Reinhold Niebuhr, a legendary ethicist and theologian from the previous century, may have produced the greatest single slice of spirituality in the history of North America when he penned a profound prayer in 1932. That prayer begins: "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know the difference.”

This is the first talk in series of taking the full Serenity Prayer line by line:  To celebrate it, be shaped by it, and learn how to live lives of strength and peace in a mad, mad world that cannot - that never could - and never will - provide us those things.