A Shrink in the Belfry
Thoughts on Life, Spirituality, and good Mental Health
(Chasing bats away, one at a time!)
Anyone know where I can buy some serenity?!?
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What is “good mental health”? I have discussed this question with many people I’ve encountered over the years, typically in clinical settings, but I’ve also written about it on another platform.
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Please don’t miss or overlook what I’m going to say right now:
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Good mental health is NOT the “absence of mental illness”.
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I have known a fair number of persons who deal with one form or another of mental illness on a daily basis (I am one of those persons, but I’ll talk about that down the road a bit), but who ALSO have good mental health.
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Good mental health is many things, but it centers around, and is rooted in, taking good care of oneself, looking to help others around you (both near and far), a healthy outlook about life itself. It’s the ability (and determination!) to accept life on life’s terms, and the awareness that life DOES have a good purpose in the long run.
It’s an outlook (and an “inlook”, so to speak!) that can allow someone to rise above the challenges, the losses, the joys, the sorrows, and even the illnesses, that can plague all of us … from time to time, or on a daily basis.
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But, it’s also the “want to”, to see others as valuable, vulnerable, valiant, and, sometimes, vanquished.
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In short, it’s seeing both yourself and others (not just the persons you really like, but everyone!) as worthy of love, respect, listening, and, a lot of times, forgiveness.
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However, I do understand that people who are very depressed (either with what is called Major Depression, or just really feeling down) will have a hard time some days choosing to have the kind of attitude and outlook I described above. That is true, and truth. Nonetheless, to some degree it can still be done. I have witnessed this in quite a number of persons.
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Many, many people around the world have heard of “The Serenity Prayer.” Most people know it by its shortened version, most often recited in 12-Step recovery group meetings:
“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.” Sometimes, they will add the refrain at the end: “One day at a time.”
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But this is not the actual “Serenity Prayer.”
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The original “Serenity Prayer” was written by a professor and pastor named Reinhold Niebuhr sometime (most scholars believe) in the early 1930s. He then prayed the prayer as part of a sermon delivered in a church in New York City, where he was invited to preach as a guest pastor.
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The actual prayer reads:
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“God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things which should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.
Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time, accepting hardship as a pathway to peace. Taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is, not as I (we) would have it. Trusting that You will make all things right, if I (we) surrender to Your will, so that I (we) may be reasonably happy in this life, and supremely happy with You forever in the next. Amen.”
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To me, this prayer is perhaps the best expression and description of “good mental health” that I’ve ever come across (other than some phrases/verses found in the Bible). So, in the coming weeks my goal is to walk through it with you and look at the “gold” that the prayer contains.
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Below, I’ve included a few pictures of a wonderful little church in Juneau, Alaska. It was the first Russian Orthodox church in the North American continent. It also has a nice, though small, belfry!! Not sure if any bats inhabit it (we didn’t see any on the day we visited), but perhaps.
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Here is a picture of a beautiful (IMO) painting of Jesus (which stands on a little easel inside the tiny sanctuary of the church) holding a book with one of my favorite statements of all time:
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“Come to Me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. For My yoke is easy.”
I think that statement, that call, explains itself pretty well. It draws you in, doesn’t it? As humans, we often feel weary and heavy laden. To find someone who says he can give us rest from such weariness and labor often sounds very inviting!
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As an aside, here is a picture that we took while out on a whale watch cruise near Juneau. To paraphrase Tim Blake Nelson’s proclamation to George Clooney’s character in “Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?”, (as opposed to gophers) “We came upon a whole orca village!”
The very first word in the Serenity Prayer quoted above is “God”. It’s a prayer, of course, so one would expect that the pray-er would call out to God. Some might call to some other personage, certainly. But there is always the sense that when in need, people appeal to someone or something we believe could help us in our neediness.
Here is another picture I love:
This shows an old open-air belfry with lovely light shining through. To me, God is very much akin to this little bell tower. Open. Light-filled. Calling. Welcoming. Yet also Powerful in a very good way.Much like the first word of the Serenity Prayer, life, and most things in it, begin with God. In my view, all good things must begin with God, even if the person receiving such truly good things doesn’t believe that or realize it.
++++ Interestingly, the book of Genesis, Chapter 2, tells us that God is both male and female: “In God’s own image God created humans; male and female God created them.” If you are willing to accept it, God is both our Father and our Mother. Not sexist, one way or the other, nor in between.
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Open arms. Filled with Light and good will. Calling. Welcoming. The Inventor and Author of grace, forgiveness, and the peace that those two things bring about.
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Which leads us back to the whole “serenity” thing! Can we buy it? Nope. No stores carry it, but you CAN find it. And it’s always been close by. So, please read on.
Something to which I was blind for a long time is that the prayer is not asking for serenity at all! Rev. Niebuhr was asking God for grace! “Give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed.”
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And what is grace? Grace is a gift of help, which another must give us, as we don’t possess that gift as yet, and cannot produce it ourselves. In this case, what is the gift of help for which we are asking? The ability to accept things that can’t be changed.
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And how are we hoping to “accept” such things? With serenity! We could accept being stuck in traffic with frustration, with anger, cussing, any number of emotional reactions. We could do the same with illness, having a camping or fishing trip rained out, any number of such things. But in this prayer, the gift is to be able to accept with serenity.
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Which means that serenity is ALREADY INSIDE US! The acceptance?!? Not so much! But the serenity? That appears to be a choice that we can make, in the midst of God’s gift of accepting things we can’t change.
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Thus, the prayer is asking God for the grace/gift to accept unchangeable (by us, anyway) things while choosing to do so serenely.
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I have thought about that idea, that truth, many times over. I have received the gift of grace to accept hard things quite often, but have not always pulled out and used the serenity card that has always been inside me. Sometimes, I’m afraid, it just seems to feel better “to accept with anger!”
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Well, enough for today. I hope this has shed just a bit of light on what, again, I think is an amazing description of “good mental health” to be found in Niebuhr’s prayer. We’ll talk more about it. Just please keep in mind that what we are asking God for are three things: grace to accept some things with a serene attitude, courage to change some other things, and wisdom. And that’s just the beginning.
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Hope you’ll keep returning to this site when you can. I can’t always write every day (a lot of things going on, especially this time of year), but will try to do so more often.
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Grace to you and peace, friends.
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Craig
As you can see, it is square in design, has open-air “windows” on all four sides, and at least two bells! I don’t see any bats in the picture, but be assured that there may be a few in there, hiding ….
In these pages, I hope to talk about many things that are important to me, and I believe to you as well, if you are human like I am! I am grateful to life and to so many people who have given me gifts of knowledge and thoughtfulness, in most cases without knowing it at all.
I have been in the dark on a number of occasions, but always, eventually, a light has come. But what good is light if it can’t be, or can be but isn’t, shared?
We’ll talk about what good mental health is (it isn’t just the absence of mental illness!), several and various spiritual ideas, love for ourselves and for others, enjoying what comes to us from our senses (and maybe from our “nonsenses!”), and other things besides. Hope you will keep coming back for more!
I guess that’s it for now.
Well, allow me to add just one more thing: I have always loved The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien! There is a line in TLOTR, spoken by Gandalf, which I still cherish: “Not all who wander are lost.”
I, perhaps like you, have been a wanderer on many occasions, and have at times felt entirely lost. But, I later learned that I was not lost at all. There was always Another Person there with me, who later brought me back around. That “Another Person” is with you, too!
Thanks for reading.
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Craig Meek, M.D., retired