"Acceptance," an Opiate?

"They have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying,
​‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace."
(Jeremiah 6:14)

​

The Serenity Prayer

​"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.
​
Living one day at a time,
enjoying one moment at a time,
accepting hardship
​as the pathway to peace.

Taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is,
not as I would have it.

Trusting that He will
​make all things right 
if I surrender to His will,

That I may be reasonably happy
in this life and supremely happy with Him
forever in the next.

​Amen.

A New Freedom Prayer

God, I pray for 
the humility 
to concede
​the truth of what I can't change,
the courage
to be fully present where positioned, 
the wisdom 
to discern your will from my own.

Living one day at a time,
one moment at a time 
​watching for self-centeredness,
praying for release, 
the paradoxical pathway to peace.

Seeking, as Jesus did,
to speak and live in truth in this world.

Trusting that your kingdom
Is on earth, 
(within this body, 
within this world)
as it is in heaven.

Experiencing freedom
within this sacred lifetime 
​as it is on the other side of the veil.

Amen

In AA some members say,
​"I could never stay sober until I accepted I was an alcoholic."

The Big Book says:
"We learned we had to fully concede to our innermost selves that we were alcoholics.
This is the first step in recovery.
The delusion that we are like other people, or presently may be,
has to be smashed."  
(Big Book page 30)

So what!  
What's the difference?
"Accept" has an "roll over" quality to it where there is TENSION in a concession or admission. 

Both "concede" and "admit" express the "smashing," the brutality of finally realizing and telling the truth.
To "accept" feels to me to be at peace with the truth...
Why change?
​I accept it. 
In that peace, I might well die drunk. 
God, I pray you keep me off "spiritual opiates.

"They have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying,
​‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace."
(Jeremiah 6:14)