<P> The earliest printed reference, in 1936, mentions that during a speech, a Miss Mildred Pinkerton "quotes the prayer," as if to indicate it was already in a circulation known to the reporter, or that Pinkerton relayed it as a quote, without mentioning its authorship . A 1937 Christian student publication attributed the prayer to Niebuhr in the following form, which matches the other earliest published forms in requesting "courage to change" before petitioning for serenity: </P> <P> Father, give us courage to change what must be altered, serenity to accept what cannot be helped, and the insight to know the one from the other . </P> <P> Various other authors also cited Niebuhr as the source of the prayer from 1937 on . The Federal Council of Churches (NCC) included the prayer in a book for army chaplains and servicemen in 1944 and the USO circulated the prayer (with Niebuhr's permission) to soldiers on printed cards during World War Two . In 1950, in response to questions about the already quite widely known prayer's provenance, Niebuhr wrote that the prayer "may have been spooking around for years, even centuries, but I don't think so . I honestly do believe that I wrote it myself ." He confirmed this in 1967 . His daughter, Elisabeth Sifton, thought that Niebuhr had first written it in 1943, while Niebuhr's wife Ursula believed it had been written in 1941 or' 42, adding that it may have been used in prayers as early as 1934 . </P> <P> The Serenity Prayer will be listed under Niebuhr's name in the next edition of the Yale Book of Quotations, whose author Fred R. Shapiro had first raised doubts about, but was later instrumental in confirming Niebuhr's authorship . </P>

Help me deal with the things i cannot change