“How easily my life becomes a list—
a long scroll of duties …”
—Gunilla Norris, “Planning the Day,” in Being Home

Long ago, when my beloved and I were newly dating, her housemate—social worker, blackbelt, and general wise woman, Cathy Corl—suggested to her a new daily practice: when you’re making out your to-do list, make two columns: one for you and one for The Universe. We were both already inveterate “to-do” listmakers with contrasting styles (my partner’s regular and tidy; mine random and as-needed) and the idea was compelling to us both.

So much in our lives felt beyond our control at that point, from my mother’s terminal lung cancer to when we might finally be able to live together. I can’t say I regularly wrote it out, but “making a second column for The Universe” became a regular part of my thinking. It served as a way both to name and honor a heartfelt yearning or prayer, and to release to the Great All what was not within our power.

After my mother’s passing, when we finally found our wee, adorable, perfect-for-us first home, it checked off an earnest second-column wish of many years.

I shared the idea with our daughter some years later, when she was struggling after a painful experience. I taught her the serenity prayer:

Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
courage to change the things I can,
and wisdom to know the difference.

I suggested that making The Universe’s second column was a good tool for developing that wisdom: that often in contemplating what truly was beyond my control, I could surrender to The Universe that which I could not accomplish. Often in the process, I discerned the part that was mine to do—a smaller task for the first column—making my prayer more active.

Since then, I have come to appreciate the interplay between the first and second column: what’s mine to do, and what I leave to The Universe. In attending to them both, I affirm what Rabbi Tarfon knew: we are not required to complete the task, yet neither are we free to withdraw from it.

These days I often find myself overwhelmed by all that is beyond my control. But when I give over what is beyond me to the second column, I often find the first column part that I can do.

Prayer

Holy Interconnectedness, help us to be steadfast in what is ours to do. Help us to rest in the knowledge that the vast web of being will hold what we ourselves must release.