Originally from Chicago, Mark Scannell attended the University of Notre Dame for two years before joining the Dominican community and eventually becoming a Roman Catholic priest. He left the priesthood fifteen years later, after falling in love with Elaine Gaston, who was a Dominican sister. They married in 1985.
Mark has worked as a consultant, a counselor, a life coach, and a co-owner of a manufacturer’s representative’s plumbing company. Since retiring from the plumbing business, Mark has enjoyed officiating at weddings, umpiring softball, reading, and learning more about the flexibility and plasticity of the human brain. He is in the process of becoming certified as a neurotransformational coach. Mark and Elaine live in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and are members of the St. Joan of Arc Catholic Church. Throughout his life, Mark has dealt with various addictions: compulsiveness in thinking and behavior, codependency, and poor boundaries, to name a few. "As I have tried to deal with these addictions, I found the wisdom and power of Twelve Step groups, which is where he was first introduced to the Serenity Prayer."
He is deeply interested in promoting and facilitating learning, and that the best learning takes place in community and through dialogue. Learning is not only about discovering what we did not know before; learning also includes discovering and reaffirming what we already know.
To facilitate a sense of dialogue as you read his book, he has ended each chapter with some questions that encourage you to search inwardly and share your reflections in communities to which you belong.
"I invite you to join this exploration into the Serenity Prayer and gratitude. I thank you for your willingness to examine whether gratitude is “elemental” in the Serenity Prayer."