Now What Do We Do?

"Someday you will. Yes, and some days you do." 

I'm coming to the end now of what I've so endearingly called, "my anger book." I started it almost a year ago. Truly an enigma, this emotion that slips through my fingers, claws mysteriously at my veins and puzzles my brain. It's been a process of waking up to my anger and asking how can I use it for good? How can I bring it out of the fog and into the light? I suppose I would first need to believe that it is worthy of mention.

For me, I've learned that I need my anger. I need to befriend it. Without it, I get lazy and act without conviction or direction. I wonder how I was able to live for so long without letting it spill out. I live in a culture that is fueled by misdirected anger. Whenever we truly are granted the space to face the root of our anger, do we carry on in self-justification or do we hold it with open hands,releasing it upwards towards redemption?

As far as anger with words goes, I'd like to adopt a few of Keizer's speech codes. Or at least try.

1. Make your needs known. Never be upset for failing to receive what you never asked for.

2. Speak nothing but the truth, but seldom all of the truth. "Telling it all" is tedious in small matters and cruel in large. Will God ever tell us all the truth about ourselves? Who could bear it?

3. Speak your heart only to those dear to your heart. "Cast not your pearls before swine."

4. Listen as though it were a sacred obligation. Take careful note of the correlation between your attentiveness to others and your aptitude for prayer. Grace for the one never exists without grace for the other.

5. Coax the quiet and the shy, but do not badger them. Have an eye out for those who look for an invitation to speak, and give them one. But do not cater to those who coyly wait for repeated invitations.

6. Explain yourself to the degree that others wish to understand, not to the degree that you wish to be understood. The wish to be understood absolutely is a violation of the first commandment: "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." Only God understands us completely.

7. Never use knowledge or vocabulary to exclude another person. This is no different from eating bread in the presence of the hungry.

8. Waste no time with people who deliberately misunderstand you, who caricature what you say in order to attack it more easily. Pick on someone your own size.

***

Almost always, my anger is pointing to something deeper down. A huge trigger for me is not being listened to. Wasted words morph into angry silence. I know i'm not alone in this. I look around and I see a lot of hurting people just wanting to be understood. This yearning i understand and it awakens me to Christ next to me, the Great Empathizer. And his Spirit within me, the Great Comforter. So when my kids aren't listening to me yet again, may I have the faith to trust God for healing. He is the only one who can fully listen and understand me.

And yet, I won't experience full healing until that Blessed Day. More and more, I appreciate the distinct comfort of being known. Known for my struggle rather than my great qualities and being good and doing the right thing. Keizer so poignantly writes, "I shake my head whenever I hear some well-meaning cleric argue for removing still more of the penitential language from the Book of Common Prayer: 'Why do we have to keep beating people over the head with the idea that they're bad?' she will say. Because, I reply, they already know they're bad and thus can take comfort from the acknowledgement. The only thing more painful than the remorse of feeling wicked is the loneliness of being told that you're good . All that,' I'm okay, you're okay' means to me is 'I'm completely oblivious, and you're completely alone.' Praise me for nothing but my struggle. "

So, may I stay alive. May we stay awake. With feeling and emotion lest we become deadly dispassionate. May I learn to be like the One that both embodies wrath and mercy.
" Might it be anger that actually comes to our rescue in the end, like an indignant mother, perhaps in the literal form of indignant mothers, wringing their hands at the heaps of corpses and the dusty lines of refugees and crying out, 'Enough, enough, enough!' "

Someday, all will be made new. Someday, I won't live in this tension anymore. Someday, I'll be that strong, courageous peacemaker. And yes, some days I am.


*all quotes taken from Garret Keizer's book," The Enigma of Anger :Essays on a Sometimes Deadly Sin"

*painting done by Krya Hinton. "An aerial view of the inner landscape and journey for an enneagram nine."