"If you're not angry you're not paying attention." This has to be one of the best graffiti samples I have seen spray-painted on a Vancouver wall. I just did a quick Google search and apparently the author is unknown. Anger is our baseline. Everyone is angry about something, but that things do not live up to our hopes, expectations or needs and that this happens en masse is plenty reason to be perpetually outraged. It isn't that everyone walks around frowning all day, though I would say that a lot of people I see in public look, shall we say, borderline miserable? I tend to smile a lot. I can't say why, really. I am quite angry, like everyone else. But I'm not miserable. I am not bitter, nor am I hostile or spoiling for a fight (well, I'm not spoiling for a fight with any of you, gentle readers!). I am angry for some very simple and basic reasons: we live in a society, and a world, that is hugely unequal. I am angry about injustice. I am angry about what is being done to our planet and the environment because of some people's stupid greed, I am angry about (not at) people who refuse to communicate clearly or honestly, I am angry about cruelty, rudeness and unkindness, I am angry about cruelty to animals. I am also angry that the city I live in and grew up in has become such an ungrateful and unfaithful whore turning her pretty and painted face towards foreign investment and has turned so brazenly against her poorest and most vulnerable denizens. I'm sure that I also have my share of leftover anger from some of the unpleasant experiences I have had in life. But I have also had a lot of good experiences and to me they outweigh the negative by at least two to one.
I have been told by some people that I appear to be full of anger and this frightens them. By others that I am, or was full of anger and in denial about it. My reply? We're all full of anger, we're all on the verge of a collective meltdown, not just me, but you also and all of us, the whole freaking, damaged and wounded human race is seething with rage so let's shut up and deal with it already!
Anger is a type of energy. It is neither bad nor good. It is energy. It is in all of us. We all have it. Most of us use or channel it destructively. Anger uses us destructively. It doesn't have to be destructive. I was homeless. This made me very angry. I am still angry about this, but I have channelled this anger into advocating and activism on behalf of those who are homeless and I challenge people in elected positions to do more to eliminate poverty and homelessness and help make this a more equal society. This is my way of saying thank you to God and to the many who have been his instruments in helping me get back on my feet.
I was abused for years by members of my family, sexually, physically, emotionally and spiritually. I have forgiven them but I am still angry that this has happened and that through their selfish ignorance I became ill for many years with post traumatic stress disorder. I have forgiven my family and now I am channelling this anger into supporting and caring for others who have been traumatized and live with mental illness. I was abused and persecuted in churches I was previously involved in. I am still angry, not that this happened but that it was allowed to happen, but I have forgiven my abusers and I am channelling this anger into serving God and others in the church that I currently call my spiritual home. I was recently spoken to in some very abusive and degrading ways by a mentally unbalanced woman who attends my church all on the pretext that I had frightened her with my anger (the charge? I on three occasions politely asked her to please let me finish what I was trying to say when she kept chronically interrupting me.) I am still angry that this happened and I am going to channel this anger through forgiveness.
There are many things to be angry about, but just as many or more to be thankful and grateful for. We can even be grateful for the lessons we can learn through the experiences that make us angry. As for the anger itself, it is bound to linger and will likely never go away. Admit this, own it, and channel it for good. Stripped of bitterness, resentment and the ugliness of self-pity anger can be transformed into a powerful and hugely constructive force of love. Love will not take away our anger (remember that Jesus cleansed the temple in a fit of divine rage and then let in on the Scribes and Pharisees? Not always meek and certainly not mild, this Lord of ours.) However, if stripped of self-pity and the desire for revenge and empowered through forgiveness God will transform our anger into a powerful force of transformation and change. Anger without forgiveness always results in destruction, self-destruction and even war. Anger that has been cleansed by forgiveness and Divine Love becomes in itself a passionate intensity, a desire and longing to see the Kingdom of God made manifest in our lives and in our world.
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