So what happens when the one we are angry with is God? Mary and Martha had, at least, God in the flesh and in front of them; they could look Christ in the face and say what they needed to say to him. How about for us? We are nervous sometimes about letting ourselves be angry at God, particularly when we cannot see how God reacts to our anger—cannot see with our own eyes that God is big enough to handle our anger; cannot see, as did Martha and Mary, that God feels so deeply for us that God weeps with us and, in fact, is loathe to strike us dead for acknowledging what is within us.
One of the reasons I love the psalmists is that they did not hesitate to speak their anger to God. We do not have to journey very far into the Psalms to see how willing the writers were to give God a piece of their minds—and hearts. If anger—and the other wide range of emotions that make us human—found its way into the prayers of the psalmists, then how might it find its way into our own prayers?
Today’s reflection and prayer come from my book In Wisdom’s Path: Discovering the Sacred in Every Season. They arose from a time, more than a decade ago, that anger came into my life as a visitor and teacher.
Each book I write teaches me many things. The lessons of this one came like pulling teeth. The way these pages fall one after the other obscures the days and weeks and sometimes months that lay between them as I wrestled with the words or avoided the blank page entirely. It wasn’t that I felt blocked, exactly; I could write, I just didn’t always want to put on paper what was stewing in my soul. I was angry with God, mad at the church, grieving for a damaged relationship, and needing time for my spirit to catch up with all the changes that had taken place in my life. I felt about God the way I sometimes do when the intensity of a friendship necessitates a breathing space. I know you’re there, I told God. I just don’t want to talk with you for a while.
When we wrestle like lovers
and I let you go
to tend to my wounds
that our loving has opened;
when we argue like sisters
and I storm away
to stew in the juices
my anger has stirred;
when the force of my passion
has left me exhausted
and I turn to the silence
to gather my strength;
let me hear you still breathing
there in the shadows,
blessing my silence
and weeping my name.
Questions for reflection
So do you get angry with God? What about? What do you do with your divine anger? Do you allow your anger to be part of your prayers—to be a prayer in itself? How might your anger become a doorway, a pathway that takes you deeper into God? How might Martha and Mary be teachers and companions for you in discerning how your anger can be a path toward life?
