In which we continue to reflect on the challenge and gift of anger as we contemplate the story of Mary and Martha in John 11 . . .
For both women and men, anger can be a complicated emotion to sort through, and the Christian tradition has not always made it easy to acknowledge and reckon with our anger. Anger has often been especially complex and difficult for women, who in many cultures are trained to be pleasant and placid and peacemakers. And so when this emotion begins to make its presence known, many of us ignore it or submerge it.
Anger, like water, always has to go somewhere. If, in order to keep the seeming peace within us or around us, we fail to recognize it and attend to it, anger will go underground and resurface in a different place. Or it will show up in a different form. It will appear as depression, sadness, fatigue, or some other manifestation. Because these manifestations mask what lies beneath them, they can prove destructive and costly to our soul. We may think it requires too much energy to grapple with our anger. We can be sure, however, that if we mask our anger or send it underground, the amount of energy it will ultimately drain from us is far greater than the energy involved in confronting it.
The amount of energy that anger carries in fact accounts for much of the difficulty we have in dealing with it. Yet this is where its power lies. When we ignore our anger, we disperse that energy; we fritter it away and expose ourselves to the insidious damage that unregarded anger can cause. When we pay attention to it, when we listen to it, when we contemplate it and pray with it, when we ask it—and God—what it has to say to us, anger can provide tremendous focus and energy for action that brings healing and wholeness to ourselves and to the world.
Questions for reflection
What have you learned about anger in your life? What messages and lessons have you received about this emotion and how you should deal with it? What have you learned from anger? Do you experience it as energy-giving or energy-draining?
