Two Poems on Anger

Anger is one of those insidious vices, I think, is collectively mistrusted and censured. I have a particular relationship with anger, as I grew up with a very angry man as a father.

Anger was bad. It was dangerous. It was something to be feared.

It was no wonder when I sat in a therapist’s office, many years into adulthood, that I had a defensive reaction to my therapist asking me why I was so angry.

My anger didn’t look like yelling, or flying into a rage, or punching or hitting.

My anger was a tight jaw. A clenched fist. A headache that sprang up out of nowhere. It looked like mild frustration I could reason away (for a time). Occasionally, it looked like a venting session with one of my siblings.

Over several years, I’ve become more acquainted with anger as a sign my body is telling me something. Often it springs up when I feel powerless, so one of my mechanism for answering this sign is by calming myself enough to be able to recognize the choices I actually have.

I’ve noticed a time I can feel most angry is when I see injustice, and I don’t see God doing anything about it.

Anger

Angry, angry every day

Weighted by this evil

Stop, it’s just a thought

That has a voice

A word that needs to speak

Keep your heart reigned

By your head

It’s what the Christians said

Maybe they were afraid to feel

So they wrote books instead

Angry, angry every day

My constant little friend

What is it you want to say?

What story will you tell?

Of a little child who once was hurt

Who couldn’t get away

Who called upon a God she’d heard

And he looked the other way

I find comfort in the story of Jesus turning over tables in the temple of Jerusalem (this story is told in all four gospels). I can imagine his rage at the injustice. Often this story has been abused and taken as an excuse to vent harmful anger. But the way humans have misused this story doesn’t retract the power from a God who gets angry at injustice.

When I feel like God is looking the other way, I remember him flipping tables.