Sunday Sermon (Anger)

¡Hola! Everybody,
I haven’t commented on the Sean Bell miscarriage of justice. I’m actually at a loss for words right now regarding this incident. Tomorrow at work, we will be strategizing in order to organize the city’s youth.

Today: a poem and a rant.

* * *

I want to stay by you and surround you with gifts.

Books of Neruda’s poetry.
Balloons from the park.
Sunny days and skinny-dipping.

I want to stay by you
so I can give you --
my vigilance when you’re home.

Tokens that tell you
you are missed.

Silent solitary parades
to celebrate your returns.

And all you will ever owe me
is a soft look
that says
you will miss me
when my gifts and I
have gone away.

-- Eddie, Nows [no. 11]
(All rights reserved ©)

* * *

-=[ Anger ]=-

“Every loving thought is true.
Everything else is an appeal for healing and help,
regardless of the form it takes.”
-- A Course in Miracles

This is a difficult post for me because lately I’ve been struggling with the issue. I find myself lashing at a loved one and if I lay down the defenses, I realize it’s just plain wrong. When I take the focus off the perceived wrong and put it on me, I see that my reactions are off.

It’s a difficult realization not because it’s hard for me to own up to it, but because it lays bare how much work I have ahead of me.

Deep down inside anger is based on fear.

Truth is a loving thought. Every thought based on love is a truth. Everything else is a desperate and sometimes dysfunctional cry for wholeness. And the question remains of how I should respond to anger. How can I be justified in responding in anger to my loved one’s anger? The answer here is clear: the only appropriate response is the willingness to give with an open heart.

What if I were to propose that all anger is nothing more than attempt to make someone feel guilty. As long as I value guilt I will create a world in which attack is justified. As long as I can keep in mind that guilt is meaningless, I will understand that no attack can be justified.

When I attack, I lose sight of the fact that I am blessed. I attack because I feel deprived and am reacting from fear-based thinking. If instead I choose to love, I create abundance. If I choose to harden myself and contract, I embody the illusion that there is scarcity.

In attacking, whether I’m wrong or right, I hurt myself and I lose the chance to know my lover because essentially I fear what I attack.

I do know anger is never justified. Attack has foundation only in fear and escape from fear begins with this realization.

This is where I will be made whole.

If I don’t defend the anger then I enter a real world of possibilities and love instead inhabiting a dream world of terror.

Love,

Eddie