"The Spirituality of Anger"
Unitarian Universalist Church of Muncie
March 14, 2010
© 2010 by Beth Lefever

The dramatic cutting, presented by Gary and Caroline, is taken from a captivating novel about two children trying to survive in a dysfunctional adult world seemingly intent upon their destruction. It is an intriguing look at what spends us and what saves us as we navigate through difficult times, and how very different those dynamics are for each of us.

Allow me to quote a bit more from the book which, as I said, is narrated by the 11-year-old girl, Alice.

"Our real father was a sweet-tempered man who never raised his voice…

"Sometimes after dinner he would go outside in the backyard with us and play softball. Our old dog, Numbhead – who had been hit by a go-cart as a puppy and was consequently too stupid to do anything but carry around a hapless live toad in his mouth – would set down his little friend so he could chase balls. My father never took his turn at bat. He was strictly the pitcher. That is what I remember the most about him, the little step he took when he threw the ball underhanded, how gently he released it. Grace in motion, he was.

"My father left on a clear, temperate afternoon in early February."

Alice goes on to discuss how she and her brother coped with this loss.

"Boone and I had our own ways of coming to terms with the abandonment. Boone simply cried: for himself, for me, for Meg (their mother), for our broken family, for our father and for the woman who had stolen him, for all sad circumstances…for old women with bad backs whose children never called; for the waning tribes of Africa.

"I -- burned my father's clothes. His shoes and his pima-cotton shirts and his socks, and that pair of khaki pants that had collected pollen on the cuffs as he threw that softball so elegantly. I did not feel sorry for the world, or imagine that God was crying. I felt sorry for myself, and I hated my father for the way he had left us – one step, graceful, easy, underhanded -- his family rolling off his fingers and arcing through the air."

One of the fascinating things about this novel is that all of the main characters practice their own particular kind of religion.

Meg, their delicate and fragile mother, seems most to experience transcendence in her solitary work as a beekeeper, though once she marries Simon, the children's evil but religious step-father, she, at least to the extent that she must, keeps to his rigid and controlling, fundamentalist lifestyle and beliefs.

Boone, the 14-year-old boy, who also seems somewhat psychologically frail, turns to a broader, kinder theism from which he worries about the non-belief of his solid and sturdy, no-nonsense, 11-year-old sister, Alice.

But she, too, must cling to something.

So, after her father deserts the family, devastating her mother, Alice, who has determined that her mother will only bounce back when she finds a new husband, turns to her own particular saving grace. She says:

"That night I left my bed, tiptoed over to my dresser and took out the giant marble my aunt had sent me from North Carolina. It was as big around as a Ping-Pong ball, and the insides swam with vague color. I stole out of the bedroom, out the back door, and into the backyard…. I put my marble on a stump and crushed it with a hammer, my heart sinking over the loss of the irreplaceable gift from my favorite aunt.

"I walked through the beeyard and threw the green fragments into the Burford holly bush that bordered the edge of our property; for Boon had his God, and I had mine. The pagan god of pure dumb superstition, a savage god favored by some Indian tribes, made of time and space, demanding a sacrifice for every benefaction. I sacrificed my favorite marble, whispering my request under that thin moonlight: Please let Meg find a man."

Alice continues her sacrifices, pounding her favorite toys and treasures to smithereens and throwing them into the holly bush with a mixture of "ridiculous hope and stunning helplessness."

She says:

"These were the sacrifices I made in the dead of night to the winding god of fate, to the mass of circumstances that has no conscience, or ability to love, but responds to spoken commands like a dead frog's leg jerks at a surge of electricity.

"Boone's God, on the other hand, was fully formed of flesh and grace; He roared out of the Bible to love crazily; He knew the number of the hairs on my head; He counted my cells; He knew my every thought and monitored my beating heart. A diving, twirling God, athletic in His mercy and His rage."

"I didn't like this God (she continues). He was too indiscriminate, the way he loved both Boone and Simon (her stepfather).

"My own god was stripped down to simple command and simple response, the payment and the deed.

"Get rid of Simon, I barked to the open moonlight, my teeth bared, my treasures flung into the holly bush.

"Kill him, I said to the moon, and when the moon faded … the stars.

"The use of this magic horrified and strengthened me, and I felt myself grow ever savage beneath my T-shirts, inside my ankle socks and my Keds."

I love this fictional child, this young girl who, with her fiercely independent mind and heart, has cast off the cruel and manipulative god of her stepfather, as well as the kinder but dubious god of her brother. Her beliefs, spectacular as they may be, are proactive, imbuing her with a sense of power and strength, a fierceness through which she might, if not survive, at least strike a blow to the fates set against her.

It is not for her to wait on the whims of her brother's ambivalent god, nor embrace with sad serenity God's mysterious and, all too often, ineffectual ways. She believes her brother's faith is grounded in ignorance and fear, not realizing that hers, too, is based on those things, although she has transferred her fear to a far more potent and self-protective anger. And she has embraced a spiritual practice that champions that all-important anger.

Anger appeals to me, as it relates to spirituality. Strong, effective spirituality, it seems to me, must make room for anger, a trait frankly not much encouraged by most of the major faith traditions.

Listen to these admonitions:

"We must try our best to keep anger always at a distance," says the Hindu Dharma.

"When anger comes, remind yourself: This is the enemy, this is the ultimate enemy, this is the true enemy," says the Dalai Lama.

And from Maimonides, one of the great Torah scholars of the Middle Ages: "So too with anger which is an extremely destructive trait, and it is fitting that one should distance one's self from it to the most extreme, and train himself not to get angry, even at something at which it is appropriate to be angry. If he wishes to make a point with his family or his community, if he was a trustee, and he wishes to improve their ways, he should feign anger in front of them in order to impress them, but he should be in control of himself when he is feigning anger, for he should not truly be angry."

You may feign anger, but you must not feel anger.

The Prophet Mohammed constantly spoke against being angry, according to Dr. Shahid Athar who cites the example of a companion who asked of the Prophet: "Give me some advice by virtue of which I hope for good in the life hereafter," to which the Prophet said simply, "Don't be angry."

Jesus, too, preached against anger: Love your neighbors, forgive your enemies, turn the other cheek... In Matthew Jesus said, "You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, 'Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment. But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment.'"

Though the religious writings on anger are far more involved than the quotes I have used here, for the most part, anger is seen as a negative, with adherents directed away from it and more toward practices of self-control, detachment, obedience and meekness.

As a cultural construct, these alternative practices make all the sense in the world, for as we know, ill-expressed anger is an extremely dangerous and destructive dynamic. Personally, too, anger can be wearing and damaging. But that does not mean it should be discounted or eliminated -- anger; shorn from the fabric of human sentiment and experience. Nor does it mean, necessarily, that it should always be displaced by more acceptable practices, such as meditation or detachment.

Sometimes the world calls us to connect rather than detach. Sometimes our hearts call us to jump in rather than withdraw; to animate rather than meditate.

And rarely do our hearts call us to meekness -- most of us; we are trained in the ways of meekness, not born into them. Rarely will you see a healthy newborn meekly awaiting the bottle or breast when she hungers.

Rather she makes her predicament known loudly and insistently, demanding resolution, and thereby taking good care of herself.

Meekness is not our nature; is not my nature.

Though I embrace many or most of Jesus' teachings, those around meekness and obedience never fail to induce some sense of distaste in me…rebelliousness…anger. It may well have been, in Jesus' time, that such teachings were important individual and cultural survival mechanisms, as I have said. It may well have been that people in Jesus' time and place were powerless enough that obedience and meekness were necessary facts of life.

And that to uplift these traits to the realm of worship was one way (although not foolproof), to ensure not only the survival of religious adherents, but to assure survival of the religion, itself, as well.

I think that is true today in many parts of the world, and for some of us right here in our own country.

Those who are without power: the disenfranchised, the impoverished, the downtrodden – for them, or for those who simply fear they may one day be among them, subscribing to a religion that encourages obedience as a doorway to abundant life may be all-important.

But for me, the terms meekness and obedience sound a dissonant chord of compromise to the full reach of our robust and voluminous spiritual natures. For me, they smack of limitation, which somehow seems inherently contradictory to the fullness of effort, and richness of life as it comes to us; contradictory to the Infinite Mystery of which we are a part, and through which we should clamber and traipse, revel and wallow, fully and freely.

And they suggest, too -- meekness and obedience -- an acquiescence and resignation to cultural, and particularly religious, tactics that manipulate, oppress or devitalize the human experience.

I think faith and belief that promote a fullness and fairness of life are crucial to the human experience, critically important, maybe even sacred. And I think it is a healthy anger that censures those who would tamper with this sacred thing called faith.

Religion is often guilty of that offense.

If it is a religion that oppresses or discriminates against, for instance, those who love differently, or those who would demand a full measure of recognition and respect regardless of their gender, it is guilty of that offense and worthy of our anger, our righteous indignation, our powerful response.

Such was my reaction when I was told, as a child, that women were to be silent in the churches. Such was my reaction, more recently, when I learned of the proposed anti-homosexuality bill in Uganda which, if enacted, will broaden the criminalization of homosexuality to include the death penalty or life in prison, a bill apparently inspired by American Evangelicals.

That is religion guilty of tampering with the sacredness of faith.

If it is a religion that takes advantage of the downtrodden and disenfranchised, it is guilty of that offense and worthy of a righteous and spiritual anger.

Such was my response when I read news accounts of the conflict in Haiti between Evangelicals and Haitian Voodoos, Voodoo and Catholicism being the two official religions in Haiti.

Evangelicals, who are among those who have flocked to the aid of traumatized earthquake survivors are working hard to provide food and shelter for the suffering and vulnerable Haitians. But they are not doing so without exacting a cost. The price? A hard-sell drive to conversion.

News reports say that trucks with loudspeakers blast evangelical music near the camps where missionaries talk to families under tarpaulin roofs. In addition, the homeless, needing papers for identification purposes, are being offered baptism certificates as their documents.

That is religion guilty of tampering with the sacred.

It is a healthy anger that rails against religious powers that rule or try to rule cultures in ways that limit the healthy expression of individual endeavors, love, ideals, wonder, joy or grief.

It is a healthy anger that defies behavior that does harm in the name of god or spirit or the holy, however well-intentioned that behavior may be, because the harm done is just too damaging.

Alice, in The Absence of Nectar, considers her stepfather, Simon, who has a position as a religious counselor of sorts.

She says:

"I pictured Simon in his counselor's office, some wrecked jury-rigged extension of some wrecked jury-rigged church, where the pastors were insane enough to unleash Simon and his philosophy upon the saddest in their flock.

"Did the poor sad people who came to Simon put up with such gibberish? Did they scream and run for their lives? Or did they simply accept the fact that God sometimes favors the maniac, that God Himself is drawn to that passion, that single-mindedness, that berserk but always entertaining devotion?"

Alice is angry, as we, too, are angry at the injustices perpetrated upon the powerless – especially… especially when they are done in the name of religion! Her anger is a right and mighty thing for her circumstances, and a holy thing by my definition of the word (and probably by hers).

Such anger is part of the reason some of us are here, in Unitarian Universalist churches, of a Sunday morning, rather than in any number of other churches. That anger against harmful religious traditions, or even just limiting traditions, which, simply by nature of their limiting experience of the Infinite, are harmful, is a spiritual sense or emotion.

Standing up to the harm caused by such traditions is, I believe, a spiritual practice.

Standing up to those individuals and institutions that perpetuate the indecency of obscenely unequal distributions of wealth and resources is a spiritual practice. Standing up to those religions which, in service of their own agendas, refuse to be good stewards of the earth is a spiritual practice. Standing up to opponents of equal marriage is a spiritual practice.

And we are a church with a history of such spiritual practices, a church where the spirituality of anger is just one of many expressions of a broad spirituality, a broad regard for the Sacred, the Holy and the Infinite.

Carl Jung said, "As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being."

Occasionally, it is anger that ignites that light. And if it is a just anger, a loving anger, an anger that leads to a brighter world, let us not hesitate to strike the match and bear that torch through the darkness.

The light is far too precious to do otherwise.