More about anger

I wanted to share a bit more from Harriet G. Lerner's book 'The Dance of Anger'*. She is writing about family dynamics but most especially from a woman's point of view. 

One of HL's major premises is that women often fight ineffectively. That is, we frequently express anger in such a way that we don't in fact make our point and so our anger isn't accepted and that leads to more frustration, anger and depression. This is not usually conscious or intentional but she suggests that this happens in part because we don't always have much of a sense of confidence in our own right to have an opinion and to be angry and to express it.

So, HL explains, 'In situations that might realistically evoke anger or protest we stay silent - or become tearful, self-critical or "hurt". If we do feel angry, we keep it to ourselves in order to avoid the possibility of open conflict. But it is not just our anger that we keep to ourselves; in addition, we may avoid making clear statements about what we think and feel, when we suspect that such clarity would make another person uncomfortable and expose differences between us.

HL suggests throughout her book that we fear and avoid our anger (and that of others as well) not only because it brings about the disapproval of others but also because it signals the necessity for change. What she seems to mean by this is that anger in ourselves or in another obviously indicates an unhappiness or dissatisfaction with a person or situation and includes the implication that that person or situation needs to change. And that is difficult for the simple reason that we very often do not want to change or see the need for it. And often enough, in any case, we feel it is the other person who really needs to change.

If we decide it is important to change the way a relationship has been going then, Lerner says, we have to be prepared for resistance and threat from the other and even within ourselves.

A kind of summary of one of HL's major themes then is: It is extremely difficult to learn, with our hearts as well as our heads, that we have a right to everything we think and feel - and so does everyone else. It is our job to state our thoughts and feelings clearly and to make responsible decisions that are congruent with our values and beliefs. It is not our job to make another person think and feel the way we do or the way we want them to...There is nothing wrong with wanting to change someone else. The problem is that it usually doesn't work. No matter how skilled we become in dealing with our anger, we cannot ensure that another person will do what we want them to or see things our way, nor are we guaranteed that justice will prevail. We  are able to move away from ineffective fighting only when we give up the fantasy that we can change or control another person. It is only then that we can reclaim the power that is truly ours - the power to change our own selves and take a new and different action on our own behalf.
* *Harriet G. Lerner: The Dance of Anger, Thorsons, HarperCollins. 1989.

Anger...

This is a bit of a shift I guess but I do enjoy sharing about my favorite books. One that I read some years ago when I will still in the monastery and found incredibly helpful is: The Dance of Anger by Harriet G. Lerner*. You might be surprised that I found this book so helpful in a monastery with those nice holy nuns but I am pretty sure you will find anger as much inside the monastery as out. The very simple and beautiful reason for that is that nuns are human beings not angels and they bring with them to the monastery all that has formed them before they came. 

In this book Lerner focuses mostly on family and interfamily relationships. I like it because it is also geared to women and women's unique difficulties with anger and guilt. It includes a sensitive discussion about the ways in which women express anger - or not (and the 'or not' is alas, an important way we seem to have of dealing with our anger). Men tend to express their anger more physically or else they absent themselves, whereas women's anger is more likely to be subtle and often disguised. It includes indirect things like silent submission, ineffective fighting, blaming, innuendo, gossip, etc. (I do want to say as an aside however, that over the years I have come to experience that men also gossip).

Here is a quote from Lerner: Women...have long been discouraged from the awareness and forthright expression of anger. Sugar and spice are the ingredients from which we are made. We are the nurturers, the smoothers, the peacemakers and the steadiers of rocked boats. It is our job to please, protect and placate the world...Women who openly express anger at men are especially suspect. Even when society is sympathetic to our goals for equality, we all know that 'those angry women' turn everybody off. Unlike our male heroes who fight and even die for what they believe in, women may be condemned for waging a bloodless and humane revolution for their own rights. The direct expression of anger... makes us unladylike, unfeminine, unmaternal or more recently, 'strident'.

Anger has its beauty as well as its harm

Lerner also speaks about guilt. We are often taught to feel guilty about our anger for instance. So, we think we shouldn't feel angry. But she says, 'anger is something we feel. It exists for a reason and always deserves our respect and attention. We all have a right to everything we feel and certainly our anger is no exception'. The issue for Lerner is not what we feel or that we feel, but how we express it.

 There is much more and I will try and share some of it next time. In the meantime, I think the book is still available. It is well worth reading.


*Harriet G. Lerner: The Dance of Anger, Thorsons, HarperCollins. 1989.


  

Prayer

Some of you who read this blog will know that prayer is for me, my life's food. I spent 30 years in a contemplative order and continue to pray each day because I believe not only in my own need to pray but in its  power and gift. But I know that for many (most?) people prayer is difficult. Is this because we see prayer mostly as asking for things and when there seems to be no answer, we lose interest? Or is it because we don't have time? I know there can be lots of reasons but let me share a few thoughts anyway.

For those who do sometimes pray, there can be a real ambivalence, indeed conflict, about prayer and its companion, silence. Maybe this is partly because we feel a bit lost about what we should be doing or how we should be praying. Also, since we don't seem to get much feedback in prayer, we notice that there are plenty of other things to distract us and keep us from focusing too much on something as insubstantial as prayer seems to be.

I found this quote from Sister Wendy Beckett's book on prayer.* She says:

The astonishing thing about prayer is our inability to accept that if we have need of it, as we do, then because of God's goodness, it cannot be something that is difficult. Accept that God is good and that your relationship with God is prayer, and you must conclude that prayer is an act of the utmost simplicity. Yet so many people seem to feel that there is some mysterious method, some way in that others know, but they do not. 'Knock and it shall be opened to you': they seem to believe that it needs some sort of Masonic knock and their own humble tapping will go unnoticed. What kind of God thinks of tricks, lays down arcane rules, makes things difficult? God wants to love us ...God wants to draw us close, strengthen us and infuse peace. The humblest, most modest, almost imperceptible rubbing of our fingers on the door and it flies open...Prayer is the last thing we should feel discouraged about.

On the Way

 I know for myself that I spent years keeping busy, watching TV, filling my life with noise and distractions of one sort or another to keep from facing what, deep within, I knew I needed to do. Be quieter. Be less self-absorbed . Pray. What I believe God did was first of all to send into my life, people who could point the way; people who knew far better than me, the way to find God. Eventually and happily I had the courage to begin to try to pray and I found I did not need to be afraid because God who is love, asks and more to the point, gives, only what is for my good and the good of others. 

How did I know what God was asking? Mostly, what is asked is right before me each moment of each day. The daily living out of ordinary life. The daily contact with others who challenge and support you. The difference is, I think, that there in God is a context which gives meaning and purpose and a goal; the growth of love. That of course, is a life-time's work. 

Next week I would like to try to say a little more about prayer and about the silence that I think helps us toward well-being and joy.

* Sister Wendy Beckett: Sister Wendy on Prayer, Continuum, London, 2006

Silence and God

I remember the first time I was ever really aware of experiencing silence. I was skiing in the mountains near Vancouver and I suddenly could feel and hear an incredible stillness. There was no one else but me standing in the snow amid huge trees. Even at the time I remember thinking: 'I am hearing silence!'. I felt a wonderful sense of awe. When I look back now what I understand is that it wasn't simply the physical sound of silence I experienced but something much deeper, much more awesome - it was in some sense the silence of the presence of God. It was so powerful that to this day, I know I remain touched by it. It stirred me and awakened in me a longing which I couldn't then identify but I now realize was a longing for God.

So what I want to say first is that I believe that the silence many of us long for is, simply, God. It is not just that God is found in the silence but that God is the very silence itself; a kind of calling silence. 

The conclusion I then reach is that as we as a society get both increasingly distressed by all the noise around us and, at the same time, find ourselves filling our lives with yet more noise and more activity; this drowning out may be in order to muffle that calling silence. For we are in so many ways, hugely conflicted about God. On the one hand many of us want something more, something more meaningful than just the apparent day after day grind; on the other hand we can be afraid of surrendering to this calling God. We may be afraid of what might be asked or we may not be able to drown out the voices of scorn around us.

As Sister Wendy says in the quote in my last blog, God wants to love us...God wants to draw us ever closer to strengthen us and infuse God's peace. I know that it is hard, really hard, to believe that a God of love exists when our world seems so full of all sorts of very bad things and immense suffering. I guess I can only say that, in your work life for instance, you read up, you study, you learn all you can. Well, try that with God.  
 

Not a very 'mystical' photo but the snail does get to where it is going!

Besides reading and listening to God-lovers, as I have been trying to say this week and last, pray. You will find God in your busy life. You will find God in your relationships. You will find God in your ordinary day to day life. You will find God in your moments of silence. You will find God in your prayer. And the more we can pray the more we will see the beauty in life and in the other people in our lives.

A great lover of God said, Prayer is nothing more than friendly converse with one we know loves us. How's that for simplicity?