You Can't Outrun Anger
Tuesday of Holy Week – March 31, 2015
A BROTHER became tired of his community and the behavior of others often annoyed him. He decided, “I will go off somewhere by myself. Then I will neither talk nor listen and shall be at peace. This anger I feel will depart.” He went out into the desert and made his home in a cave.
One day he placed a water jug he had filled on the ground. It rolled over, spilling its contents. He filled it again and it fell over again. When this happened the third time, he became enraged, took hold of the jug and smashed it against the rocks.
Calming down, he realized that anger had mocked him. “Here I am by myself and anger has beaten me. I will return to the community. Wherever we live, we need to work at being patient with God’s help.”
[Bernard Bangley, By Way of the Desert, p. 110]
The brother in this story could be any of us. The impulse to move away from difficulties, troubles, and struggles lives within us. We see our own interior landscape (anger, for this brother), and believe that if we lived in a different place, worked with other people, or were free of current responsibilities, we would be free of that which lives within us.
Of course, this thinking is an illusion. The root of our difficulty is never “out there” as much as it is “in here,” within us. It may be more convenient to blame our situation. It may feel better to blame our current state on someone else around us. But our first task, as humans growing into God and becoming the persons God created us to be, is to attend to our own inner life. That includes seeing ourselves and our own dark shadows for what they are.
Most always, though, it is far easier – and more pleasant to our fragile egos – to blame someone else for our problems than to take the difficult look within ourselves.
One gift of living in community – that is, in close relationship to others – is that someone always seems to put their finger right on the emotional spot where I am most tender.
Or to say it another way, there always seems to be someone around who, knowingly or unknowingly, can pull my triggers and get a reaction from me.
When someone else puts a finger on a tender emotional place . . . or when another someone pulls my trigger . . . I am given an opportunity to see something of myself that I may not have noticed previously. For just a moment, the curtain on my inner life gets pulled back just a bit, and I’ve invited to take a peak at myself.
I said above that this is a gift, though rarely does it feel like a gift. The gift comes, though, when with intentional reflection and prayer, we begin to see our own interior. We see the emotional reactions that live within us. And we slowly stop blaming others for our reactions; rather, we begin to open up these parts of our lives to God for healing.
This brother in the desert found a teacher in the water jug that kept tumping over. God used the jug to teach him that the issue was not “out there,” with other persons or things, but rather lived within him. The brother put it this way: “My anger has mocked me.” And he said, “I am here by myself, and anger has beaten me.”
As he says in the parable, “Wherever we live, we need to work at being patient, with God’s help.”
A BROTHER became tired of his community and the behavior of others often annoyed him. He decided, “I will go off somewhere by myself. Then I will neither talk nor listen and shall be at peace. This anger I feel will depart.” He went out into the desert and made his home in a cave.
One day he placed a water jug he had filled on the ground. It rolled over, spilling its contents. He filled it again and it fell over again. When this happened the third time, he became enraged, took hold of the jug and smashed it against the rocks.
Calming down, he realized that anger had mocked him. “Here I am by myself and anger has beaten me. I will return to the community. Wherever we live, we need to work at being patient with God’s help.”
[Bernard Bangley, By Way of the Desert, p. 110]
The brother in this story could be any of us. The impulse to move away from difficulties, troubles, and struggles lives within us. We see our own interior landscape (anger, for this brother), and believe that if we lived in a different place, worked with other people, or were free of current responsibilities, we would be free of that which lives within us.
Of course, this thinking is an illusion. The root of our difficulty is never “out there” as much as it is “in here,” within us. It may be more convenient to blame our situation. It may feel better to blame our current state on someone else around us. But our first task, as humans growing into God and becoming the persons God created us to be, is to attend to our own inner life. That includes seeing ourselves and our own dark shadows for what they are.
Most always, though, it is far easier – and more pleasant to our fragile egos – to blame someone else for our problems than to take the difficult look within ourselves.
One gift of living in community – that is, in close relationship to others – is that someone always seems to put their finger right on the emotional spot where I am most tender.
Or to say it another way, there always seems to be someone around who, knowingly or unknowingly, can pull my triggers and get a reaction from me.
When someone else puts a finger on a tender emotional place . . . or when another someone pulls my trigger . . . I am given an opportunity to see something of myself that I may not have noticed previously. For just a moment, the curtain on my inner life gets pulled back just a bit, and I’ve invited to take a peak at myself.
I said above that this is a gift, though rarely does it feel like a gift. The gift comes, though, when with intentional reflection and prayer, we begin to see our own interior. We see the emotional reactions that live within us. And we slowly stop blaming others for our reactions; rather, we begin to open up these parts of our lives to God for healing.
This brother in the desert found a teacher in the water jug that kept tumping over. God used the jug to teach him that the issue was not “out there,” with other persons or things, but rather lived within him. The brother put it this way: “My anger has mocked me.” And he said, “I am here by myself, and anger has beaten me.”
As he says in the parable, “Wherever we live, we need to work at being patient, with God’s help.”
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