Sunday Stillpoint: The Dark Guardian Angel of Anger

Sunday Stillpoint

"Anger gives you the impetus you need to change conditions that need to be changed. In this way, anger is like a dark guardian angel…that offers guidance and spiritual support."

--Thomas Moore, Ph.D.
--DARK NIGHTS OF THE SOUL: a Guide to Finding Your Way Through Life's Ordeals
Gotham Books, a division of the Penguin Group, 2004


Several times in this blog, readers who have posted comments have mentioned what they refer to as my "liberal rage." They complain that my point can sometimes be lost in the anger used in expressing it.

However, if those same commenters also read the comments posted by other mothers who have Marine sons posted to Iraq, they would notice a common thread. The rage often seen posted on this blog is neither LIBERAL nor CONSERVATIVE. It is not even political.

It is a MOTHER'S rage.

Mother's rage can accomplish a great deal. Very little was made of the disastrous meandering in Iraq by war planners that left no exit strategy and threatened to bog down into a hopeless morass…until one grieving, angry mother parked herself in front of the president's vacation home and asked one simple question: Why did my son have to die?

And just a couple of decades ago even, drunk drivers were routinely returned back out onto the highway after third, fourth, and fifth infractions with no worse punishments than fines, until one woman whose daughter was killed by a drunk driver was filled with such a holy rage that she created an organization that spelled out the word: M.A.D.D.

Perhaps people take for granted the enormous strides that have been taken in this country to address drunk drivers since Mothers Against Drunk Drivers began their campaign to educate the public and get the laws changed, but it all started with one angry mother.

In South America, mothers whose adult children had been vanishing off the streets--presumably "disappeared" by government hit squads--hit the streets in such unignorable numbers that a ruthless dictator was eventually overthrown.

Pop psychology makes much of the destructive force of anger. We are taught not to suppress it, because that can result in psychosis. We are taught not to vent, either, because that can cause our blood pressure to soar.

Mostly, we are taught to medicate it.

Not much is written, however, about how to CHANNEL it.

Thomas Moore, the author of such seminal bestsellers as The Care of the Soul and Soulmates, is perhaps one of our nation's wisest of men. A Catholic monk for twelve years as a young man, Moore went on to get his doctorate in psychology and to become a psychotherapist. He also studied theology, music, and religion. He got married, divorced, and remarried, and he brought children into the world.

In his writings, he avoids pat banalities from either psychology or religion, and digs deeper to the truly spiritual, the holy wise. His book, Dark Nights of the Soul is perhaps the most profound I have ever read on how not only to endure through great despair and difficulty in life, but how to glean from it the greatest truths life has to offer--how not to run from depression, in other words, but how to embrace it and even turn it into the most powerful and meaningful moments of your life.

I read this book during my son's first deployment, when I felt a rage coursing through my body like an electrical current, sparking and popping at inappropriate moments and overall threatening to completely overwhelm me. They say that anger is actually the flip side of fear, and the greater my fear for my son, the more potent my rage, until I feared it might destroy me.

And then I read Dr. Moore's book, and was absolutely astonished to find, in a chapter entitled, "The Deep-Red Emotions," that not only did anger not have to be a destructive force in my life, but that it was indeed a force to celebrate.

"Anger is related to power and creativity," wrote Dr. Moore. He explained that channeling our rage into a cause worthy of our emotion can give us a renewed sense of purpose and direction in our lives. "It's obvious that social wrongs are only corrected when the abused get angry enough and resist."

I like this part so well I'm going to bold-face it: "Anger can draw out the knight and warrior in you…Many men and women going through a dark night describe how they were changed by it, often becoming more of a warrior…someone who has taken on an edge and discovered unknown power."

He explains that, until we learn how to channel our rage into productive, creative means of expression, we often retreat into a place he calls "dark and quiet." A far more dangerous place, in other words, that can lead to such disasters as suicide.

"Anger is your spirit flashing out of you," Moore says, the "pulse of life."

Anger, he explains, can make you strong, can help you endure, can inspire you to take charge of your life.

Now, it goes without saying, of course, that anger has a very dark side--a violent side, a sado-masochistic side, a passive-aggressive side, a murderous side. Dr. Moore addresses these issues in his book, but I am assuming that my readers understand the difference, here.

I'm talking about the kind of rage that can lead not to violence, but to despair, not to harming others, but to the kind of eating away at our souls that depletes us of our life force and leave us spent and exhausted.

This happens when we turn our anger on ourselves, or when we let it rage in a frustrated, futile manner. Imagine a downed power line writhing on the pavement, its potent charge spent against the concrete, useless and hopeless until someone inadvertently bumps up against it and is electrocuted.

Dr. Moore talks about taking that same rage and transforming it, he says, "through a channeling of your life force, and this liberated vitality gives you your presence as a unique personality."

My sister-in-law, Kay, could not be more different from me both in temperament, personality, and politics, but her son, my nephew Mike, is currently serving with the Marines in Ramadi. She's as terrfied as I am, and as angry, but she has channeled her energies into volunteering for the USO. At DFW airport on every Sunday, the Army sends out their deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan on commercial airliners. (Marines leave from Air Force bases.)

She gathers with other USO volunteers there every Sunday, passing out care packages and hugs and other touches of home to troops both seasoned and angry--like my son--and fresh and terrified, like someone else's son or daughter. From someplace deep within, she summons the energy to say good-bye to someone else's child for them each and every Sunday of her life.

And if a Marine from anywhere in the Dallas area dies at war, my sister-in-law is there at the funeral, offering comfort and help. I don't know how she does it--I couldn't, to be honest--but this is her life force, her rage, channeled into a unique expression of her being.

I take my own gifts and talents and use them in my own way, an expression of this mother's rage, that is meant to educate and inform, inspire and uplift, or even just to make others think. And if, in the long run, I can make even one small contribution toward making the world a better place, then I have fulfilled my purpose.

"The force you need to thrive and create is your anger turned upside down," writes Moore. "Anger gives you all the power and motivation you need to live every minute originally, as yourself. Without it, you will surrender in the wrong places and you will become overwhelmed. Anger both keeps you out of certain dark nights and lifts you out of them once you have succumbed. It is your precious angel, deserving of your attention and cultivation."