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Welcome to OneLife Ministries. This site is designed to lead you prayerfully into a heart experience of Divine Presence, Who is Love. While it focuses on Christian teaching, I hope persons of varied faiths will find inspiration here. Indeed, "God" can be whatever image helps us trust in the Sacred, by whatever means Grace touches us each. Please share this ministry with others, and please return soon. There is a new offering daily. And to be placed on the daily OneLife email list, to request notifications of new writings or submit prayer requests, write to briankwilcox@yahoo.com .
Blessings,
Brian Kenneth Wilcox MDiv, MFT, PhD
Interspiritual Pastor-Teacher, Author, Workshop Leader, Spiritual Counselor, and Chaplain.
Brian encourages support of the 4-Star Christian organization Compassion, which supports children worldwide; see www.compassion.com .
Opening Prayer
Jesus, sometimes I struggle with negative feelings. I want to act rightly, but other feelings pull me in the opposite way. Give me the discretion and will to act to always seek to be a blessing. Forgive me for the times I have acted angrily. Grace me with your Spirit, so I will be the gentle yet strong person you desire me to be. Amen.
Today's Scripture
9My dear friends, you should be quick to listen and slow to speak or to get angry. 20If you are angry, you cannot do any of the good things that God wants done. 21You must stop doing anything immoral or evil. Instead be humble and accept the message that is planted in you to save you.
*James 1.19-21 (CEV)
Spiritual Teaching
Prayer is the seed of gentleness
and the absence of anger.
*Abba Nilus, Desert Father
* * *
Anger arises from the divinely-given faculty of feeling. The author of The Cloud of Unknowing refers to the understanding of our having five faculties:
Primary Faculties
1)Mind Comprehends in itself all data received from the other faculties.
2)Reason processes intellectually data from the other faculties.
3)Will pertains to the desire and choice to respond in a manner.
Secondary Faculties
1)Imagination hereby we depict to ourselves things absent or present.
2)Feeling pertains to sensations of inner and outer experience.
*Anonymous. The Cloud of Unknowing. Edited by William Johnston.
In this last, feeling, we can address positive and negative emotions. One aim of the spiritual life is the cleansing of control by these negative feelings.
Anger is one of the negative feelings. And while anger is not totally forbidden in the Christian faith, Scripture is replete with notations on its threat to our wholeness and relationships. We can wisely assert that while anger is not always wrong, there are only rare situations that warrant an angry response.
* * *
Years ago I read of a man who was habitually angry. He went to the Book of Proverbs and memorized each scripture dealing with anger. He witnessed that after this, there was a ceasing of his compulsion to anger. Possibly, such a quick cure could apply to us, but not likely.
* * *
What is anger? Well, we could speak of it in its feeling quality. We could speak of anger as to its negative effects on the mind-body. When all is said, anger is a response to pain in some form. This perspective sets a tone for working with anger: compassion toward ourselves, and toward other persons.
* * *
Theologically, and spiritually, we need to see anger as the potential demon anger is. Indeed, the early Desert Fathers and Mothers referred to the demon of anger. And anger is one of the Seven Deadly Sins.
Anger is by nature designed for waging war with the demons and for struggling with every kind of sinful pleasure. Therefore angels, arousing spiritual pleasure in us and giving us to taste its blessedness, incline us to direct our anger against the demons. But the demons, enticing us towards worldly lusts, make us use anger to fight with men, which is against nature, so that the mind, thus stupefied and darkened, should become a traitor to virtues.
*Abba Evagrius. www.orthodox.net .
If we each look back over our hurtful episodes in relationship, likely, we will find in almost all, if not all, contexts the play of anger. Likewise, much self-inflicted suffering arises from a clear or subtle anger against ourselves arising from ourselves.
Some persons "need" to be angry to communicate - really, such is a mode of controlling another person. Sadly, that is how anger can take hold of us, so much so that is the only way we know to be in relationship, but that way, even if functional, is harmful and debilitating to intimacy of any kind.
* * *
St. Paul addressed these angry attitudes and means of communicating that were hurting the fellowship of churches. I will share below some of his responses to anger in the church fellowship and home:
In every place of worship, I want men to pray with holy hands lifted up to God, free from anger and controversy.
*I Timothy 1.8 (NLT)
But now is the time to get rid of anger, rage, malicious behavior, slander, and dirty language.
*Colossians 3.8 (NLT)
Get rid of all bitterness, rage, anger, harsh words, and slander, as well as all types of evil behavior.
*Ephesians 4.31 (NLT)
Fathers, do not embitter your children, or they will become discouraged.
*Colossians 3.21 (CEV)
* * *
How do we spiritually work with anger? Here, I do not include the more psychological aspects of the matter, but I do not mean to diminish such indeed, at times, a counseling or therapeutic approach is needed, along with a more spiritual one. We know anger is linked often to psychological disorders. And persons are shaped as angry persons often by familial context, and genetic factors likely play a role in propensity to anger.
Spiritually working with anger includes the faculties. For example, imagination allows us to see ourselves responding calmly to situations that we might respond to in anger. Reason allows us to process the saneness of a non-angry way of life. Will is the bottom line: Do we really want a better way than anger?
St. Paul offers us the alternative to anger. In the above Ephesians passage. St. Paul offers the alternative to angry relating:
Instead, be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God through Christ has forgiven you.
*Ephesians 4.32 (NLT)
So, the Scripture offers a three-ingredient alternative. We are to act with kindness, tenderheartedness, and forgiveness.
Yet, how do we become these qualities, so that we show these qualities? We do not wait to become them; we act them. In acting them, we become them. When I will to be kind, I begin to act kindly. I am not to wait to feel like acting kindly. Then, by acting kindly, I begin feeling kindness, rather than anger. I am pragmatically applying a means to be a kind person. A spiritual principle applies here. The more kind I am, the less of all else but kind I am.
As with the appearance of light, darkness retreats; so,
at the fragrance of humility, all anger and bitterness vanishes.
*St. John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, (Holy Transfiguration Monastery, 1978). www.orthodox.net .
* * *
I have discussed elsewhere in my OneLife writings the transformation of energies such as feelings through meditation and contemplative prayer. Today, I will not go back over that, but will give closing exercises for applying Ephesians 4.32. Yet, let it be affirmed, transforming negative feelings, like anger, is not a matter of will-power, but of practical application of Truth to our lives, and grounding our conversion in the union of our will with the Will of the Spirit.
Responding
1)Close your eyes and go into your calm meditation. Return to a scene in which you reacted angrily to someone; possibly, you and the other person shared angry words, shouting, slander,
Now that you are back at the scene, this time replay the scene. See yourself acting differently. Revise the scene to include the acts and feelings of kindness, tenderheartedness, and forgiveness.
2)See yourself in a present relationship situation you are frustrated about. Do the above exercise with the present situation, projecting how you would like to be and act.
3)Spend time reflecting on times you let anger guide your response to persons. Pray about that, asking forgiveness, and praying for blessing and peace to the other person, or persons.
4)If you have acted angrily to someone and need to confess that to him or her, asking forgiveness, do that as soon as possible.
* * *
*OneLife Ministries is a ministry of Brian Kenneth Wilcox, SW Florida. Brian lives a vowed life and with his two dogs, Bandit Ty and St. Francis, with friends and under a vow of simplicity. Brian is an ecumenical-interspiritual leader, who chooses not to identify with any group, and renounces all titles of sacredness that some would apply to him, but seeks to be open to how Christ manifests in the diversity of Christian denominations and varied religious-spiritual traditions. He affirms that all spiritual paths lead ultimately back to Jesus Christ. He is Senior Chaplain for the Charlotte County Sheriff's Office, Punta Gorda, FL.
*Brian welcomes responses to his writings or submission of prayer requests at briankwilcox@yahoo.com . Also, Brian is on Facebook: search Brian Kenneth Wilcox.
*Contact the above email to book Brian for preaching, Spiritual Direction, retreats, workshops, animal blessing services, house blessings, or other spiritual requests. You can order his book An Ache for Union from major booksellers.
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