Moving Beyond Anger
Anger is largely used as a means of creating distance, to gather some toward the conflict or to push some away. What anger truly is, is a modality for keeping us asleep to the reality of the perfection we are a part of. Anger isn’t real. It’s a destructive force, contrived by ego, to allow us to feel somehow superior. This series serves to point out the damaging effects of anger so we can move past it and get back to, as our last series laid out, how to be Love.
February 2 – So, You Big Mad?
Using the trending social media bit, “You Big Mad”, as a jumping off point, Rev. Gina shifts our tendency to play the blame-game when we are angry to a people of peace through a return to love. Drawing on steps from Neill Gibson & Shari Klein’s What’s Making You Angry? and insight from the Testament of Dan found in the The Apocrypha, we are reminded to turn to love to move past anger.
February 9 – Madness?
What do we do when our egos start hollering and our fists ball-up and there’s nothing happening to stop us from forgetting that love is the only thing that’s really real? How do we take the lesson from that initial angry emotional response and come from love before we start yelling? Rev. Gina shares from the knowledge of Thich Nhat Hanh and Carol Tavris, distilling the lessons down to a seemingly simple, but often challenging task of living in the now – as we focused on some months ago – to let go of fear, release anger, stop the ‘what-if’ doom scrolling, and recall that our thoughts and beliefs shape our experience.
February 16 – Madness!
Rev. Gina recounts two recent stories where turning to love instead of anger resulted in blessings to the local community, both within and outside the church.
February 23 – Fed Up or Fed?
Stepping through The Cranky Code from Anger is a Choice by Tim Lahaye and Bob Phillips as the basis for the different forms of anger we see around us, Rev. Gina asks us to pinpoint those we identify with. Then taking a deeper look at the Cherokee story of two wolves, we are shown that both wolves are needed and both must be cared for if we are to attain our highest good.
March 2 – Let it Melt Away.
As Marvin Rolnik noted, “There is one language everyone in the world is fluent in: Victimeses.” Closing out the series on Anger, Rev. Gina guides a meditation with an exercise that allows participants to write down those vestiges of victimhood and anger – emotions or thoughts which cause discomfort – to literally watch their sources of anger melt away.
