Text Box: Interfaith Celebration Gathering Sunday, August 27, 2000 Interfaith Celebration Gathering Service Service agenda: Opening Prayer Readings Message OPENING PRAYER: Dear Mother, Father, Great Spirit, God, please hear my prayer. Let not my mouth be tempted to open when anger overtakes me. Seal my lips until I can resolve my anger or share it in a non-abusive way. I ask this knowing that all I need do is ask and it is granted. AMEN READINGS: It is easy to fly into a passion—anybody can do that—but to be angry with the right person to the right extent and at the right time and with the right object and in the right way—that is not so easy, and it is not everyone who can do it. Aristotle An angry man opens his mouth and shuts his eyes. Cato The greatest remedy for anger is delay. Seneca MESSAGE: The Inner Monster Firestone has recently recalled all of the tires that Ford put on their Explorer model. As I understand it, the tires have failed, causing deaths. Whether the fault for the deaths lies with Firestone or Ford has not yet been revealed. However, the American public has come in droves to local Firestone stores to see if their tires are the ones on recall, and to get replacements for the recalls. Some have even come to bamboozle Firestone personnel our of new tires using flimsy and elaborate tales that have nothing to do with the tires on recall. My husband, who is a Tire Manager for a Firestone store, has shared episodes from his days lately connected with the recall. He has talked of being cursed at, yelled at, hung up on, and verbally abused in almost every possible fashion. He has even quietly asked one or two people to leave the store when they insisted on loudly cursing him in a room filled with families with children. Listening to him share his frustrations, I so wish I could say to these people, “Chuck did not make the tires. Nor did he recommend that they be under-inflated, causing deaths to several persons. Please put your anger where it belongs.” But, not only do I not have access to these folks to tell them any of this, it is not up to me to fix the situation. Chuck says that he does not take the verbal abuse personally, that he merely lets it roll off his back. But, I can tell it is taking a toll on him physically as he comes home much more worn out than usual. What I am reminded of in hearing Chuck share how he has been treated by these Firestone customers is the inner monster that lives in all of us. This monster lurks deep in our subconscious. It is fed daily on the frustrations we encounter that we can do nothing about, It fattens itself during the times when we stuff our anger or short-circuit it in some way. Then, one day when one last irritation happens to us, we unleash this inner monster to ravage whatever is in its pathway. Unfortunately, ‘whatever might be in its pathway’ might be totally innocent and undeserving of our anger. At this point, innocence or guilt does not matter to the monster. Its only concern is dumping the huge waste basket filled with stored up toxic anger. When we store or stuff our anger and do not allow it proper resolution at the time it occurs, we feed this inner monster. When we unleash our inner monsters, we are responsible for the devastation they cause. We have every right to be angry when something engenders it. Anger is a protective God-given device. There is a wonderful little book for children called Liking Myself that says, “it’s okay to be angry when somebody stomps on your flowers.” Anger is not sinful. Nor is it a bad thing. It is a tool that, when used effectively, can alert us to boundary violations and personal danger. As a tool, it can also be used to harm ourselves and others. We have no right to abuse another person with our anger. When we scream at people, curse them, shame them, or call them names, we are verbally abusing them. The damage, in many cases is more profound than if we had hit them. I don’t know about you, but when I went to school, there were no courses on how to handle anger. So, in growing up, the only two things I learned about anger were that it was destructive, and that I needed to hide mine. It wasn’t until I was in my forties that I finally learned how to process my anger, and how to own my part in any situation. I also learned that before I could tell the object of my anger about the anger, I needed to wait until I could talk about the anger rather than being the anger, and acting it out on someone or everyone. The best tool I learned for processing my anger at things other people do that I find irritating came from a 12-step program maxim, “What we dislike about others are our own disowned parts.” Oops. That means that I do the same things that I find irritating in others. This puts a whole new slant on things, doesn’t it? Nothing cools the heat of my anger quite as quickly as realizing that I do the same things someone else has done that just irritated me. Thanks to these anger lessons, my inner monster does not surface quite as often or as readily as it once did. When we stuff our anger, it also gets in the way of our connection to God. As Cato said, “An angry man opens his mouth and shuts his eyes.” I think we also shut our ears so that the only thing we can hear is the sound of our own anger. Have you ever tried apologizing to a person filled with self-righteous anger? Not only do most of them not hear us, they have no way to take in what we are saying. Nor can God get messages to us when we are filled with anger. We just plain do not listen. Let’s work together on taming our inner monsters so that we can better connect with God and with each other. And, as for my husband, I think I might nominate him for sainthood in another week or so. May God add a blessing to these humble words. AMEN © 2000 Rev. S. Suzanne Fisher