They say anger is often an expression of grief.  Maybe it’s true. 

I didn’t believe it.  I honestly didn’t believe that such anger, that THIS anger, could be grief.  What did I have to grieve, after all?  That I didn’t get a job that I didn’t really want?  That made no sense.  That a suffering, small-minded man refused to see my gifts and instead chose another mediocre man in my stead?  How is that something to grieve?  That I get to remain ministering among a community that loves, supports and appreciates me, that sees me?  Who would grieve that?  No one. 

So what did I have to grieve?  What possible reason could I have to mourn – and to mourn so much and so unknowingly that it would result in such wrath, such anger?  It wasn’t logical.   No, this emotion must be something different, I thought.  This is an altogether different dwelling place.

But today, today, the grief hit me full-on.  It was brought on by such a slight, almost irrelevant incident, but it shined Friday Night Lights on the reasons I have to grieve.  And that grief, that sense of hopelessness, that sense of utter disillusionment has overwhelmed and undone me.  Almost as much as the anger has done for the past months.  Maybe even more so. 

For it is the raw, heartbreaking recognition that one’s ideals have always been just that: dreams as fragile and useless as a dandelion’s leaves that my toddler can puff away.  Useless as a broken pot. 

In the end, it turns out, all we really care about is ourselves.  The only thing most of us see is our own version of the world.  The only thing we hear is the echo chamber we choose to locate ourselves in.  Oh, we might imagine that we are progressive or compassionate, that we care about justice or righteousness, but, ultimately, if the person who has been wronged is outside of our carefully-if-subconsciously constructed circles of who’s in and who’s out, of who counts, of who is worth fighting for, then we are just too tired to fight someone else’s battle.

And, here’s the thing, it’s me too.  I have been guilty of this same exact thing over and over, for much of my life.  I have tried to avoid it, maybe better than some, but just like everyone else, when push comes to shove, you think, oh well, what can I do.  Better stick to my own battles.  Maybe it’s all we are capable of doing.

I think it was in Mrs. Schnell’s 12^th grade English class (the source of many abundant riches) that I ran across an Edwin Markham poem that has stuck with me ever since (I don’t even have to google it to put it down here):

He drew a circle to shut me out
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout,
But Love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in.

In ways, it has remained a guiding principle of my identity, a motto for my life. I have even thought it was a good description of what Jesus does on the cross, in the empty tomb.  And maybe it is. 

But, it’s also true that none of us is Jesus.  None of us has his power, his sinlessness.  And there comes a time when you realize that you can’t draw a circle big enough, not on your own. Maybe this, right here, is what Augustine meant when he talked about original sin. Deep down, we’re selfish creatures, and it makes us broken in a fundamental way that only divine power and grace, divine selflessness and love, can overcome.

So, yes, maybe this anger, all along, has been grief.  Grief that people are not what we want them to be, that we’re not what we want to be, that there are those who will never be held accountable for the wrongs they have done, that the honesty you put out into the world is rarely, oh so rarely, returned.  Maybe it’s grief over the realization that justice has always been a subjective thing.  Maybe it’s grief that it took me nearly four decades to figure that out.  Maybe it’s grief for the great and heaving loss of innocence. 

And, as awful as all that is, at least grief is something I know intimately well.  There is some relief to recognize it beneath my anger, like an old friend.  I’ve lived here before and I know how it lives in me.  I know this landscape; its familiarity is a comfort.  At least grief is something I know I can deal with; I know I can, in time, find its peace. 

But this one might take a while, friends.  This one might take a little long while.