Be Gentle & Give Yourself Grace
During the second semester of seminary, at the heels of COVID, immersed in syllabi a mile long and Zoom burnout, Jan Ammon, minister of the communal worship, said, “Be gentle with yourself, Angela.”
I’d never heard those words before. She asked how I was doing. I shared with her summer internship, church work, and a writing project.
She added, “Give yourself grace.”
Again, this is a phrase foreign to me. I was well aware of the descriptives “gentle” and “grace” just not words to describe how to care for myself. To be gentle is free from harshness, sternness, or violence. To give grace is to be considerate, thoughtful, kind and courteous. To be gentle is to be patient, compassionate, kind, and humble. To give grace is a mealtime prayer of giving thanks and blessing. To be gentle is gentleness, a divinely balanced virtue that can only operate through faith. Grace is another divine virtue from God as unmerited favor.
I understood gentleness and grace for others, but for me, it took learning and applying self-compassion. Before applying grace and gentleness to myself, I had to acknowledge my misstep—that moment when you miss the mark.
I have often confessed that I am a calendar head recovering from multitasking, perfectionism, and overextending myself. Administration is one of my God-given gifts, but that does not mean I should do everything. Believe me, this former energizer-bunny has tried. I’ve grown weary, angry, and frustrated. Attitudes and feelings that do not promote being gentle or giving myself grace. Instead, I beat myself up. “Shoulda, coulda, woulda,” was internal thinking that formed my unforgiving heart towards me, which was not a soft and tender answer but spiked my anger.
Anger is a spiritual task.
“Anger provides energy for transformation, for challenging structures of injustice, and asserting agency and dignity,” claims Alice A. Keefe.
Anger is a spiritual task.
Anger is a dirty word. Anger is a spiritual task. Anger allows “us to see that something is wrong in our personal or social relationships. Anger provides energy for transformation, for challenging structures of injustice, and for asserting agency and dignity,” explains Alice A. Keefe. These are the popular and positive assessments Keefe pit against negative assessment of anger expressed by religious and contemplative writers. She admits anger can be both destructive and creative, but like fire it must be tended to. Therefore, anger is a spiritual task.
Keefe explains that anger can be “an emotion intrinsically inclusive to aggression and the will to vengeance” that has no utility outside of violence. Anger can also arise as a “primordial emotion that arises, like fear, in response to the perception of threat, part of our inherited mechanism for survival then anger’s signaling and motivating potentials can be appreciated.” Keefe encourages us not to lean into bifurcated anger “good or bad, depending on one’s motivation.” But to wonder “when is anger, a body/mind emotion that is rooted in the perception of threat or insult, even prompted by only pure compassion or love?” For example, a parent angry about a child’s self-endangering behavior, genuine concern for the child’s safety is mixed with feelings of “frustration at not being heeded, fear that other’s might think he/she is a bad parent, anger at self for not being a good enough parent, vexed impatience, and so on.” Well-intended anger labeled bad anger. Keefe goes on to explain, “Except at the extreme of violent and unreasoning rage, most angry people still care about the humanity of the object of their anger and still intend to bring some positive resolution out of the situation that has generated their anger—the impulse to rage and destroy is mixed with the motivation to resolve or to fix or the need to be heard and acknowledged.”
Keefe suggests, “anger carefully tended allows its fiery nature to provide energy and illumination.” bell hooks claims “the point is not to give up rage, rather that we use it to deepen the contemplation to illuminate compassion and struggle.” I agree. We have to tend to our anger. We have to acknowledge our misstep. Harness a “more balanced and open approach to anger. … with acceptance and investigation [anger] can work to “break open the heart,” acting as a “searing flame, an energy which can cut through layers of deception and conditioning.” Through the lens of psychologist Anita Barrows, we must not lose touch with our anger, if we do “we lose touch with a deep wellspring of strength and positive force for many kinds of change.”
Ordinary anger labeled as bad generates “uncompassionate and unskillful ways of relating to anger.” Internalized anger causes a “sense of toxic shame about being an angry person;” “shame then becomes a serious obstruction to honestly acknowledging his or her anger and dealing with it in a healthy way.”
How could I be gentle with myself or offer myself grace if I was not dealing effectively with my internalized anger? An anger that spiked my heart because I’d overextended myself, lacked the right amount of sleep, and taken on too many things.
Madelaina Elizabeth’s poem “The Things I Carried” speaks to carrying “too many things” we think we need. The narrator says, “I was laden down/ heavy with burden./ I didn’t realize on me/ was a backpack filled with things/ I didn’t need.” So, I began to empty it out. / To unload the guilt/and the stress/and disappointment.”
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”
That day, I spoke with Jan, and she noticed “my backpack was filled with things I didn’t need.” Her kind words suggested I be gentle with myself and give myself grace. In other words, everything I had my hands on was important. Did I once again need to be reminded of Zora Neale Hurston’s words, “Black women are the mules of the world,” carrying the burdens of race and gender? Or did I need to be reminded of Jesus’s grace and gentleness: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly” (Matthew 11-28-30, NRSV, MSG).
At this juncture, I was an adjunct lecturer teaching at two schools, working at the local arts council, completing Ph.D. coursework, and dealing with messy family matters.
I agree with Keefe, who writes, “To deal accurately and effectively with anger is part and parcel of the spiritual work of knowing and owning oneself, and there can be no real letting go of the self until one knows oneself, including our more unpleasant and difficult parts. If one cannot relate to one’s own anger in compassionate, wise, and constructive ways, one will probably not respond to the anger of others in compassionate, wise, and constructive ways.”
Grace and gentleness are healthy ways I deal with anger that has spiked my heart, anger wearies and burdens me. Giving myself grace and being gentle with me sometimes means saying no, doing one thing or nothing at all. Being gentle and giving myself grace means reevaluating my backpack of responsibilities and spending more time in God’s presence.
These are Spirit-led words I bring to spiritual direction sessions when noticing that matters of the heart, consciously or unconsciously, are “weary and burdened.”
Source:
Keefe, Alice A. “Tending the Fire of Anger: A Feminist Defense of a Much Maligned Emotion.” Buddhist-Christian Studies 39 (2019): 67–76. https://www.jstor.org/stable/48618601.
