The Genesee Diary: Report from a Trappist Monastery

by Henri J.M. Nouwen

First: Allow your angry feelings to come to your awareness and have a careful look at them. Don’t deny or suppress them, but let them teach you. Second: Do not hesitate to talk about angry feelings even when they are related to very small or seemingly insignificant issues. When you don’t deal with anger on small issues, how will you ever be ready to deal with it in a real crisis? Third: Your anger can have good reasons. Talk to me (John Eudes) about it. Maybe I made the wrong decision, maybe I have to change my mind. If I feel that your anger is unrealistic or disproportionate, then we can have a closer look at what made you respond so strongly. Fourth: Part of the problem might be generalization. A disagreement with a decision, an idea, or event might make you angry at me, the community, the whole country, etc. Fifth: On a deeper level you might wonder how much of your anger has to do with ego inflation. Anger often reveals how you feel and think about yourself and how important you have made your own ideas and insight. When God becomes again the center and when you can put yourself with all your weaknesses in front of him, you might be able to take some distance and allow your anger to ebb away and pray again.