Sacred Anger

What if being angry isn't your problem? No matter who you are, or where you are in your life, there was a time when you've had a run-in with our darkest emotion. Anger is universal. As uncomfortable as it is, feeling anger isn't the problem; it's what we fail to learn from it that is. Sacred Anger is a journey with the feeling that most of us avoid whenever possible. It is an excavation of the sources, and experiences of anger, and our relationship to it. Seryna Myers guides you through her process that deepens your understanding of how you really feel, extracts the lessons from it, and then gives you the tools to let it go. You'll learn: How to identify how and why you feel the way you do. How to understand anger (and other uncomfortable emotions) and what they're here to teach. How to work with and learn from anger to support your life's journey. Seryna's fresh take on such a heavy topic makes the exploration of anger something that feels light and good for the soul. Her storytelling makes these conversations about anger feel like they're happening with a trusted friend. Sacred Anger takes a grounded approach to this work, examining every facet of this emotion, making your anger one of the most valuable tools in your spiritual and emotional arsenal.

For a generation, Muslim extremists have targeted Americans in an escalation of terror that culminated in the September 11 attacks. Our shared confusion -- Who are the attackers? Why are we targets? -- is cleared away in a book as dramatic as it is authoritative. Updated with new chapters on Afghanistan and the the broader Islamic movement, Sacred Rage combines Robin Wright's extraordinary reportage on the Islamic world with an historian's grasp of context to explain the roots, the motives, and the goals of the Islamic resurgence. Wright talked to terrorists, militant religious leaders, and fighters from Beirut to Islamabad and Kabul. Their voices of rage reverberate here -- right up to the attacks in New York and Washington. Across continents extends a challenge we fail to understand at our peril. Sacred Rage now casts light on the war being fought in the shadows.

This edited collection traverses the genre of anger studies by documenting its transition from the Classical age up to our present-day cognizance of the philosophical, socio-historical, psycho-physiological and pathological theorizations of anger. The book illustrates how literature may systematically document and even institutionalize primal, emotive outbursts, providing meaningful analysis for scholars across various disciplines. The contributions here cover a wide spectrum of critical works, ranging from Aristotle’s Rhetoric, Seneca’s De Ira and Plutarch’s On Restraining Anger to Bharat Muni’s Natyashastra, as well as notable nineteenth century texts by authors such as E.T.A. Hoffmann, Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Bronte, Matthew Arnold, Algernon Swinburne, Rudyard Kipling and Henry Lawson.

In this compelling interdisciplinary study, Linda Grasso demonstrates that using anger as a mode of analysis and the basis of an aesthetic transforms our understanding of American women's literary history. Exploring how black and white nineteenth-century women writers defined, expressed, and dramatized anger, Grasso reconceptualizes antebellum women's writing and illuminates an unrecognized tradition of discontent in American literature. She maintains that two equally powerful forces shaped this tradition: women's anger at their exclusion from the democratic promise of America, and the cultural prohibition against its public articulation. Grasso challenges the common notion that nineteenth-century women's writing is confined to domestic themes and shows instead how women channeled their anger into art that addresses complex political issues such as slavery, nation-building, gender arrangements, and race relations. Cutting across racial and genre boundaries, she considers works by Lydia Maria Child, Maria W. Stewart, Fanny Fern, and Harriet Wilson as superb examples of the artistry of angry expression. Transforming their anger through literary imagination, these writers bequeathed their vision of an alternative America both to their contemporaries and to subsequent generations.

A LOS ANGELES TIMES BESTSELLER In the face of systemic racism and state-sanctioned violence, how can we metabolize our anger into a force for liberation? White supremacy in the United States has long necessitated that Black rage be suppressed, repressed, or denied, often as a means of survival, a literal matter of life and death. In Love and Rage, Lama Rod Owens, coauthor of Radical Dharma, shows how this unmetabolized anger--and the grief, hurt, and transhistorical trauma beneath it--needs to be explored, respected, and fully embodied to heal from heartbreak and walk the path of liberation. This is not a book about bypassing anger to focus on happiness, or a road map for using spirituality to transform the nature of rage into something else. Instead, it is one that offers a potent vision of anger that acknowledges and honors its power as a vehicle for radical social change and enduring spiritual transformation. Love and Rage weaves the inimitable wisdom and lived experience of Lama Rod Owens with Buddhist philosophy, practical meditation exercises, mindfulness, tantra, pranayama, ancestor practices, energy work, and classical yoga. The result is a book that serves as both a balm and a blueprint for those seeking justice who can feel overwhelmed with anger--and yet who refuse to relent. It is a necessary text for these times.

This book is about the disruption of the intellect that awakens consciousness to its wholeness and purpose. When consciousness is fractured, its world-making powers are momentarily disrupted. In the gap, during which spatio-temporal categories of thought cease to apply, consciousness realigns with that which it is meant to serve. The moment of self-remembering—shocking, unique, and truthful—leaves a call to obedience in its wake. To refuse to respond is to cease to be human.

The Old Testament can seem strange and disturbing to contemporary readers. What should Christians make of Genesis 1-3, seemingly at odds with modern scientific accounts? Why does the Old Testament contain so much violence? How should Christians handle texts that give women a second-class status? Does the Old Testament contradict itself? Why are so many Psalms filled with anger and sorrow? What should we make of texts that portray God as filled with wrath? Combining pastoral insight, biblical scholarship, and a healthy dose of humility, gifted teacher and communicator Matthew Schlimm explores perennial theological questions raised by the Old Testament. He provides strategies for reading and appropriating these sacred texts, showing how the Old Testament can shape the lives of Christians today and helping them appreciate the Old Testament as a friend in faith.

While ancient civilizations worshipped strong, active emotions, modern societies have favored more peaceful attitudes, especially within the democratic process. We have largely forgotten the struggle to make use of thymos, the part of the soul that, following Plato, contains spirit, pride, and indignation. Rather, Christianity and psychoanalysis have promoted mutual understanding to overcome conflict. Through unique examples, Peter Sloterdijk, the preeminent posthumanist, argues exactly the opposite, showing how the history of Western civilization can be read as a suppression and return of rage. By way of reinterpreting the Iliad, Alexandre Dumas's Count of Monte Cristo, and recent Islamic political riots in Paris, Sloterdijk proves the fallacy that rage is an emotion capable of control. Global terrorism and economic frustrations have rendered strong emotions visibly resurgent, and the consequences of violent outbursts will determine international relations for decades to come. To better respond to rage and its complexity, Sloterdijk daringly breaks with entrenched dogma and contructs a new theory for confronting conflict. His approach acknowledges and respects the proper place of rage and channels it into productive political struggle.