Father Richard Rohr explores how getting in touch with our grief allows us to transform our anger:
Anybody who’s on the edge, disadvantaged in some way, or barred from a position of hegemony or power will naturally understand the tears of the prophets, with their gut-level knowledge of systemic evil, cultural sin, and group illusion. Black Americans might have seen white people act nice or speak of human equality, for example, but they knew we lived behind a collective lie. Collective greed is killing America today. We make everything about money—everything—and injustices like these will naturally leave us exasperated and ultimately sad. How can we look at the suffering taking place in Gaza, Ukraine, or Sudan and be anything but sad? It’s sad beyond words or concepts. Only the body can know.
I recently turned eighty and the older I get, the more it feels like I must forgive almost everything for not being perfect, or as I first wanted or needed it to be. This is true of Christianity, the United States, politics in general, and most of all myself. Remember, if we do not transform our pain and egoic anger, we will always transmit it in another form. This transformation is the supreme work of all true spirituality and spiritual communities. Those communities offer us a place where our sadness and rage can be refined into human sympathy and active compassion.
Forgiveness of reality—including tragic reality—is the heart of the matter. All things cry for forgiveness in their imperfection, their incompleteness, their woundedness, their constant movement toward death. Mere rage or resentment will not change any of these realities. Tears often will, though: first by changing the one who weeps, and then by moving any who draw near to the weeping. Somehow, the prophets knew, the soul must weep to be a soul at all. [1]
Spiritual teacher Mirabai Starr describes the compassion that can arise as we experience both our anger and our grief:
Anger is a natural response when we let the pain of the world into our hearts. It is not the only appropriate response, of course. However, when we can welcome the fire of the Prophets into our own lives, we tap into the true nature of righteousness and draw the vigor necessary to step up in service to that which is greater than ourselves. We remember our essential interconnectedness with all that is and we are motivated to act on the impulse to protect the web of inter-being with all our might.
Personal and planetary grief are inextricable. Our encounter with the manifold losses that characterize the human experience can till the soil of our hearts so that we are more available to the suffering of other beings and the earth we share. When we have been broken, we recognize the brokenness around us and compassion naturally grows. Sorrow can be paralyzing at first, but compassion, which can sometimes take the form of anger, is a wellspring that offers infinite sustenance. [2]
References:
[1] Adapted from Richard Rohr, The Tears of Things: Prophetic Wisdom for an Age of Outrage (Convergent, 2025), 6.
[2] Mirabai Starr, “The Second Sacred Gate: Grief, Anger, and Transformation,” ONEING 6, no. 1, Anger (2018): 81–82. Available in PDF download.
Image Credit and inspiration: Ricardo IV Tamayo, untitled (detail), 2021, photo, Cuba, Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. Together, we hold the flowering of compassionate action, remembering our shared humanity and deep connection to one another and all of creation.
Story from Our Community:
I have learned to stop and pause when I am filled with rage. When I know I have been overtaken by ego rage, I recognize it is not good for me and can be injurious to others. In my pause, I say the Serenity Prayer and ask God to release me from myself. I’m grateful to have found this practice to avoid causing destruction when I mean no harm.
—Marguerite M.
