The Other Side Of Rage

Editor’s Note: My friend and neighbor, Lynne McFarland, keeps posting words and images on the Book of Faces which move, inspire, and energize me. This means I’ll keep asking for permission to post them here. First, there was “Let’s Break Free,” then there was “Interaction.” And now…let’s call it “The Other Side Of Rage.” When Reverend James Lawson (pictured above) spoke at the Ryman Auditorium on the occasion of the naming of Rep. John Lewis Way, he addressed Governor Bill Lee directly by way of Val Kilmer’s words as Doc Holliday in Tombstone concerning “the great empty hole” that compels a person toward acts of brutality. That sermon (which still strikes me as a kind of exorcism) can be found here. Lynne and I are part of a group of Nashvillians who remain committed to taking Reverend Lawsons words to heart. Listen.

Imagine this Scene: My husband and I at home. I want him to do something. He doesn’t want to do it because I’m pushing him, and this feels to him like a challenge he must win. He is strong willed. I don’t want to give in because I think I am right, and I am strong-willed, too. This does not always escalate to an effort to force each other with emotional pressure. Sometimes I back off; sometimes he cooperates.

And sometimes I feel the emotional disturbance of rage welling up in me.

It is about Will. His. Mine.

It is time for some nonviolence work. Nonviolent meditation. When I am feeling rage rising inside, I notice it and, well, just notice it. I practice breathing through the rage, seeing rage before me while I breathe on the other side of rage.

When this practice is successful, when only noticing the rage “works” (rather than letting the rage activate me into some action, such as shouting) an interesting thing happens. My breathing gets deeper and slower, my mind quiets down, my body gets still and not as tense, and I am in a New Space. I’ve been practicing this for a while now, maybe a year or more, and I can attest that this is Different. Different than how I managed rage in the past, when I was socially appropriate and calm-appearing but with layers of tension underneath, a hidden presence.

In 12 Step groups, they talk about “white-knuckling it”—avoiding relapse with pure willpower, toughing it out. Not a long-term workable method. In psychodynamic work, therapists may pick up on evidence of repression in a patient, the patient’s unconscious holding back of some unwanted emotion, which leaks out and shows in the patient’s tense voice or rigid body posture or other signs of conflict.

But This is Different.

The new documentary being filmed about Rev. James Lawson’s life and work has the working title “A Better Way.” This is a reference to what Rev. Lawson’s mother told him when he was about eight years old, and he announced that he wanted to go hit a playmate who threw a racial slur at him. She said, “There’s a better way, Jimmy.”

In his monthly webinars hosted by Holman United Methodist Church in LA, where Rev. Lawson is Pastor Emeritus, he gives a clinic on nonviolent action. He often advises us to start “at home.” To start with practicing nonviolence in our daily lives with our family members.

In almost every session of the webinars, Rev. Lawson talks about Soul-Force or Life-Force, about what it is to be fully human, or its opposite, “having a hole in the middle of the soul,” a line he gets from the movie Tombstone, spoken by the character Doc Holliday describing the murderous cowboys in the film. They are angry that they were born human.

I have tried to get clear in my own mind what Rev. Lawson means by this powerful phrase, “hole in the middle of the soul,” which clearly means a lot to him as well. When he talks about Soul-Force or Life-Force, he often pairs that language with words from Scripture to love God with your whole heart and your neighbor as yourself as the way to be fully human. Other creatures are fully and wholly themselves in other ways, but this is the way we humans are fully human.

We share instincts, the source of the primary emotional system, with many animals. We humans are also able to be connected with the universal life-force (another name Rev. Lawson uses for Soul-Force). That force is Love (of God, of neighbor), and as far as we know, a gift to humans. (I think many animals have that capacity as well. But that’s a conversation for another day.)

So, if we are being as fully human as we are capable of being, without a hole in the middle of the soul, we are integrating the instincts/primary emotional system with our Life-Force or Soul-Force, that Force being our guide and our direction.

Back to my husband and me and our Strong Wills. I can only speak for myself (and not for him), but when I feel rage rising in me because my Will is being challenged, I think this is happening because at that moment my Will is connected to those instincts/the primary emotional system. That is where Rage resides (as well as other instincts).

When my Will is allied instead with my full self, the fully human, then that Strong Will wills to Love, which is nonviolent.

This is the training that Rev. Lawson provided for the young activists in Nashville back in the day and the training that he provides for us now.