I got mad at my children the other day.

They didn’t listen, were dawdling, and were mildly disobedient. So I raised my voice and told them things for which I later had to apologize.

It took me longer to simmer down - become peaceful - and begin to unpack why I chose to express my anger the way I did.

After all, anger is a valid and helpful emotion. It stems from passion for the things most dear to us, the things we work hardest to protect, safeguard, and nurture.

As the poet David Whyte says, anger is the purest form of care.

But when we get angry we are often unwilling and unable to plumb the depths of what’s really going on: I become blind to the significance of the work for which I am working. And I bristle at tempering my reactions, which are expressions of a love unable to yield to a wider more expansive definition, one I’m unwilling or unable to accept. And so I give anger a harmful voice.

We learn more from a scenario in this Sunday’s Gospel, when Jesus tells long-time friends that the God they hold in highest esteem, doesn’t favor them as much as they suspect. 

They flew into a rage, mobbed him, and nearly killed him.

We understand. We too often fail to realize that God’s equitable love for all people is actually something to be embraced and celebrated - and not exclusively claimed, denigrated or riddled with fault.

Like us, Jesus’ opponents fail to realize that most expressions of anger are actually displays of frustration with our unwillingness or inability to accept a wider reality, a more expansive definition of love - one that brings its own threats and fears.

We do well to understand the teachings of our anger - it shows us what we love most deeply, most yearn to protect, and most covet: we simply don’t get angry over things we don’t care about.

It is in this contemplation that the foundation stones for new ways to express our deep yearnings can find bedrock, that we might live more authentically into our anger not as deprivation and insufficiency, but as profound care for another whose well-being we care more about than our own.