I left off a sentence from the Audre Lorde quote yesterday. “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. And this fact is only threatening to those women who still define the master’s house as their only source of support.”
I’m not sure what this final sentence touches in me, about women’s anger and the possibility of it being one of the master’s tools. I know it’s tempting to move into laments and hand-wringing of (white) privilege, but that’s not what’s most lively for me here (if no less true).
I hear Audre Lorde’s wisdom. I see her point(s), more and more deeply the longer I slow down, listen, get curious. I sense more than see how expressive-anger is more feasible in white women than it is in others. I can imagine more now how the expressions of anger blow off steam but get stuck in a cul-de-sac of liberal grief, going nowhere but round and round on the tongue. And I see daily how liberal outrage is the unresolved pain from longstanding wounds, whether by church, family, parents, siblings… The imbalance of feminine-masculine then plays out in our politics surrounding gender and personal choice, starting younger and younger as it plays out in our children.
None of this feels life-giving to me, or connected to a better way in healing (women’s) anger(s).
What I do know is that even with my righteous and sizeable anger, I am at the most peace that I’ve ever been. It’s not that I don’t get angry anymore. I do. How could I not, aware of my women’s body and bodies of dear sisters I love? The work I’ve learned in how to BE with that anger is simply so very different.
I don’t spend a lot of time or effort writing about it, for one thing. For whatever reason, I no longer need the writing circle as goad to come to speech about it. I no longer desire this anger I know so intimately to be witnessed ‘out there.’ When I feel the anger flare up in me, I slow down. I feel around in my belly for the tears. When they feel ready, I let them come, usually in private. A sacred solitude in which I can let them come with abandon. Not abandoning myself or denying the excruciating sadness. Letting the waters flow…
…until they’re spent, for that moment.
I am always surprised to find that on the other side of the fire is another shore. It’s quiet, curious. Hope whispers here. Not because the world has changed, or even will change. Hope whispers here because of who finds me. Walks with me. Is connected with me in the Now that can become New, in its time.
Everyone’s on a journey of their own. Deep bow.
AND…
...this is a better way I am finally ready to practice.
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