A spiritual life is not, I think, about being perfect but about how we deal with imperfection – humanity. This was God’s problem too, I know. And is mine for sure.

I’ve written a lot about fear, but not much about anger, it’s twin brother. If you venture out of your own head these days, and turn on a computer, TV or radio, you will run headlong into the anger that permeates so much of our outer world, our political system, our media and our worklives. Nobody talks much about anger, but it is, like fear, in the air. One reason I love dogs and animals so much is that my life with them has made me less angry. If you want to do right by them, you just have to learn to be less angry. This is not something members of Congress do not seem to know, or television commentators. (Might ship Lenore down to D.C. for a few weeks to get things going.)

For me, anger, like fear, is inevitable, but not a healthy place to work out of.

People often tell me when they meet me that I am less angry than they expected from reading my books and the blog. This is something of a surprise to me, in that I don’t feel that I write in anger much, even though I do feel strongly about things.

Yet I also see what they mean. And I am open to what they say. Whenever I start to say, “hey, wait a minute, that’s not true,” I know to pause a bit.

When you write out of anger – about animals, corporatism, rural life – it prevents perspective and detachment and it projects more anger. I don’t argue my feelings and I don’t answer angry e-mails, period.

Things do not get accomplished out of anger, even though it is a natural and inevitable human emotion. So I will address it in my way – meditation, discussion, blogging, thinking, sharing it with Maria. I think there is anger in me, and I need to see it more clearly, especially if I am to live and work in a sometimes angry world. But I also need to remember that Washington (like New York) is not the world, only a very tiny slice of it.

Anger and conflict is not the big story, it is only their big story. It is, in fact,  only a small part of the story. In my world, in the people around me, in the people I know, in the animals I live with, anger is very rare. The big news is challenge, growth, creativity, change, honesty and love. But I don’t want anger in my writing, or in my blog. So something to talk about. I do have strong feelings about things, and I do believe part of my role is to challenge people. But a real write, a real communicator, does not communicate through anger. That is not communicating. It is not good writing either.