The following meditation is led by Tara Brock.

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One of the questions I've been asked a lot lately has to do with how to handle our anger.

And in general, the more we're stressed, the more likely anger will be playing out.

It's one of our survival stress reactions.

And here we are.

And we're in a very traumatized society with huge anger and rage.

It's circling around our core wound of racial violence, circling around the inequities between the races, between classes, extreme political,

the Bidenist, bitterness, anger.

And I've had many people share with me about the fault lines that the stress is producing and the anger in our personal relationships.

So it's important to honor that anger is this hugely powerful, primal energy.

And it's one that can cause horrific suffering.

And it's also a force that can serve radical and healing transformation, a friend of mine who's been at protests in DC most days.

He's a black man in his mid fifties.

And he was telling me last week about how much he loves the energy of the young people that are showing up.

And he says, he told me their anger and outrage and injustice, their passion, their vitality.

But then he also started talking about how it's the older ones at the protests like him, he put himself in that category, that were actually being the emotional regulators.

They were sensing when anger might lead to unwise actions that could undermine their cause.

And I was really struck by this image of the necessity and value of anger, just feeling that the passion of the younger people,

and of the elders with that wise awareness that in no way suppresses the anger, but it knows how to not get possessed or hijacked, how to guide the anger.

I often quote Ruth King, who has a wonderful book, mindful of race, who says, anger is initiatory. It's not transformative.

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