What is Anger?

Let's talk about something we don't talk about all the time. Let's talk about anger. First of all, anger is an emotion and, by nature, has neither a positive or negative connotation. What you do with your anger makes all the difference. Paul admonished us to "be angry but sin not" - recognizing that anger is all about how you use it or don't use it that creates our impression of it. Jesus got angry in the Temple. God has gotten angry. So did Moses, David, Peter, Paul, etc. So, what is anger anyway?
Anger is what happens when the communication connection is broken. This can happen intentionally or unintentionally. Once communication is broken, anger results from the conclusions one makes absent any direct understanding. For instance, a husband gets angry at his wife because she forgets their anniversary. Absent of any direct understanding of the reasons why, she begins to assume that he doesn't really care about the relationship or, even worse, about her. Feelings of anger get mixed with hurt feelings and they grow exponentially to the point where she doubts the security of their love and marriage. By the time the husband gets home he gets a full blast of her anger and is back tracking on his heels until he can try and patch up the problem.
Anger is also what happens when we are faced with an injustice. The World Trade Center, children being molested and killed by sexual predators, the murder of a pregnant woman by her husband and the body of the woman and baby dumped into the Bay, the degradation of a person of color by someone who is white just because they are of color...These are things which create in us a sense of anger created by an injustice.
How do we deal with our anger? Here is the key question. In order for our anger to be assuaged we must learn how to communicate what we feel without creating the same kind of destruction, injustice, or disrespect that caused us to be angry in the first place. While there is a place for "an eye for an eye" that place is not in anger. To respond in anger to someone who is angry with you or at you does not solve the dilemma. Again, we must communicate rather than hold our emotions inside and allow them to blow up in a rage.
I just listened to a program about Jackie Robinson, the great Brooklyn Dodger baseball player, who endured the prejudice of a nation and won them over. In order to accomplish that goal he had to hold his anger and find constructive ways of responding to it (usually this was in the form of beating the other team and gaining a certain amount of revenge against their anger towards him).
Our problem with anger is not expressing it but it is in how we receive it from others. We hurl it back at others rather than deflecting it away from us. At Joel and Shafali's reception, a woman from the VFW came into the hall as we were cleaning up and began berating us for taking down the flags and plaques that had been on the wall. We tried to tell her that we had permission from the VFW to do what we had done. She was unable or unwilling to hear that and continued to ply us with her anger over our "disrespect". She returned three different times to express her anger. Each time it became more and more pointed. She spent some time in the hallway weeping over what we had done. While I'm sure the alcohol she had consumed was, at least, partially responsible for her emotional state, I was fascinated to see how all those who were there (mostly the Klecka family - Shafali's mother, brothers and relatives) handled themselves. They did not lash out at her but tried to diffuse the situation. After the woman had left the hall, I went over into the bar and tried to make sure that those who were the patrons of the VFW knew that we had not done anything out of disrespect. They were grateful for the sentiment and apologized for her attitude. I wonder if they would have done that if we had berated the woman when she spewed her anger at us? I think not. Everyone gets angry. How you handle it can make all the difference in the world.