What Did Christ Himself Say About Anger?

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In the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5, starting at 21st verse:

21 “You have heard that our ancestors were told, ‘You must not murder. If you commit murder, you are subject to judgment.’[d] 22 But I say, if you are even angry with someone,[e] you are subject to judgment! If you call someone an idiot,[f] you are in danger of being brought before the court. And if you curse someone,[g] you are in danger of the fires of hell.[h]

(HMM. In Class We Only Went That Far, but at Home I look Farther and:)

25 “When you are on the way to court with your adversary, settle your differences quickly. Otherwise, your accuser may hand you over to the judge, who will hand you over to an officer, and you will be thrown into prison. 26 And if that happens, you surely won’t be free again until you have paid the last penny

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Okay, I have to stop here and admit, the thing I'm most angry about, the thing that pops into my head four or five times a day is how unfair it is that you get a legal settlement from the Church based on what State you lived in at the time of the rape. I've found myself in the weird place mentally of saying, wow, I wish I'd been raped by a priest here in L.A. instead of Chicago, because the Church fought all the way to the Illinois Supreme Court to get cases older than 40 years old thrown out, and the state high court ruled in favor of Catholic Church attorneys and other sources of influence September 2009. The logic here is older victims, who suffered trauma for more years in a culture that totally misunderstood child abuse, are the ones who cannot get help from the church.

The total dearth of help for victims who can't bring a litigatable case is astounding. The Catholic Church truly does only help those it is required by law to help, it moves not an inch further.

So now if I read the words of Christ up there correctly, it's up to me on my own, to find a way to take the Chicago Archdiocese to the Judge, and not in court.

"Settle your differences quickly. Otherwise, your accuser may hand you over to the judge."

(Here is The Message translation on anger, forget the court stuff:)

I'm telling you that anyone who is so much as angry with a brother or sister is guilty of murder. Carelessly call a brother 'idiot!' and you just might find yourself hauled into court. Thoughtlessly yell 'stupid!' at a sister and you are on the brink of hellfire. The simple moral fact is that words kill.
23-24 "This is how I want you to conduct yourself in these matters. If you enter your place of worship and, about to make an offering, you suddenly remember a grudge a friend has against you, abandon your offering, leave immediately, go to this friend and make things right. Then and only then, come back and work things out with God.

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In class, once again, I noted similarities in The New Testament and Alcoholics Anonymous.

You've got to make amends

Went home looking for open AA meetings in my neighborhood. It now costs six dollars to go somewhere and back in L.A. and I have become unable to get out of my neighborhood.

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Have to break this isolation. Have to deconstruct. How did I end up once again, working in a situation where I am in a room all alone for hours on end.

Why do I keep ending up this way when what I crave is interaction with humans.

It's amazing, I started City of Angels in 2007 looking for a way out of isolation and ended up more cut off from the world than I was before.

That isolation is the problem I have that has to be solved right now, and looking in the same places expecting different results is insanity.

So for now I'm finding new ways to survive here in my thousand dollar a month squat in East Hollywood, where I can't even get out of the neighborhood anymore.

That's my life.

Disassociating...

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This passage jumped out at me at Anger Management at Hope Again Tuesday morning:

Proverbs 24:24-25
24 Don’t befriend angry people
or associate with hot-tempered people,
25 or you will learn to be like them
and endanger your soul

(That's New Living translation, here is The Message:)

24-25 Don't hang out with angry people;
don't keep company with hotheads.
Bad temper is contagious—
don't get infected.

(Amplified translation is supposed to be most accurate:)

24 Make no friendships with a man given to anger, and with a wrathful man do not associate,

25 Lest you learn his ways and get yourself into a snare.

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In a snare, is that anything like a SNARL?

Whatever, I'm changing my perspective, stepping away so I can see better.
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SO next day, Wednesday, the only thing I want to write is more from my Anger Management Notes.

It's OK to Not Be Right. and Keep Your Mouth Closed Tight

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From Tuesday Anger Management at Hope Again

Let Go to Get Beyond

Clenched Fists are Closed Tight so Cannot Be Refilled but when you relax and let your hands be open, New Stuff is Able to Pour In

A rear view mirror can sometimes seem more clear. Closing doors can set you free.
- Why would you want to go backwards?
- Don't let past events define you.

AGAIN
Like last week:
Let go of Needing Approval

FEAR
is a big roadblock. You have to step into your fears to get through them.

THEN
The group conversation detoured first into how today's times are Evil Times, so today especially people need to turn to God-

Then this new female participant went off on a tangent about her Catholic family not being real Catholics and arguments at home about whether a priest could remove bad spirits from their house or not, she had an East L.A. accent but said she came from Cleveland. She was sure the priest could remove evil spirits, as she's a real Catholic, her mother in law is not.

I wrote in my notes, "Don't say a word," again wishing there were recovery centers for adult victims of pedophile priests somewhere, but we do the best we can with what we've got, don't we.

-ke

NOTE: Details of female's tangent changed to protect her true identity.

Relax, You Will Hear Everything You Need to Hear When the Time is Right

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Once again heard just what I needed to hear in Anger Management at Hope Again today, all the way at the end of the session, when I had started staring at the clock and again, wondering why I am coming there. Then we got to the list of bullet points under:

“The more you have of the following, the more anger you will have.”

In the middle of the list was this item:

"Preoccupation with winning approval from others."

I had a star by this one, because I wondered, what does this characteristic have to do with anger. In the group we joked a bit, agreeing that "people pleasers" make other people angry more than themselves. But no, this is about how by being the people pleaser, you can set your own self up for feeling angry.

Then I got it: The anger is in the frustration that there are some people you just can’t please.

Your anger comes from beating up against a wall over and over again, expecting to finally please people who, like it or not, are never going to be pleased with you.

I had to admit, even though quietly and internally, I’d been saying to myself a lot lately, why do you care that the people who run SNAP don't like you. They didn't like you to from the very start, in fact, that's why it became an issue with me to begin with.

What am I doing wrong???? I wasted a good two years wondering.

I'm not doing anything wrong.

They're just never going to like me, for their own reasons.

So who cares?

Message to me: Don't do City of Angels expecting to get anything out of it. Just blog it because I wake up at 3:30 AM burning to blog it.

If somebody doesn't like it, So What? Especially since the guys who don't like it, won’t like it anyway.

Because anyone who believes the whispering behind the scenes against me instead of judging this blog based on its merit, is no one I need around me anyway.

I'm thinking about a line on a Law & Order episode recently, or it may have been a movie, an older cop delivered the line to a young rookie, who was all enthusiastic: “I have a hunch about this case.”

The older detective looked wise and said, “Problem is, boy, when a guy has a hunch, then that's all he sees when he looks at the evidence.”

Or something like that.

Point is, it’s best to just go forward and keep searching, keep digging. I don't know what is going to be uncovered. I know there’s a big effort to try to stifle City of Angels, and it’s left me way more isolated than I ever wanted to be, but hey, that's the way it is.

Thanks to isolation, I don't always have to put on makeup.

Last year I was unhappy that my apartment has no windows that look out on the street. We live kind of in the back, blocked in by other buildings, where you can’t see out into the world.

I was angry that I’d landed here.

Now, after feeling a bit threatened past few months, I realize how grateful I am that the apartment I live in has no windows that look out onto the street. Because being in this hidden unit, no one can see in to where I live from the street either. I'm safe, cocooned back here.

You never know why God puts you in places, even places you don't want to be. You just have to trust His will, and keep going forward.
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Old Anger Management Standby:

James 1:19-21 (NIV translation)

19. Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, 20 for man's anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires. 21 Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you.

COOLEST TRANSLATION:

James 1:19-21 (The Message) Act on What You Hear

9-21 Post this at all the intersections, dear friends: Lead with your ears, follow up with your tongue, and let anger straggle along in the rear. God's righteousness doesn't grow from human anger. So throw all spoiled virtue and cancerous evil in the garbage. In simple humility, let our gardener, God, landscape you with the Word, making a salvation-garden of your life.

MOST ACCURATE:

James 1:19 (Amplified Bible)

Understand [this], my beloved brethren. Let every man be quick to hear [a ready listener], slow to speak, slow to take offense and to get angry. 20For man's anger does not promote the righteousness God [wishes and requires].

21So get rid of all uncleanness and the rampant outgrowth of wickedness, and in a humble (gentle, modest) spirit receive and welcome the Word which implanted and rooted [in your hearts] contains the power to save your souls.
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Hey, I'm not saying I've achieved anything like this control of wrath and rage. But nobody's perfect, you can only pick yourself up each day, dust yourself off, and start all over again.

ke
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I watched them. The guys pouring tar on our roof instead of replacing the roof, as the landlord who owns this building WILL NOT invest a dime more than barely necessary. So the leaks in the roof just travel. The landlord sends a team of illegals over now and then to pour tar where the leak is coming through, but will never replace the roof.

One of those illegals, or a guy who hires illegals, expressed his side of the rage at my ladlord, probly being cheated out of his pay, the last day that team was out here pouring tar on the roof.

I watched him.

He pulled the tar thing over to the edge and carefully poured it so it dripped down onto the terraced walkway and courtyard below.

If you look now you can see places all over the edge of the roof where there is roofing tar spilled over and dripped. Now it's hardened and blends in with the chipped paint of the rest of the decor. He poured it out the last day they were there after about a week of tarring and re-tarring.

My daughter's room still smells like mold, it's in the ceiling of course.

Only way out for a person is to make more money. There is no structure out there protecting you, no one will go to bat for you against the corporate structure. Everything is owned by absent "stockholders" and the rest of us are just getting squeezed.

Or enjoy small victories, like that mexican guy pouring tar out on our building after probly finding out his crew was not going to be paid what they agreed to earlier, or whatever his gripe was. Only problem is there's no landlord living with the results of the crew's political stance, only me, living with hardened tar dripped all around my home.

Have to keep reminding myself, it could be a lot worse, and then keep those fingers on the keyboard...

Sick where no one sees me

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This entire lifetime has been bizarre, but currently, at age 62, well in a month 62, I'm in another weird situation, and as always there is no stability at all.

Working at home, sick as a dog, no health insurance so no real doctor care, so don't even really know what's wrong with me. No one sees me the days that I have to hold on to furniture to get from one end of a room to another, no one hears me moan in pain. Now I only moan out loud when it's sudden unexpected pain, the rest I've learned to live with. But even with only unexpected pain bringing up a moan, I moan a few dozen times a day.

Finally figured out why I'm tripping and knocking things over so much. I'm not picking up my legs when I walk, just unconsciously, because every movement adds more pain. So if there's a tiny thing on the floor, my foot still slips on it. A wire that no one else trips over, that I never used to trip over, now lands me flat every time I pass it. I finally figured this all out yesterday when once again things came toppling down on me in the hallway where I'd just tripped again.

Knocking things over is then a side effect. However, people around you only see the tripping and falling. Even me, I've been down-rapping myself for knocking things down all the time.

No one can see pain. With this disease, where I look healthy and strong just tired, no one can see that the inside of me hurts. I don't even know how to describe it. It's just, whatever part of me I'm using, that's the place it hurts, then the pain shoots out to everything else from there. So it travels. It's in the nerves I can feel that it is in the nerves, I've often felt the direct connection between stress, tension, and the pain.

That doesn't mean the pain will go away if you just calm down. That means you are in less pain if you are calmed down.

It's hard to remain calm when the medical world ignores what is happening to you. Lately I've read that the medical problems people in the Gulf of Mexico are having are similar to these weird PTSD quote unquote symptoms I've had, only theirs is likely from direct poisoning from pollution of the BP Oil Gush.

But it makes me wonder. Maybe fibromyalgia is really the result of inhalation and absorption in other ways of all the carbon pollutants we've had in our atmosphere now for way too long at way too high levels. Some people, maybe because of the PTSD, are more susceptible, so get sick from the oil products sooner...?

I've always thought pollution was at the root of this pain I've been in since about 1986.

But today, I'm so isolated, stuck in this one room I live in, unable to clean it properly so it gets dirtier and dirtier by the day. I talk on the phone to my friends, most of them live in other cities. Yesterday as I was talking to an East Coast friend who lives in the country, I was on the walkway of my building, looking down on the dripped tar, chipped paint, and wobbliness of the structure, plus the dusty trash that blows in from the street and gathers in corners, and said to my friend, yeah I wish I could come to visit.

But I don't think I'll ever get outta here.

Truth is some months I can't even buy a bus pass.

We still have birds singing here. They feed off the same trash that keeps a small part of the human population alive. I realize that because of this weird skill I developed of being able to type almost at the speed of sound, I'm trapped here in this place. Can't make enough money to get out, make too much money for social security to even consider my claim.

So I'll probly be typing here next to my bed for the rest of my life. Which will likely be shortened as to the fact I'm typing in bed sick when I should be getting medical attention. I mean, I'll be able to type when every other part of my body is not working.

I type to make a living when I'm crippled in pain so can't go out and get any other job. In a way transcribing is relieving though, as it gets my mind in the subject matter I'm typing about, and I get out of the pain for a while. It seems inhumanely cruel that a world would make a sick old lady type from home to stay alive, but reading a little literature from before 1940 you realize most humans have led lives of toil and difficulty, that's how it is on earth. It was only that short period of time- the return of the GI's from WWII and that thriving economy- to today. To today's mess the Reaganites made of that wonderful blossoming middle class, so now it's almost all destroyed.

I'm like a character in a Charles Dickens story, the aging woman, blind, still sewing buttons for a living, from her shack in the slummy section of a decaying city.

Only today it's 2010 L.A. so, instead of sewing, the aging lady types with crooked fingers on a computer keyboard for pennies a word, probly until the day I die.
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RE: The C Church and my stymied efforts to start something about their crimes with City of Angels: They're like a virus that won't go away and I'm the penicillin that stopped working.