Is Your Hair on Fire? Or Is Your Anger Cold?

managing the unmanageable

Good morning, Blue Roomies!

Today, I give you an Offhand Comment I Can’t Stop Thinking About(™). 

Last Friday I was at a Zoom happy hour with some clergy friends. We got to talking about how our people are doing, both loved ones and parishioners. (A number of us live in the DC area, where we’ve had firings, early retirements, cuts in research funds, elimination of programs, etc. Chaos.)

One of them said, “Yeah, I know some folks who are pretty ‘hair on fire’ right now... though interestingly, they’re often not the ones most directly affected by what’s going on.” 

That’s Jessica Tate, friend and fellow pastor here in the DMV. I felt the truth of her comment at the time, but followed up with her later to explore further. 

Photo by Josh Hild on Unsplash

She reminded me of that old phrase, “When you’re going through hell, keep going.” People who are just trying to survive, she mused, don’t often have the mental bandwidth to let themselves pause and wallow in how awful things really are. In those situations, we have to protect our sanity and our hearts, controlling what we can control and letting other stuff go. 

“Folks who are more hair on fire seem to have the luxury of watching things unfold from a (somewhat) safer distance,” she went on. “It’s a privilege in a way, to be able to be offended or angered by every news story. But being less affected gives you license to be less grounded, less focused. These people are coming from a very compassionate, good place, they just haven’t found their action steps.”

Jess introduced me to the concept of “cold anger,” a term from community organizing. Cold anger is tactical—anger as fuel for the work—as opposed to hot anger, which can consume us. “I wonder if that’s what I’m sensing from people who are most affected by what’s happening in the world,” she said. “Things become very focused on what you can impact, what you cannot impact. There’s a hard-core realism that comes into play, and it’s having the effect of making people more disciplined in their reactions/responses.”

I’m working on a magazine article that will come out later in the year on Jeremiah’s words to the people of Israel, in exile in Babylon. Build homes, he tells them. Plant gardens. Raise families, yes, even in this foreign land. Don’t wait. Insist on thriving.

In the next breath, Jeremiah provides the rationale: Pray for your neighbors and seek the welfare of others. In so doing, you will find your own welfare. 

Another word for welfare is shalom. Peace. Flourishing. Wholeness.

For Jeremiah, all this building and planting and living has a prophetic purpose—to bear witness to the God of the universe who is not bound to a particular land.

There’s also some interpersonal utility to it. There will be no imminent rescue. The people are going to be there for a couple generations. They can’t put lives on hold.

But Jeremiah’s words also have an intrapersonal benefit. No time for doomscrolling when you’re measuring drywall. Hard to be hair on fire when you’re focused on pulling weeds. 

On Wednesday I was at coffee with some fierce mama friends when one of them got an alert on her phone that ICE was lurking in a neighborhood nearby. She’d just been trained in nonviolent accompaniment of immigrants in such situations, so off she went. (Did you know that only 7% of people apprehended by ICE this year have been convicted of a violent crime? And 65% of detainees have had no convictions whatsoever? That’s from the conservative Cato Institute.) The rest of us finished up our social time and adjourned to a nearby postcard-writing gathering, where some 2 dozen people were stockpiling handwritten notes encouraging people to vote in November’s elections here in Virginia. They’re there every week without fail. 

Or consider my rabbi friend Michael, who’s supposed to be leading a group of travelers in Israel right now. The country is closed down, so instead he’s channeling a yearning for peace and justice into the faith250 project, which you can read more about in last week’s post.

I suspect Jess’s words hit me because I can easily fall into the trap of thinking that monitoring tragedy is accomplishing something. Still, I’m fortunate to be surrounded by people who keep one another accountable to doing the work… to letting one’s anger and indignation freeze into a rock-hard conviction to do the next right thing no matter what.

Steady on, loveys.

~

What I’m Up To

Next week is a busy one in the Blue Room:

Monday, June 30, noon EDT on Zoom: Our final installment of the Art of Onward for supporting subscribers. Topic: community. (Link will be sent Monday morning.)

Wednesday, July 2, 1:00 p.m. EDT on Substack Live: Pop Culture Pastors Hour episode with Ed Goode about the 2006 Will Ferrell fantasy-comedy Stranger Than Fiction.

Thursday, July 3, 7:30 p.m. EDT:  community-wide conversation about Frederick Douglass’s “What to a Slave is the Fourth of July”.  

Also, it’s not too late to register to be with us at the Synod of Lakes and Prairies Synod School (like church camp for all ages, but on a college campus) July 20-25. I’ll be offering the morning keynotes, based on the upcoming book!

~

Link Love

First, in honor of Pride month for a few more days: Gender is not binary in the book of Genesis:

Second. Substack Notes continues to be a mostly kind and thoughtful social media space. (Someone called it “the place where people hang out who have strong opinions about the em-dash.”) I post free-wheeling thoughts there daily-ish—this week included items about the Trevor Project, biblical literalism, and a bagpiper at Normandy—and this note from Benjamin Cremer resonated:

There are times when the weight of the world feels almost unbearable. We’re living in a moment where cruelty is not only normalized but celebrated. Where people are shamed for showing compassion. Where empathy is treated like weakness. Where caring for the vulnerable is labeled “soft” or “radical,” and where indifference is rewarded with applause.

For those who follow Jesus, this can feel soul-crushing. It can feel like we’re shouting into the wind—grieving while the world rushes past with hardened hearts and clenched fists. These are heartbreaking days. And it’s okay to say that out loud. Lament is not a lack of faith—it’s the language of faith in a broken world.

But now more than ever, it matters that we do not give in to the despair.

(more at the link)