I—and millions more—had never heard of Eyjafjallajokull, the Icelandic volcano, until it blew up a few days ago and belched ash and dirty ice into the atmosphere at a rate of 750 tons per second. Now, days later, this ugly volcanic “garbage” floats over much of Europe and is the cause of thousands of flight cancellations. Entire national economies are being humbled by this unexpected event.
Having spent a large part of my life preaching and writing, I am always on the prowl for a word picture or a story that illustrates a great idea and makes it “graspable” by a listener or a reader.
In that sense Eyjafjallajokull is a symbol of the many volcanoes, some active, some dormant, that mark the landscape of the human spirit—that inner space that is as large in its unique dimension as is outer space.
These interior Eyjafjallajokulls of varying sizes can erupt when one least expects it: in traffic, in a routine conversation when disagreement rises, in a moment when someone denies us something we believe we deserve.
In such moments we find ourselves trembling with subterranean emotion. We want to explode, to claim what we think is ours, to compel the other person to back down and get what he has coming. We become single-minded in thinking of every reason we are right and other person is wrong.
I am tempted to write about all the anger I see in the world around me. The anger I often feel among certain Christians who seem to dislike the world more than love it; the anger of right wing and left wing political groups who always have a chip on their shoulder, the anger with which some people write an author or a preacher when something is said that is just a bit out of the box. It’s easy for me to muse upon this stuff and want to … well, get angry.
But today Eyjafjallajokull reminds me of myself. It is a visual rebuke to me.
I grew up thinking I was a pretty calm person and that it was others—not me—who had anger issues. They might have a volcano inside of them, but my interior space, I believed, was an oasis of peace and order. It wasn’t that I never experienced the sensations of strong hurt and irritability. But my habit was to deny such feelings, to assume I was probably wrong, that it was maturity to retreat in times of conflict and say nothing. My wife, Gail, once pointed out to me that while I often said nothing in such moments, the glare on my face told a more accurate story of my inner disposition.
Then one day I discovered Eyjafjallajokull within myself. I became embroiled in a disagreement that caused feelings to ignite in ways I’d never experienced before. All I can say is that I felt the volcanic power of rage. That disagreement captured my mind, and for many days I could hardly think of anything else but my desire to be vindicated and for the other party to be appropriately punished.
The crazy thing about that conflict so long ago is that I can no longer even remember what the issue was or how it managed to gain such control over me. Perhaps it was because I had so little experience in dealing frankly with anger and its effects, but when the volcano inside of me blew, it brought my life, for all practical purposes, to a halt, much as the real Eyjafjallajokull has paralyzed northern Europe. I was surprised, amazed at myself: all of this meanness that suddenly came from who-knows-where.
The volcanoes in me—I began to discover there were others—had always been there, before I was even aware of them. I grew up in a family where children were not permitted (or taught how) to express their frustration or anger. Children were “to be seen and not heard,” and on the few occasions when I hinted at what I really felt, I was disciplined severely. Then too, the version of the Christian life handed down to me by the fathers of my tradition was that of niceness. Christians were to be kind, gentle, submissive, never assertive or aggressive. Certainly, never angry.
That memorable episode of conflict so many years ago became an important moment of self-discovery in my life. The other person in the engagement and the issue itself became insignificant. What really needed to be dealt with was me and the rather large inventory of small and large matters I had simply stuffed and never dealt with. I realized I had some repenting and forgiving to do. I had to become a “volcanologist” of the spirit, a student of the energy of anger within me: where it came from, how it expressed itself, and how it needed to be processed into something more in alignment with the grace and mercy Jesus so aptly modeled.
I have not fully mastered this area of life (could anyone in the lifetime allotted to us?), but I have learned to spot the uprisings of feelings that can eventually morph into needless anger. I’ve learned what issues are likely to create eruptions in me. And I’ve acquired a bit of facility in harnessing healthy anger and directing it into some creative, hopefully Christ-like, expression.
Many of the volcanoes in our hearts find their origins in our earliest years, in hurt, fear, and feelings of powerlessness. They arise from times when we were humiliated or deceived. Sometimes we inherit our parents’ volcanoes and pass them on to our children. Beneath all of that is probably one single problem: the fact that few of us can accept those moments when someone else says or does something which diminishes us or strips us of our sense of dignity.
All of this lies like molten lava within us waiting, wanting—often at the most inconvenient moments—to be released. You can see it in the way some leaders lead, the way some groups of people act, the urges within ourselves that often surprise us with their ugliness and viciousness.
I perceive Simon Peter to have been a hair-triggered angry man when Jesus first engaged him. Until he brought those impulsive feelings under control, he was of little use to the Lord and his mission. It’s interesting then that words ascribed to Peter about Jesus focus on this very subject of anger-management.
“When they hurled their insults at (Jesus),” Peter writes, “he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead he trusted himself to him who judges justly.” What I hear him saying is this: Jesus’ reactions were always appropriate, never out of control, never destructive, never paralyzing. He had no Eyjafjallajokulls in him.
Fascinating that Peter would point this out … as if it were a lesson he’d had to learn himself the hard way.
When I see video of the smoke and ash plume from Eyjafjallajokull, I see my potential self. And I am challenged by the thought that if I were to live a thousand years, there would always be some more volcanoes to tend to.
I have a trip to Europe coming up. If the airlines cancel my flight, I’m going to react in grace. I will not sue the Icelanders, although I truly wish they’d put a cork in their Eyjafjallajokull.
Gordon MacDonald is editor at large of Leadership and lives in New Hampshire.
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