This post first appeared in Jan., 2026. I’m reposting an edited version today because Oct. 2—the birthday of Mahatma Gandhi—has been named International Day of Nonviolence by the U.N. For ten long years, my anger at MAGA-inspired violence has been in tension with my aspiration as a Quaker to live a nonviolent life. Here I reflect on how I’ve held that tension, for better or for worse.
I. I’m a Quaker, a member of the Religious Society of Friends. Most people don’t know much about us—except for the oatmeal we don’t make—so here’s a primer:
Quakerism began in the 1650s in protest against what its founders saw as the Church of England’s distortion of the Gospel. The branch of Quakerism I belong to has no clergy and no creed that one needs to sign on the dotted line. Nor do we believe that the Spirit stopped speaking when Holy Writ was locked down. We believe in “continuing revelation”—i.e., the human capacity to hear and act on the imperatives of the Spirit—and in the importance of living in ways that “take away the causes of war and all forms of violence.”
In place of a creed, Quakers aspire to live by Testimonies that reflect what we’ve learned about the values we’re called to embody: equality, peace, social justice, integrity, simplicity, community, and care for the earth. We often fall short of our aspirations, but our Testimonies have found expression in various real-world ways—evidence that nonviolence is not passivity but what Buddhists call “right action.”
Quakers were the first American religious community to oppose slavery, making ownership of enslaved people grounds for expulsion ninety years before the Civil War. Some have expressed their opposition to war by becoming conscientious objectors and war tax resisters—though COs have often served in unarmed military roles (e.g., battlefield medics), and war tax resisters normally give to charities what they withhold from the IRS. Though small in number (around 85,000 in the U.S. today), Quakers have had a disproportionate presence in nonviolent struggles against war and for racial justice, as well as relief, reconciliation and rebuilding efforts in war-torn lands. Quakers have also had a strong presence in education in the U.S. and around the world.
II. I discovered Quakerism when I was in my mid-thirties, and found it to be the spiritual home I’d been looking for. It made sense to me that every human being has direct access to the Spirit—that the first place to go when I’m in need of guidance is not to a book or an expert, but to what Quakers call “the inner teacher,” an indwelling voice of love, truth and justice.
But given what I know about my own capacity for self-deception, it also made sense that I need a community in which to test my leadings, to help me discern whether the voice I’m hearing is that of my inner light or my inner darkness.
The community I need is not one that gives me answers, but one that knows how to help me listen more deeply to the truth we all carry within. I need a community that helps me discern true from false, right from wrong, knowing that the only answers with staying power are those that come from within, not those imposed from without. That’s the kind of community Quakerism offered me.
III. Here’s the rub: in spite of fifty years of Quaker-style listening, discernment and formation in the theory and practice of nonviolence, I come close to blowing sky-high whenever I learn about the latest Project 2025/MAGA offense against everyday decency, human dignity, the rule of law, and the common good.
Fortunately, I don’t suffer from scattergun anger, the way POTUS does. My failure to be declared “winner” in each and every thing I’ve tried has not led me to kick my dog or burn down a house, let alone threaten war against a sovereign people, or imprison and deport tens of thousands of non-criminals without due process. My anger is laser-like, aimed at people like POTUS and his minions who use their power and wealth only to get more of same, hurting folks who are vulnerable, who deserve a helping hand from those of us who have more than we need.
My “anger issues” run deep enough that a few years ago, a conservative friend with whom I was having a series of “spirited” political discussions gave me a T-shirt that reads, “One Mean Quaker.” I wear those scarlet letters with un-Quakerly pride. At age 87, there may be snow on the roof, but there’s a fire in the furnace.
IV. Does anger have a place in the life of someone who aspires to nonviolence? My answer is a simple yes—and I feel no need for therapy to “fix my problem.” Truth be told, if I didn’t feel anger toward POTUS and MAGA, I’d get myself to a therapist ASAP. Becoming emotionally numb to evil leads to the death of the human heart, and I intend to keep mine alive as long as I draw breath.
By their own admission, one of MAGA’s most potent weapons is “flooding the zone with s _ _ t.” By drowning us in a deluge of merde, they want to wear us down to a point where we stop resisting. Anger can serve as a source of energy for the work we need to do, a source of stamina to help carry us through. Everything depends on our capacity to harness our anger in the service of life-giving actions instead of harboring it in ways that bring us down.
I love the old saw that “not forgiving is like drinking rat poison and waiting for the rat to die.” But forgiveness, I’ve discovered, is not always mine to give, especially in relation to people who have long histories of malicious acts they refuse to acknowledge, let alone atone for. Sometimes I have to pass the forgiveness baton to higher powers, as Iris DeMent does in her tragicomic song about betrayal: “God may forgive you, but I won’t. Jesus may love you, but I don’t.”
V. For me, the spiritual life is not about escaping the world’s trouble by flying up, up and away. It’s about finding the right balance of grounding and passion to stay in the fray. Anger—rightly understood, harnessed and deployed—is an emotion that keeps me grounded in reality while giving me the energy to pursue possibilities, no matter how remote.
Anger repressed can contribute to psychological breakdowns like depression, and chronic anger can contribute to bodily breakdowns like high blood pressure and heart disease. As one who has some experience with clinical depression, I have no desire to revisit that deadly state of mind.
When I get angry about the way people with power and wealth treat folks who must scramble daily simply to stay alive, it feels as if I have tapped into a vital stream of life—a stream that connects us to each other in the web of being, the ecosystem of all life. What hurts one of us hurts all of us, and feeling the hurt viscerally reassures me that I’m still in the web, holding and being held. I was in that stream when I wrote Healing the Heart of Democracy in 2011, whose title speaks for itself.
VI. Day by day, as I try to use my anger to animate actions in service of love, truth and justice, I take time to strengthen my commitment to nonviolence by listening to voices that remind me of life’s endless potentials.
I listen to nature, to music, to the poets, to trusted teachers, to people whom I regard as exemplars in leading nonviolent lives. I also continue to listen in solitude and community for what is in and out of balance within me.
I’m not up for cheap versions of “The Peaceable Kingdom,” not ready to lie down with predators still red in tooth and claw who continue to devour the vulnerable. Still, I want to live in a spirit that helps lay the ground on which we can take a step closer to Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Beloved Community”—or, at the very least, the functional civil community we must create post-MAGA to keep our democracy alive.
At the same time, I like to keep my options open, taking my cues from a joke Quakers tell on themselves: A Quaker farmer owned a mule that refused to do a lick of work. Having run out of patience, the farmer went to the barn one morning, lifted the mule’s ear, and calmly delivered a message: “Friend mule, Thee knows I am a Quaker. Thee knows I will not yell or curse at Thee. Thee knows I will not throw rocks at Thee, or kick Thee, or hit Thee with a stick. But what Thee does not know is that I might sell Thee to the Baptist farmer down the road who will beat the living daylights out of Thee.”
The moral of this story is simple: “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”
P.S. We’re one month away from the Nov. 3 midterm elections. It’s vital that droves of us vote to make it harder for the MAGA regime to scream “rigged election,” as they always do when they lose. So please VOTE EARLY, and encourage folks you know to do the same. HERE is a list of states where you can check on the early voting options in your state.
[NOTES: My 10 books are available wherever you get your books, including HERE and HERE. The Center for Courage & Renewal is HERE. I post on Substack every Friday, as time and energy allow. Free as well as paid subscribers will always have access to everything I post. BTW, if you know my book On the Brink of Everything, please consider leaving a brief review of the just-released 2026 edition wherever you buy books. New editions need all the help they can get. Thanks!]
This is such a beautiful, important essay. What you write about finding the balance between forgiveness and anger and feeling both deeply at the same names the struggle of every deep thinker who is trying to live with integrity, not to mention grace. Certainly, it is my struggle. Given my background and my current launch into the world, practically every morning my prayer for myself is to do my best on both counts. I say that phrase you use here all the time: "not forgiving is like drinking poison and hoping the other will die" all the time...and yet. I strive to keep my heart space open while not closing my eyes to what is happening all around us. You are a model of this for me and so many others. Thank you.
Carry on, angry old Quaker! You offer fuel for our flagging engines!