How are you doing with Meh?

The last time I spoke we were on the edge of winter, not potentially on the edge of a record breaking, once in a generation ice and snow storm set to impact millions of Americans over the next few days or longer.

The last time I spoke to you we were confronting daily, even hourly reports of unchecked assaults on human worth and dignity, including the emblematic murder of a 37 year old woman in Minneapolis, shot three times at point blank range, numbed by the cruelty of her death and a growing number of others- people of color, people whose primary language is not English, whose stories were not yet being told.

A couple of weeks later and the battery continues on global level, from Switzerland to a continuation of what is now being called close to civil war on the frigid streets of a Midwestern city where hundreds of my UU clergy colleagues and nearly a thousand other faith leaders marched Friday in sub zero weather, and were arrested for blocking entrance to the airport, and other acts of protest and resistance along with huge numbers of local citizens.

Not singing we are a Gentle Angry people that I could see:

Rather we shall not be moved.

Personally, I have been shaken out of any Meh, any pervasive indifference, that I carried into 2026, too overwhelmed by the prospects of a weather system I am in no way fully prepared for, scrambling to figure out how to shut off water, light our house, stay warm enough to be safe

And then the infuriating reports from Minneapolis of a toddler hauled off to Texas, a five year old seized as bait to arrest his father, a man dragged from his home in little more than his underwear .

Kidnappings carried out by masked militia in combat fatigues, recruited for their hatred of The Other, their mistaken loyalties, their false patriotism. Pawns in a deadly exercise of power.

And another murder of an American citizen.

The feelings re- triggered in me of physical helplessness, and ongoing psychological helplessness.

The extreme opposite of Meh– a now too familiar feeling- jaw clenching, face flushing, hand shaking rage.

“Felt for rational and irrational reasons, on a personal and a global level. More often it is destructive. We hurt ourselves and those around us.

But used skillfully it is an effective tool for recognizing that a situation needs to change.”

This past week, MLK week, we might have been reminded that he was known for having to having wrestled with anger, including the time right after Rosa Parks had just been arrested in Montgomery, when this then 26 year old pastor realized that the gathered crowd was upset- how to combine the militant and the moderate in a single speech.

How to be angry at the system oppressing you but not to direct the anger at the people caught up in the system.

For Dr. King anger was part of a process, which also includes forgiveness, redemption and love,

And yet there were times when he was very very angry and lashed out hard at those close to him, personally and professionally.

Especially as the pressures mounted on him and his emotional energy nearly evaporated.

One of the 2025 words of the year (Oxford University Press) ( along with Meh) recognized the danger of unchecked exposure to incitements to rage.

It is rage baiting, also known as rage baiting, rage farming, or rage seeding, an internet slang term described as the manipulative tactic of causing outrage with the goal of increased internet traffic, online engagement and revenue, as well as attracting new subscribers, followers, or supporters. This manipulation achieved through inflammatory headlines, memes, tropes or comments that provoke users to respond in kind.

I admit that when I scroll through my phone late at night or at my dining room table, at times I have been susceptible to the anger that is triggered in me, the moral outrage as I fall into a trap of believing posts including misinformation, toxicity and what is called low quality news.

And poised on a few occasions to repost this often fabricated content from negative influencers who are otherwise unknown to me.

How do we combat this perilous vulnerability, this provocation of blind hatred while keeping the possibility of righteous anger alive?

How many of us were relieved to hear that Renee Good’s last words were that “I am not angry with you dude,” as if an angry response by a woman to being threatened, a proactive response to what ICE was carrying out in her own neighborhood, might have provided justification for being killed by an out of control agent?

Or that the blunt anger of her wife merits an investigation into her political activities and her public witness?

Regardless of gender, we receive persistent messages about the folly of, the downside of anger. An online scroll through quotes and sayings on anger reveals the dominant message: anger is not beneficial, in fact just the opposite, and must be curbed if not eliminated.

Truisms like these:

• He who angers you conquers you.
• For every minute you are angry, you lose sixty seconds of happiness.
• Anger is one letter short of danger.
• Anger blows out the lamp of the mind.

Anger management experts explain the causes of a badly wired angry brain: frustration, too much stress, physical or emotional trauma, alcohol and drug abuse, excessive hormone release, problems with neurotransmitters, genetic personality factors that promote anger, families and cultures that promote anger and aggression.

They teach us about increasing our bodily awareness to notice where we first begin to feel our anger — is it in our chest, our jaw, our hands? They instruct us in deep breathing and muscle relaxation, biofeedback, and mindfulness meditation.

There’s that kind of unacceptable anger, dangerous, displaced rage. Lashing out, bursting out rage. And devastating depression — anger held back for too long and then turned inward.

That there is after all, as clinical psychologist Leon Seltzer has described in a blog for Psychology Today, “a rarely recognized upside of anger.” Sure your anger should be controlled, he says, but don’t try to obliterate it either. While maintaining that he continues to see anger as mostly hazardous to our physical and mental health, and to our relationships with others — there is what he sees as one aspect of anger that makes it invaluable. Anger, he believes, is the one emotion that can be seen as moralistic — having everything to do with our values, our system of ethics.

Righteous anger, as he defines it, is the emotion associated with affirming personal worth and dignity. The anger, as he writes, that might help you maintain crucial feelings of honor, importance, and self-respect, even as a child whose self-concept has been constantly battered. When you have personally been taken advantage of or exploited, for example being fired from a job and there is no credible explanation for why you were let go. Or on a less personal level perhaps, if you believe in fair wages for work done — a raise in the minimum wage for example — and there is no response in Congress — this sense of injustice can lead to completely understandable and justifiable and expressed anger. That leads to social change.

The anger that will fuel the change we so desperately need to meet this moment.

These words from Karen Salamansohn

The world is both burning and blooming

You get the bad news

And the sunrise in the same day.

You cry over the headlines ,

Then you laugh at a baby

Wearing a hat shaped like a bear,

That is the dual citizenship of being alive,

Rage and reverence,

Grief and grace

You are allowed to scream

And still notice how good the soup is.

You don’t have to choose.

Let it all in.