No Apologies. Take Your Power Back.
“Anger is not the action itself. It is action’s invitation.”
What a fucking week.
If you’re in the U.S., you know what I mean. Even if you’re not in the U.S., you still know what I mean.
But this post isn’t going to be about what you’ve seen in your doomscrolling. Or at least, most of it won’t be.
Instead, this is week 3 of my ongoing check-ins as I reread Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way. (This was last week’s ICYMI.)
Week 3 is about “Recovering a Sense of Power.” I know — talk about timing. This is a week where it feels like external forces want us drained of our power. We’re distracted by the 24/7 firehose of information (and misinformation) on social media. That distraction is where our power disappears.
There’s that statement “Where attention goes, energy flows.” This is especially true for artists. There are times when we do need to be paying attention to what’s going on in the world and in our communities. We can’t let ourselves become complacent or opt out of doing things like taking care of others.
Week 3 of The Artist’s Way opens with a section on anger. Yet we’re not recovering a sense of anger. Julia Cameron writes, “Anger is not the action itself. It is action’s invitation.”
It’s almost too easy to get angry about the state of things. But staying in the place of anger isn’t productive. It’s just going to breed more of the same. We can let ourselves wallow for a bit if needed. But once we’ve had our fill of that, it’s time to channel that rage into something more productive.
I spent part of the week working on an essay that I submitted for publication. The week’s events brought up memories I had of being in Evangelical circles when I was young. (More on the outside looking in vs. being an active participant.) I wrote about the contrast I experienced in an environment that claimed to “hate the sin and love the sinner” and how today more people seem to hate both.
In Week 3, this passage stood out to me: “The act of making art exposes a society to itself. Art brings things to light. It illuminates us. It sheds light on our lingering darkness. It casts a beam into the heart of our own darkness and says, ‘See?’”
In other words, art is a mirror.
This moment in our country’s history is also a mirror. When we look in the mirror (figuratively or literally) and don’t like what we see, it might trigger one of two things. One is that we’re spurred to take action and make changes in our lives. The other is to stay in denial and look away — and, if not in touch with our anger, maybe break the mirror.
If there’s one lesson from this week’s events, it’s that sometimes we need to make someone take that look in the mirror.
You might have seen clips floating around of Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde’s sermon at Washington’s National Cathedral on Tuesday. She addressed the country’s leaders with a plea to “have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now,” including immigrants and the LGBTQ community.
As a result, Rev. Budde was subjected to all kinds of backlash and even threats to her safety. One Republican Congressman said that Rev. Budde should be “added to the deportation list” even though she was born in and is a citizen of the U.S.
Rev. Budde told NPR, “... It actually confirmed the very thing that I was speaking of earlier, which is our tendency to jump to outrage and not speak to one another with respect.” Ultimately, she said, "I don't feel there's a need to apologize for a request for mercy.”
Requests for mercy, tolerance, kindness, and empathy are not radical. Part of reclaiming and recovering our sense of power is not backing down when our reasonable needs are met with unreasonable anger.
I posted a clip of Rev. Budde’s interview with NPR in my Instagram stories, where she said she wouldn’t apologize for what she said. I captioned it “More of this in 2025!”
Yes, we should apologize and hold ourselves accountable if we make a mistake. But if we aren’t advocating for harm or hatred, then it’s a time to be unwavering in our beliefs. Let’s not give our power to bad faith arguments, trolls, or clickbait. Save your energy so you can “get in good trouble.”
Want to connect with your beliefs and reclaim your power? This exercise from Week 3 might help:
Inner Compass: Each of us has an inner compass. This is an instinct that points us toward health. It warns us when we are on dangerous ground, and it tells us when something is safe and good for us. Morning pages are one way to contact it. So are some other artist-brain activities—painting, driving, walking, scrubbing, running. This week, take an hour to follow your inner compass by doing an artist-brain activity and listening to what insights bubble up.
Take your power back. Use it for good. See you next week.