for befriending anger

BTS of writing about a female taboo

A few days ago my friend Corinne texted to tell me she had received her copy of Feminist Prayers for My Daughter in the mail. Like me, Corinne has one daughter. Also like me, she knows how powerful it is for a woman to learn to mother herself. “I turned straight to ‘for befriending anger,’” Corinne’s text read, “and saw ‘O Rolling Thunder,’ and lost it.”

‘Rolling Thunder’ is the name I use to address God in that particular prayer. One of the most intimate parts about writing this book for me was mindfully choosing just the right words with which to petition the I AM — a practice I borrowed from our great matriarch, Joyce Rupp. For this particular prayer, when I needed to image the Divine in a way that could embrace anger rather than fear it, ‘Rolling Thunder’ felt like a good capture of the passion and responsiveness of the life force we share in common with God: the energy that revolts against injustice and suffers no oppressors.