I got a letter in the mail yesterday. It had been written by someone who was (perhaps still is) in a towering and wholly irrational rage with me, and so it was not a pleasant letter. It was, in fact, as full of spitefulness and rage as an alleycat is of fleas. It rang with cheap shots, insults, and snarks about my probable motivations. It was a very, very nasty piece of work.

I skimmed it once, in shock, and got very shaky for a while. But over the course of the day I worked through my own quite powerful emotions--culminating in a brief but refreshing bout of "ohfergawdssake!" sheer pissed-off-edness at bedtime. I spent altogether too much of yesterday writing out a variety of responses: a reasoned and fairly kind counter-argument; a good swift "get real, buster!" kick, put in brutally derisory tones; a burst of anger – and hoo boy, can I write anger! Much, much better than my correspondent, whose techniques are crude compared to mine. This morning, I could deal with the letter more calmly and with more clarity.

But the letter did pose one problem I've seen many times in the past and often had great trouble with. The writer demands an apology from me. He is clearly in a real State, and he holds me personally responsible for that State. It's rather like the Great American Insurance Assumption: “If I am suffering, somebody must have done something to make me suffer, and that someone owes me one, and until that someone pays up, I'm gonna hold out for what I'm owed.” This person is holding out for me to admit responsibility for his State. And I can't do that, because I have as much to do with his State as does a can of Crisco.

Looking back over my own conduct, I do indeed see several instances in which I have been tactless or over-managerial, two of my favourite personal faults. But he hasn't accused me of those: he's accused me of a wide range of behaviours and (especially) motives which are the products of his own fevered imagination;. He has taken actions or words of mine and put them through the alembic of his rage, so that they emerge totally transformed. Should I apologize for what I have not done or thought or felt, to calm him down and make him happy? Should I, instead, apologize for what I have done, but he has not accused me of? That's like giving him rubles when he's demanding greenbacks. That won't satisfy the imagined debt.

Another problem: in the sentence after his demand for an apology, he sneers that he knows that any apology I made would be insincere. He's just holding out for the form of the thing. So even if I did apologize, he's not going to accept the apology as genuine. This isn't an effort to straighten things out and reach reconciliation and restoration, the more so as he is completely convinced of his own pure victim status and sees nothing whatsoever at fault in his own behaviour. The pseudo-apology would be entirely one-way. It's the sacrifice his rage requires, a blood-victim for the altar, to pacify the angry god.

But this isn't my god, or a god I feel I owe anything to. I have a much more satisfying sort of God--not a god who magically intervenes with Canada Post to protect me from nasty letters, but a God who sits with me, reading over my shoulder and suffering for me in love; and who also suffers, in equal love and even more deeply, for the hot miserable raging darkness inside the person who wrote this letter. Any god does pretty well in good times, but I have a God who is a very good God to have around in dark closets of misery, or times of suffocating confusion, or long bleak stretches of the desert. This God doesn't require to be carried, like the heavy, cold marble images of our ideals. He does not demand to be babied and fussed over and given his way in everything and protected from every bump, like the infantile god of the Self --there's a godlet who, in the desert, can only plump down on its big, soft diapered bottom and howl in rage and despair for Mommy to come FIX THIS. This isn't a good-time god, like money or the stock market or interior decor or food. This isn't a god who will turn and hurt me, own me and eat me alive, like alcohol or cocaine or my own perfectionism. This is a God who comforts me in hard places, directly and through the love of others--but it's as often comfort in the old sense of "being strong with" as it is the cosier new meaning. Fir this is a God who expects me to do my own walking, carry my own loads, and do my own work, because this God respects my abilities and expects me to use 'em.

So, "use your loaf," the God-whisper said on this issue of the apology-sacrifice. In terms of my own integrity, I had no question: I don't need to make this apology. The rage-god doesn't deserve it, and I have done nothing that my own soul needs serious clearing for, although maybe my social skills could use a lick and a polish in any future dealings with this person. In that sense, he's right: any apology I made would be insincere. The only "sorry" I can truthfully manage here is "I'm sorry you feel this way." I don't think that's what the rage-god wants.

But there are all sorts of practical pro-and-con arguments. A pro-forma apology from me could perhaps placate the rage-god, and allow a settling down in which we could untangle some of the knots, and that could be a good thing. On the other hand, false gods tend to grow when fed: should I be offering this one a charbroiled rack of sacrificial lamb? This is not a god who knows that good sequence of confession, absolution, and reconciliation: to this god, confession is a sign that the victim is weak enough to lunch on. This god loves not love, but that sense of power. Should I be feeding it?

There are issues to consider of justice and kindness, feeling and reason. If a feeling is completely unreasonable, grounded in paranoid imaginings, should we give it the same weight and dignity as a feeling grounded in reality? Or should we acknowledge its existence and give it a solid reality-check? Should we pacify the unjust in the hopes that they might calm down enough to understand their injustice? Or should we stand up to them and give them as good as they gave, in the hopes that we can win the victory over them and pull them down, revealed in all their bullying weakness? Should we choose the strong and subtle road of passive resistance? Or is this just one of those stupid situations where all you can do is to shrug, walk away, and pray like crazy for the other person?

I'll choose the last, I think. That's what those who love me are saying I should do, and I'll heed their advice. I have a long history of sacrificing at this particular god's altar, and it never did more than temporary good in the past. I could probably do the standing-up manouevre, but is that the charitable thing to do to someone who's obviously not well? Maybe walking away is the coward's option, but it looks like the most reasonable one for now.

Makes me glad, though, that I've got the sort of God who's especially good to have around in Interesting Times, who is not a control freak, and who doesn't demand blood-sacrifices--only a soft, trusting, and accepting heart.