Often, poets say it best.

For example, spend a moment or three with these stunning words penned by the Irish poet John O'Donohue as he explores what it means to be a citizen:

For Citizenship

In these times when anger

is turned into anxiety

And someone has stolen

The horizons and mountains,

Our small emperors on parade

Never expect our indifference

To disturb their nakedness.

They keep their heads down

And their eyes gleam with reflection

From aluminum economic ground,

The media wraps everything

In a cellophane of sound,

And the ghost surface of the virtual

Overlays the breathing earth.

The industry of distraction

Makes us forget

That we live in a universe.

We have become converts

To the religion of stress

And its deity of progress;

That we may have courage

To turn aside from it all

And to kneel down before the poor,

To discover what we must do,

How to turn anxiety

Back into anger,

How to find our way home.

(From To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings)

My favorite lines from this poem are --

• "The industry of distraction makes us forget that we live in a universe ..."

and

• "We have become converts to the religion of stress and its deity progress ..."

I am going to chew on this poem for a bit; let it settle into the marrow of my bones.

I want to let it continue to ask me a question fit for these anxious, angry days:

What might it take for us to turn our collective anxiety back into the kind of motivating anger that can help all of us find our way home?