For my weekly writing spot on this site, see the One-Minute Mystic, with a new meditation posted every Monday. Also see The Village, the story of Misty Longings, England's most beautiful village, posted episode by episode earlier this year.       Venomous words     When everything kicks off and tempers flare, just how near are we to the end of the world? Two sporting stars recently received generous media attention for saying rude things in the heat of battle. First there was James Haskell the English rugby player who responded forcefully to his eye being gouged out by an Argentine forward. Unfortunately for him – though not for the youtube community - his words were picked up by the referee's mic, leading to spluttering apologies from the broadcasters. To record his language here would involve too many asterisks to make it worthwhile, but we can at least note his contrite twitter afterwards: 'Just want to say sorry for the bad language. I clearly shouldn't have sworn, bit of pressure out there. Onwards and upwards.' The following day it was tennis player Serena Williams in the dock during the final of the US Open. Penalised for hindering her opponent with a premature shout, Ms Williams laid into the Eva Asderaki, the match umpire: 'Aren't you the one who screwed me over last time here? Yeah, you are… I truly despise you… you're a hater and you're just unattractive inside… wow, what a loser.' No need for asterisks but enough venom to make a cobra proud. Unlike Haskell, however, she felt no need to apologise. 'I don't even remember what I said,' she remarked afterwards. 'I think everyone when they play kind of 'zones out'. Our fascination with sporting anger presumably arises from the repression of our own. We are both intrigued to see strong feelings let rip and smoothly self-righteous that we are rather more in control of our feelings. In our world, having enemies is not unusual but we tend not to call them by that name. As someone once said to me, 'No, I don't have enemies - people I struggle with perhaps, but not enemies.' We find it hard to be honest about our hostility. Sometimes people recount a nasty incident to me and I say: 'That must have made you very angry.' But they can rarely admit to anger. 'Oh I wasn't angry,' they reply demurely, 'just disappointed.' Or, 'No, not angry – just sad; sad that they behave like that.' Sad! Disappointed! Anything but their true emotion of incandescent rage. So thank God for the spiritual writer Henri Nouwen who wrote candidly about his venomous feelings as he lay in a hospital bed: 'In my mind's eye, I saw the men and women who aroused within me feelings of anger, jealousy and even hatred. They had a strange power over me. They might never think of me but every time I thought of them, I lost some of my inner peace and joy.' On the whole, I prefer rage expressed to fury in fancy dress; anger revealed rather than congealed. Words out are the beginning of a conversation; words kept in tend towards depression. There's nothing wrong with a few asterisks now and then. More writings © Simon Parke