Tag: Angels

Posted on

Angels by Ricky

I don’t believe in angels, at least not androgynous beings with wings that one sees in classical religious paintings. I do believe in messengers from God and, in these contemporary times, those messengers we call “angels”. I have never knowingly seen one nor have I had anyone give me a message from God. The one time a voice in my head warned me that two boys riding on one bicycle would fall down into the path of my car, the warning did not pass through my ears first but went directly into my brain and did not resemble or feel like my thoughts.

I attribute that warning to either the Holy Ghost or to one of the boys’ Guardian Angel because, if it had been my brain’s analysis of the situation, I expect the warning: 1. would not have been repeated with more emphasis and, 2. with an explanation that was a statement of fact—not speculation. On the other hand, I don’t know if guardian angels exist as some believe, but the above incident leaves my mind open to the idea.

When one has received the Gift of the Holy Ghost the Holy Ghost will be one’s constant companion as long as one remains sufficiently righteous. Since the “voice” in my head was not mine, I can believe it was the Holy Ghost. I don’t even want to consider, “if not the Holy Ghost, who else is in here with me?” I’m pretty sure guardian angels would be external to my body. So perhaps it is some Heavenly spirit hiding out as it were–sort of like being in the closet. More likely than that, it could be my split personality—my 12-year old self lurking in the background and not yet fully integrated into one whole adult. I prefer the Holy Ghost version.

There are three kinds of angels. Not to be flippant, but two categories are good ones and bad ones. Good ones serve God and the bad ones serve not God but whatever name one calls the supernatural being who is opposed to most of what God wants. There are two subcategories within the good and bad categories. Now pay attention even though there is no test later.

The first subcategory is angels who are “Resurrected Beings” which are people already resurrected and now serving as messengers (angels) of God. Most Christian denominations believe that only Christ has been resurrected and that everyone else must wait until “the morning of the first resurrection” sometime in the future. [See KJV Mathew 27: 52-53 for the truth of “resurrected beings”.]

The second subcategory is angels who have “Spirit Bodies” which are those who have not yet been resurrected, or yet been born to receive their bodies, or are among the spirits cast out of Heaven during their rebellion against God and thus cannot have been resurrected yet. [KJV Revelations 12:7-9] Of these, the first two listed serve God and the spirits “cast out” serve the not God that you can name yourself.

If you are ever visited by an angel, how can you tell which type, good or bad, you are talking too? Apparently, angels have laws or rules they must obey. Just ask them to shake hands. If the angel is a resurrected being he will shake hands with you. If the angel is still in his spirit body, one serving God will refuse to shake hands while one serving “the one you must name” will shake hands but you will not feel his hand in yours. What could be simpler, assuming that being in the presence of an angel will not have reduced you to a quivering mass of protoplasm barely able to function let alone remaining rational?

The third of the three main categories of “angels” is where we humans have assigned angelic attributes or qualities to mortal men, women, and children. Hence, the popular phrase, “You are such an angel.” Many such mortals probably deserve the comparison at least until their “feet of clay” are uncovered and exposed to the world, if they are famous enough. Mother Theresa’s case comes to mind. Personally, I can overlook her shortcomings and remember her as serving God among the poor.

As I said at the beginning of this piece, I have no experience with actual angels that I consciously know of but, from what little of him that I do know, I view our group member, Pat Gourley, as an angel due to his work among the sick and dying. Florence Nightingale, Mary Martha Reid, Catharine Merrill, Anna Etheridge, Cornelia Hancock, Louisa May Alcott, Clara Barton, and Walt Whitman were also famous nurses working among the sick and dying. Pat has followed in the path of nursing “greats”. Surely, he deserves the mortal title of “angel” despite any flaws he may have. I am sure God will judge him kindly because, as Jesus said, “Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” [KJV Mathew 25:40 – see verses 35-40 for the complete concept]

I believe many people engage in angelic-like behaviors at one time or another. As we go through life, let us all remember the words of King Mosiah from the Book of Mormon, “And behold, I tell you these things that ye may learn wisdom; that ye may learn that when ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God.” [Mosiah 2:17]

© 13 December 2014

About the Author

I was born in June of 1948 in Los Angeles, living first in Lawndale and then in Redondo Beach. Just prior to turning 8 years old in 1956, I began living with my grandparents on their farm in Isanti County, Minnesota for two years during which time my parents divorced.

When united with my mother and stepfather two years later in 1958, I lived first at Emerald Bay and then at South Lake Tahoe, California, graduating from South Tahoe High School in 1966. After three tours of duty with the Air Force, I moved to Denver, Colorado where I lived with my wife and four children until her passing away from complications of breast cancer four days after the 9-11 terrorist attack.

I came out as a gay man in the summer of 2010. I find writing these memories to be therapeutic.

My story blog is TheTahoeBoy.Blogspot.com

Posted on

Angels and Archangels by Phillip E. Hoyle

Save me from angels! They’re too fiercesome. Why even in the ancient Hebrew book Tobit, young Tobias’s guardian angel Raphael carried a sword. That angel was no sentimental Europeanized childhood protector but rather the leader of the angelic host, the army that surrounded the throne of the great Lord, God of Israel. Raphael served the one that no one could look upon and live. And then someone said of me that I was an angel—this after I’d lost my lover Michael to an AIDS related cancer. Of course, somewhat like Raphael did with Tobias I walked with Michael on his way to test after test at Denver Health, accompanied him during his chemotherapy sessions, picked him up from the floor when he fell, helped him to the restroom, cleaned up after him, loved him mightily during his rapid decline in health. I also sat with him while he died. Many things actually. That seemed simple love proffered to a beloved, not something magical or mystical; simple love mixed with profound responsibility.

When Michael’s friend told someone I was an angel, I’m sure the man meant something very sentimental. But mythological? I don’t know. At the time I was in no mood to be either kind of angel. I was angry at my loss and all too aware that my late arrival in Michael’s life journey saved his closest friends many, many hours of care giving. I was not going to be consoled by anyone’s guilty feelings or sincere intentions. And besides, I knew my journey into this love and my imperfect execution of love’s demands. I knew myself all too well. Spare me the blather.

Now we’re talking mythology here, but it always seems to get mixed up with sentimentality. I abhor that! Still I don’t know how to get beyond it to something more constructive. It’s always easier to criticize than to create something new.

A couple of years later I again got called an angel this time after the HIV-related death of my Rafael. His Mexican mom told his Puerto Rican social worker that I had been his angel in his last months. I’m sure he had dramatized for her just what we had going—probably with too many details for her comfort. He insisted that she understand our love. The case manager told me what she expressed. Somehow since the ascription occurred cross-culturally and from a devout Roman Catholic person, I could more easily accept it being assigned to me. For her to say so was a breakthrough of acceptance, one I knew her dying son demanded of her. She was strong in her love and although she didn’t say it directly to me, she did convey it through a third-party, a way of communicating much more Mexican than American. I realized I did serve somehow as a messenger of the divine love, acceptance, and care to a young man who had meant no harm, who had experienced too little love, and who had broken too many Mexican taboos in his too short life. My love for him, whom I found somehow beautiful enough to assign godly terms, made me happy to provide the divine service however it was perceived and interpreted by others.

Our affair was in so many ways perfectly divine—even in the ancient Judeo-Christian sense with the fearful God who sent fearful angelic troops to announce to freaked out shepherds that they were to receive a great joy, one for all humankind! Whatever my role, whether angel or shepherd, I was finally pleased—oh so pleased—to be in the middle of such a divine drama.

Some months after Rafael’s death I told the man who had irked me with his angelic name calling that I would not care to meet another man named for an archangel—no more Michaels or Raphaels for me. He smiled and with an arched eyebrow and sly grin asked, “Well, what if his name was, say, Lucifer? Could that get your attention?”

“Probably,” I admitted.

© 15 December 2014

About the Author

Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. In general he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists. Following thirty-two years in church work and fifteen in a therapeutic massage practice, he now focuses on creating beauty. He volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE program “Telling Your Story.”

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot

Posted on

Angels by Pat Gourley

Angels, specifically my own Guardian Angel, were certainly
part of the mythology foisted on my innocent little head in the early years of
Catholic Grade School. The mythology being laid on us actually reached at times
the absurd when we were asked by our nuns in the very early grades to please
scoot over in our desk seats so we could make room for our guardian angels to
sit down. I don’t remember this injunction much beyond the second grade. Perhaps
that was because of a realization on the part of our teachers that with the
existence of Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy going out the window for many of
us it might have been a bit much to keep pushing the idea of guardian angels needing
a break and plopping down next to you.
Catholic teaching, perhaps not the most sophisticated strain
of it even back in the mid-1950’s, taught that all souls get an Angel assigned
to protect and be your guardian if you will. Since I was well on my way to
being a little apostate at the age of eight I always thought the nuns were just
trying to get us to not keep our books next to us on our seats, which we would
frequently push off the seat and crash to the floor.  And of course in today’s age of significant
childhood obesity there would be many kids who couldn’t make room for any Angel’s
butt with their own barely fitting in the seat.
If anyone seriously presented me with the possibility of my
having a guardian angel today I might ask about the 1200 kids under 5 years of
age who die of malaria daily and where the fuck are their Guardian Angels. It
would seem like those angels are being quite the slackers and probably should
be fired. And there are other countless examples of various forms of hideous human
suffering that bring the whole concept of guardian angels into serious
question.
Belief in angels for me personally of course brings into
question all sorts of other queries about the spiritual and ending of course
with the real big one ‘what the hell does happen once we die’. If I play my
cards right will I be escorted into heaven by my own angel or much more likely,
if you buy this horse-pucky at all, will I be given a GPS map straight to hell
with my own guardian angel sadly saying ‘well I tried to save your sorry ass’
and waving good-bye, forever.
Most days I wake up pretty much a dyed in the wool atheist
and thankful for the daily Facebook posts by Richard Dawkins. I do though admit
to recently being drawn back to the writings and recordings of the great
philosopher Ken Wilber, who lives here in Denver by the way.
Wilber is no fan of the new atheists, Harris, Dawkins
Hitchens etc. but he does have a bit more sophisticated take on the possibility
of an afterlife than angelic escorts to the great beyond. I most recently have
listened and am re-listening to a series of over seven hours of CD interviews
with Wilber on the Future of Spirituality
conducted by Tami Simon in 2013, the wonderful lesbian woman who owns Sounds
True in Boulder.
When talking about the possibility of God existing it has
been difficult for me, and I think for Tami also, to pin Ken down on this. He
certainly implies a ‘spiritual’ force moving the evolutionary reality of our
Universe along its way. One of my favorite Ken takes on this is that it seems
highly unlikely that it has been simple chance that has led “from dirt to
Shakespeare”. Though I am still not completely buying this I am back listening
to him and we’ll see where it ends up.
For now I am left with the stark belief and extremely
non-momentous reality of my own impending demise and that that most likely will
be the end of me with no angel involvement happening. At our current state of
evolution it its so very difficult for us to imagine anything else going on
after we are gone. This is such a freaky thing for us to ponder that we have
conjured up Angels and a whole host of other deities and after-life myths since
we left the trees of the African Savannah.
The raw reality of it all is summed up nicely in these few
lines from of course a Grateful Dead song called Black Peter. It is a tune
about a guy dying of something nasty and coming to the following realization
about his own demise:
See here how everything
Lead up to this day
And it’s just like any other day
That’s ever been
Sun going up and then
The sun going down
Shine through my window.
Lyrics by Robert Hunter
I don’t mean to be a big buzz-kill here so if Angels blow
your skirt up by all means just scoot over and invite them to have a seat.
©
December 2014 
About the Author 
I was born in La Porte Indiana in 1949, raised on a farm and schooled
by Holy Cross nuns. The bulk of my adult life, some 40 plus years, was spent in
Denver, Colorado as a nurse, gardener and gay/AIDS activist. I have currently returned to Denver after an
extended sabbatical in San Francisco, California. 
Posted on

Angels by Gillian

Angels apparently abound.

Angel Falls and Angel Island. The Blue Angels, fallen angels, guardian angels, angel cake, angel hair, angel wings, angel dust, angel eyes and angel sharks; the Los Angeles Angels, Angels in the Outfield and Angel on my Shoulder. Hark the Herald Angels Sing. Angels We Have Heard on High. Not to mention innumerable men in Spanish-speaking countries named Angel.

In spite of the word’s popularity, I had a friend who couldn’t even recognize it, though I wouldn’t class it as a very difficult word, and his native language was English. (If you can say that about someone from Minnesota.) He was a devout Lutheran, and seemed to have no difficulty with the word in prayers, or the Bible, or Xmas carols, but he was incapable, apparently, of recognizing it out of context. The famous U.S. navy flight squadron became the Blue Angles, and remained so even after he had been to see one of their displays. There was angle food cake, angle hair pasta, and angle dust. But then, this came from the person who unfailingly called the old Alpenglow motel in Winter Park, now a Best Western by the way, the Al-pen-gull-o. I amused myself one day trying to get him to say angle iron, wondering if it would have become angel iron, but failed to elicit the word at all.

I don’t have a problem recognizing the word, but I’m not too sure I would recognize the real thing. Although, in hind-sight, at least, I’m getting much better. There are many of them (or us) about. I firmly believe that most, possibly all, of us, have a bit of angel somewhere within. The amount varies from person to person, time to time, place to place, and in the eye the beholder. For many fortunate children, like me, parents are at least partly angels. They are our guardian angels, keeping us safe and helping to guide our early ventures in this new world. For many fortunate parents, as they age and the roles begin to reverse, the children become the guardian angels of the parents. For many fortunate adults, again like me, a spouse or life partner provides some glimpses of angel. Often we get a briefer glance at an angel; that friend who uncomplainingly moves in for a month to take care of us after surgery, or that neighbor who never talks to us but who unfailingly keeps our sidewalk shoveled free of snow simply because he sees that for us it is no longer a pain-free activity.

Sometimes it’s a complete stranger. Several years ago I observed an old woman leaving a homeless shelter. A fresh flower lay on the sidewalk, looking as if it had just fallen from someone’s button hole. She tried to pick it up, but it seemed too hard to bend so much, so I swooped in and picked it up. She looked ready to cry, then pure joy glowed in her face when I handed it to her.

“Oh bless you,” she muttered, “I did want that.”

Her shaking fingers held it up in the sunlight.

“All that beauty!” she said.

“And all for nothing”

She will never know it, but she was my angel for that moment, and returns to me as such quite often. I see a beautiful sunset or colorful bird and I hear her voice again,

“All that beauty! And all for nothing.”

Perhaps I too was a momentary angel that day, for her. Perhaps the fact that someone not only did not cross the street to avoid her, but actually acknowledged her existence and for two seconds offered a hand in kindness, meant as much to her as the encounter did for me. I shall never know, and that will never matter.

I used to be a champion Dumpster Diver. You’d be amazed at what perfectly good items end up tossed in the trash. I don’t do it much now; not because of any newfound dignity but because of newfound aches and pains. One morning I surfaced from a promising dumpster to see an old face just surfacing beside me. A possibly homeless, certainly poor, old woman with a sad face which looked about to cry.

“No doughnuts nor nothing.” She leaned back down over the rim, rummaging as far down as she could reach. I gazed hopefully with her, but could see no sign of wrapped food items.

“Monday morning,” she declared knowledgeably, “I can mostly find some breakfast in here.”

She sank dejectedly down on the pavement, again looking close to tears.

“Don’t go away,” I called as I hurried off into the store, “I’ll be right back.”

I bought a dozen assorted doughnuts and rushed back out.

Another old face lit up. She thanked me profusely and set about stuffing the things into her mouth.

She was, and is, among my angels. She reminds me of my extreme good fortune in this world, that I can go dumpster diving for fun whereas she, and all those many like her, do it out of necessity.

I doubt most, if any, of my angels, dream they are so important to me, a person who, to many of them, is a complete stranger; someone they have probably completely forgotten. In the same way, I don’t know if I have ever been, or am, anyone’s angel. Only one person has ever actually told me I was an angel, and that was my oldest step-son. He was, as usual, deep down in a Bourbon bottle at the time, so I should probably not let it make me too proud of my inner angel.

But I do believe I have one. I believe everyone in this room has one. In fact, someone in this room might be an angel to someone else in this room. We can become an angel to someone at any moment anywhere, and we can find our own angels any moment anywhere.

All we have to do is open our hearts and spirits, and receive with joy whatever comes.

© 15 December 2014

About the Author

I was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have now been with my wonderful partner Betsy for 25 years.

Posted on

Angels, Santa Claus, and Fairies by Lewis

In 1897, Francis P.
Church, newspaper editor, wrote the following to an 8-year-old Virginia
O’Hanlon in response to her letter wanting to know if there really was a Santa
Claus.  It seems one or more of her
friends had told her no such “person” existed.  His words have become classic:
Virginia,
your little friends are wrong.  They have
been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age.  They do not believe except what they see.
They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little
minds.  All minds, Virginia, whether they
be [adults] or children’s are little.
Yes,
Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.  He
exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that
they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary
would be the world if there were no Santa Claus!  It would be as dreary as if there were no
Virginias.  There would be no childlike
faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence.  We
should have no enjoyment, except in sense and light.  The eternal light with which childhood fills
the world would be extinguished.
Not
believe in Santa Claus!  You might as
well not believe in fairies!…The most real things in the world are those that
neither children nor [adults] can see. 
Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn?  Of course not, but that’s no proof that they
are not there.
You
tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is
a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest [adult]…that ever
lived could tear apart.  Only faith,
fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view…the beauty
and glory beyond.  Is it all real?  Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is
nothing else so real and abiding.
No
Santa Claus!  Thank God, he lives and he
lives forever.  A thousand years from
now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to
make glad the heart of childhood.
I suspect that much of
Frank Church’s prose went right over young Virginia’s head.  It likely was written with an eye to
newspaper sales more than a child’s enlightenment.  But it apparently touched the hearts of many
parents of the late 19th Century–at least, those belonging to what we now call
“upper middle-class white America”. 
But there were a number
of Americas then, just as there are now. 
There were the wealthy Industrialists such as the Rockefellers and the
Mellons and the Carnegies.  It was the time
of robber barons, Reconstruction, and child labor.  For thousands, if not millions of children,
there were no newspapers in the household and they likely could not read them
if there were.  There also were almost
certainly no presents under the Christmas tree (if there were such a thing) in
their living rooms.  For them, Frank
Church’s promise was as illusory as the fairy on the front lawn or a front lawn
itself.
Essentially, I believe
that Santa Claus, angels, and fairies (the ethereal kind) are conjured up out
of a very human need for deliverance and salvation.  Santa Claus “delivers” in a
simplistic, materialistic way on Christmas Eve. 
He reminds us that we are worthy of love because we receive the material
things we hope for, things that will “gladden our heart”.
According to Wikipedia,
angels in the Abrahamic tradition “are often depicted as benevolent
celestial beings who act as intermediaries between heaven and earth or as
guardian spirits or a guiding influence”. 
I will take the liberty of casting them in the role of bringing “heavenly
gifts” to God’s children–a Santa Claus for the post-adolescent set. 
But what do they have
in their bag of treats?  Not material
things, of that I’m certain.  Perhaps a
soupcon of salvation, a lotion of love, a fountain of forgiveness?  Fyodor Dostoyevsky has said, “For a
[person], all resurrection, all salvation, from whatever perdition, lies in
love; in fact, it is [our] only way to it”.
Every gift under every
tree this Christmas is there as a representation of the love of one human being
for another.  They are the product of the
human hands which make them and others that wrap them and place them there,
given from one human being to another out of love.   Neither Santa Claus nor angels has a role to
play.  Each of us has the capacity both
to give and receive the fruits of love. 
This is a very liberating concept–one which does not depend upon
fantasy or hope alone. 
The only salvation that
matters is the one in this life and for that I have all the gifts that I need.  I have only to listen to Pavarotti sing
Puccini’s Nessun Dorma or Judy
Collins Someday Soon or Paul
McCartney It’s a Long and Winding Road
to hear the voice of Gabriel.  I have
only to feel a friends’ arm around me to brush against the Divine.  Standing at the foot of the Giant Redwoods
and glancing up at the sky, I know all of Nature is a Cathedral.  Gazing up at Michelangelo’s David, I see in my own humanity evolution’s
greatest gift.  What temptation could
Angel or Santa Claus possibly offer me now?
© 15 December 2014 
About
the Author 
I came to the beautiful
state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I
married and I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas
by way of Michigan, the state where I married and had two children while working
as an engineer for the Ford Motor Company. I was married to a wonderful woman
for 26 happy years and suddenly realized that life was passing me by. I figured
that I should make a change, as our offspring were basically on their own and I
wasn’t getting any younger. Luckily, a very attractive and personable man just
happened to be crossing my path at that time, so the change-over was both
fortuitous and smooth.
Soon after, I retired and we
moved to Denver, my husband’s home town. He passed away after 13 blissful years
together in October of 2012. I am left to find a new path to fulfillment. One
possibility is through writing. Thank goodness, the SAGE Creative Writing Group
was there to light the way.