Dear Angels

Dec. 17, 2023

Dear Angels, 

It was my elementary school’s tradition that the very last moment of school before we kids would be launched into the winter holidays was a Christmas carol sing-a-long. While the long yellow buses would start rolling up to the school and prepare to collect us and take us home, we’d be in the gym, sitting down with our classmates, cross-legged on the shiny wooden floor. 

All these years later, I can still smell the floor wax polish. 

A projector was front and center, and its fan wheezed like a veteran smoker. Behind it was the school principal, Mr. Jantzen, his face illuminated by white light. He sported a pocket protector jammed full of pens and a 1970s tie which struck me as hideous even back then. Beside him was a stack of transparencies, each one with the words of Christmas carols written out by hand. Singing began as soon as he slapped the first transparency onto the projector.

Oh, we’d sing the heck out of the Christmas carol, and then the next, and the next, and it was just the best time. Ever since, I sing a Christmas carol like 

It came upon the midnight clear, that glorious song of old,
from angels bending near the earth, to touch their harps of gold:
“Peace on the earth, to all good will, from heaven the news we bring.”
The world in solemn stillness lay to hear the angels sing.

Down through the years, I can still hear the voices of three hundred elementary school students belting the song out loud and proud, adolescence and its social awkwardness and shame still years away. Once the carol was finished, Mr. Jantzen would swipe the transparency away and slap on a new one, and it would be another song to sing, and then another: 

The first Nowell the angel did say was to certain poor shepherds, in fields as they lay,
in fields where they lay keeping their sheep, on a cold winter’s night that was so deep.

It didn’t take long, by the way, to discern a repeating pattern in many of the Christmas carols we’d sing. So many of them featured you, dear Angels, in your Christmastime form: 

Silent night, holy night,
shepherds quake at the sight,
glories stream from heaven afar,
heavenly hosts sing “Alleluia,”
sleep in heavenly peace,
sleep in heavenly peace.

You, Angels, in your Christmastime form, were everywhere when I was growing up. You were in the carols we sung, you were on plenty of Christmas wrapping paper and Christmas cards, you topped plenty of Christmas trees, and you were also portrayed in church Christmas pageants with kids wearing bedraggled wings and tinsel halos and white robes that were stained by all their off-stage wriggling and wrestling. But when the time came for them to appear on stage, the kids playing you sobered up pretty quickly. Solemnly, they’d play your part, which was to appear in the Bethlehem skies above the shepherds minding their flocks, just as the Gospel of Luke says. This Gospel portrays you as fulfilling your essential messenger role and scaring the heck out of the shepherds because “the glory of the Lord shone around you.” But you said unto them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.” 

But Christmastime would always give way to New Year’s, and the circle of the year would begin again. Meaning that you, dear Angels, weren’t stuck in your Christmastime form, but appeared in others guises also. One of my favorite TV shows around this time was Charlie’s Angels, a crime drama series featuring three detectives played by actors Farrah Fawcett, Kate Jackson, and Jaclyn Smith. 

No wings and halos and long white robes here, of course, but we’re still talking Angels of at least some kind: beautiful Angels, intelligent Angels, Angels who were fearsome to the criminals who, in the end, always got caught. 

I sense a common denominator here. Angel as powerful. Angel as agent for good. As much as in the all-year-round TV show as in Christmastime. 

Then there was one of my favorite 1970s bands: ABBA. I’m thinking in particular about their hit song called “I Have a Dream,” which came out right around the same time that my young life was turned completely upside down by my family’s move from Peace River, Alberta, to Palestine, Texas: 

I believe in angels

Something good in everything I see

I believe in angels

When I know the time is right for me

I’ll cross the stream, I Have a Dream

That was the song. And here again, there’s a basic Angel concept being passed on. Angel as hopeful. Angel as a way of keeping positive and an ability to see the good in anything. God knows I needed an Angel in my life like this at the time, because the move broke my heart. 

But, dear Angels, as I write this letter to you, I find that I’m getting ahead of myself. All these memories come from my much younger self, and in truth, that younger self compartmentalized all the different kinds of Angels he encountered. You Angels in Christmastime form, and Charlie’s Angels, and the Angels in the ABBA song, and other Angels besides these, all lived in different parts of my brain, and they never mixed and mingled. I never sought to go deeper and ask what the common denominator among them might be. Plus, I hadn’t lived long enough to encounter multiple other expressions of the Angel concept (in world religions beyond Christianity as well as in literature and art) which also need to be known and brought into the equation. It just wasn’t a time when I wondered what Angels really are, or why Angels are so popular, or why they keep coming up in secular TV and movies and music and books and on and on–paradoxically so, since our age is an age of science which frowns upon such things as Angels. 

It just wasn’t the time. 

But now is the time. That’s what this letter is really about, dear Angels. Thinking out loud about some of these deeper things with you, and also with my dear West Shore Unitarian Universalist congregation. 

It may amuse you, dear Angels, to learn that in this year of 2023, Americans were polled about their spiritual beliefs. It turns out that nearly 7 in 10 adults believe in you. 69%, to be more precise. Contrast that with belief in astrology (34%) and reincarnation (34%). And, of the folks who believe in you, fully 33% claim no religious affiliation. Of this 33%, quite a few identify as atheist and agnostic. That’s right! Some folks might have nothing to do with “organized religion,” or they might balk at believing in God, but that doesn’t stop them from believing in Angels! All this, by the way, in an age (which I have already said) is increasingly secular. But secularity does not quench the yearning felt in all hearts to feel connected to something larger than oneself, something deeply meaningful, even (dare I say) transcendent.

This is not some fluke. People have always believed. One of the most ancient ideas about you Angels is reflected in a story from the Hebrew Bible, in the book of Genesis, which scholars say was written down around 2500 years ago. However, what was written down had been passed down orally, and so it’s likely that the story I’m about to share is hundreds of years older than that. It’s the story in which Jacob dreams of a ladder reaching up from earth to heaven, and Angels ascend and descend in continuous motion. There is more to the story, but what we have here is enough to suggest the ancient idea about Angels, which is this: that God creates the world by extending his glory outward beyond himself, from heaven to earth, in the form of emanations. Angels are the beings who convey these emanations; they are the messengers who embody and enact God’s creative design. So, if there is a gap between heaven and earth, it’s the Angels who fill in the gap. They descend to the earth and all its beings in a creative act, and they return to God via ascent. They go up and down the ladder. 

Valery Rees, in her scholarly book entitled From Gabriel to Lucifer, puts it like this: “according to the most ancient sources the Angels are innumerable, so that even each blade of grass on earth has an Angel dedicated to making it grow.”

Again, this is about Angels being messengers of God’s creative joy. You, dear Angels, are transpersonal agents for good. Into the ears of everything, you whisper: GROW. BE. 

It’s exactly this that makes you vulnerable, in the sense of your image being manipulated to serve lesser interests. People have inserted you into stories, people have put words in your mouths, but in truth, you were not there, and you did not say what they said you said….

A classic and most unfortunate case of this relates to the beloved Christmastime story that is told and retold endlessly through Christmas pageants and holiday carols and so on. I’m referring to that story told in the Gospel of Luke, Chapters 1 and 2, where the Angel Gabriel comes to Mary to tell her that she is pregnant with child and that the father is God himself. The rest of the story involves that famous series of events we all know about: the journey to Bethlehem; no room at the inn; the child born and placed in a manger; an Angel appearing before shepherds and announcing the birth of the Savior, the Messiah, the Lord; the shepherds coming to the holy family and adoring them. Those scenes. But what I’ve come to learn is that this is all religious propaganda. You Angels are brought in so as to create the appearance of legitimacy. 

The whole, unvarnished truth is that the book of Luke originally started with Chapter 3, and that original version said nothing about a virgin birth. In fact, the original version made it sound like Jesus was merely a human being whom God chose to adopt. To modern ears, this may sound completely underwhelming. But it was the tradition of ancient times that adopted sons had a higher status than natural sons. So for example, if the Roman Emperor adopted a son, that adopted son, and not any natural sons, would become the next Roman Emperor. Being adopted, in short, is the farthest thing away from being underwhelming! It was actually the best thing possible! However, 30-40 years after the original Luke was written, this doctrine of “adoptionism” was increasingly unacceptable to many Christians who wanted Jesus to be nothing less than God and not just a human adopted as God’s son. Part of the propaganda effort to cement this more preferred understanding was to take the original Gospel of Luke and add in what we now call Chapters 1 and 2. Chapters 1 and 2 put a very different spin on things. Now, Jesus does not have a human father–his father is God himself! He is born of the Virgin Mary! 

But it’s religious propaganda. It was added in, 30 to 50 years after the original text. And, there are multiple clues within the text itself to prove that this is in fact true. Maybe they escape the attention of regular readers. They sure escaped my attention, for years. But, once the scholars start pointing them out, you can never unsee them again. Just one is this: In Chapter 3, a long genealogy is given that proves Jesus’ human father’s lineage was a solid Jewish one, a legitimate one. But then, immediately preceding this in the added-on Chapters 1 and 2, the story is told of how Jesus’s father is God himself. But why have the long detailed human genealogy in Chapter 3 when Chapter 1 and 2 basically make the human genealogy irrelevant?  

Huh? 

Dear Angels, there’s lots more about this to be said. All I will say is that I went down deep into a scholarship rabbit hole and came away disillusioned and disappointed. I will still sing the Christmas carols and I will still enjoy the Christmas pageants, but now I know the truth. Words were put into your Angel mouths, for propaganda’s sake. You were inserted into stories that probably never happened. People did that to you, because they knew that when Angels appear, there is God. There is power. There is glory. And people pay attention. 

Knowing this, the question really becomes–are there stories about you that are more trustworthy? Stories of real encounters with you the Angels which are honest, and no one is trying to win propaganda battles or make money? 

It turns out that there are plenty of books and online sites where people share stories of encounters with you the Angels. Here’s one person’s story: 

“When I was in my 20s, I spent four years traveling the world. I was in South Africa, just outside Durban, and a friend had taken me on his motorbike to his favorite waterfall. We had both been swimming but I got cold and went to sit on a patch of green grass. To get there, I had to step from the sand I was on over a log then across a bit to the grass. I was walking medium speed, and lifted one foot to step over the log, when a VERY loud booming masculine voice shouted, “STOP!” Except the shout wasn’t heard with my ears, it was inside my head. Hard to explain. Also, there was nobody else around except Tim and I, and he was still happily swimming.

I stopped, wondering what had just happened. I still had my foot in the air above the log. I looked around, and spotted what I thought was a leaf waving about six inches from my big toe. It took me a few seconds to realize that it wasn’t a leaf, but a snake. A black mamba. He had his head raised and was licking the air right near my toe. He was waiting to see what my next move was to be, and he had seen me long before I saw him. I slowly backed up and walked very carefully backwards to where Tim was. I have no explanation for the voice that I heard, except that it was so loud and was inside my head rather than heard with my ears, and it came at a time when I didn’t feel in any danger at all – in fact I was very calm and happy. I feel that it was my guardian angel who shouted at me to stop, as I would have stepped right on the snake. My guardian angel saved my life.” (from a Reddit poster named “lightenergy”) 

That’s the story. Let me say immediately that I trust this far more than many Bible stories about you. I also want to say that I wish I had one of my own to tell. I don’t. I’ve had plenty of my own “black mamba” moments (I speak figuratively, not literally), but I don’t recall my guardian Angel shouting at me to STOP. I wish you’d shouted STOP when my Dad wanted to move us to Texas. But you didn’t. Why do some folks experience the protection of Angels, and others don’t? Maybe, dear Angels, this is just another way of asking that ancient question of why a good God allows evil to exist. 

It is a Mystery, perhaps the biggest one of all. 

But now I am flashing back to that image of numberless Angels–an Angel for each blade of grass, each fish, each tree, each mushroom, each bird, each human, each of absolutely everything–whispering GROW. Whispering BE. 

Maybe I don’t have a story of you, dear Angels, shouting STOP. But there are times when words pop into mind which are encouraging, and generous, and I don’t know where those words come from. It’s not like I chose to say them. They just appear. 

Do they come from you? 

And then there are moments like the one portrayed in that Christmas classic, It’s a Wonderful Life. George Bailey is suicidal; but it’s the way he imagines his world that’s wrong. So along comes Clarence Oddbody, Angel Second-Class. I’ll bet this portrayal of an Angel as a slightly bumbling helper offends you. After all, you are messengers and emissaries of God. There is nothing bumbling about you. There is a reason why, when you appear to folks, the first words out of your Angel mouths is “Fear not.” Because the Glory of the Lord is overwhelming. Religion scholar Rudolph Otto once described how the truly transcendent appears as a mysterium tremendum et fascinans—that is, a mystery before which humanity both trembles and is fascinated, is both repelled and attracted. This is indeed frightful. The glory of the Lord is nothing to scoff at or take lightly. Yet there is a deeper truth, an Angel truth, at work here. If we could just see our lives through Angel eyes. If we could just see other people through Angel eyes. If only. Then everything would change. George Bailey is reborn in the movie, and we would be too. 

Dear Angels, this Christmastime, as I’ve said, I’ll sing the old Christmas carols and enjoy the Christmas pageants even though I know that they are false representations of you. But help me to be open to what’s real about you. Help me to receive your whispers in my ears to GROW and to BE. Transform my eyes so that I might see good in everything–in my own life, in the lives of others, even in this turbulent time of American politics and climate change and war. 

I believe in angels

Something good in everything I see

I believe in angels

When I know the time is right for me

I’ll cross the stream, I Have a Dream

Dear Angels–be with us all. 

May it be so.

Sincerely, 

Anthony