365 Days of Change: Angels Among Us?
DAY 8 - THE ETHEREAL (August 28, 2012)
It was my regular spiritual escape to the Mount St. Francis Retreat Centre grounds, something I used to do on a weekly basis before finding comparable solace with a lot more exercise and challenge in the mountains. It's a Christian establishment, with monastic silence as a program option, but it has always felt rather Catholic to me. I'm not officially Catholic, but I grew up spending entire days praying in spectacularly ornate churches with my Italian and Maltese friends without my tepidly Protestant parents aware of it. Such grand churches render me penitent and draw me inexplicably to tears. I have crucifixes peppered throughout my Nepalese/Tibetan articles and secured above doorways because they make me feel safer. Age thirteen was not the best age to be watching "The Exorcist" on television alone with the parents out at night. It left permanent scars. How ironic I should discover so much later in life that my biological father was a Catholic Spaniard from the Catalan region of Sant Cugat! La vida es maravillosamente extrano!
The autumn forest leaves were stunning in burnished yellow, mature orange and lime-fresh green, waving their hellos on the breeze as I made my way to a weather-worn bench just below a grassy plateau. Today, unlike every other day, I was not alone. The Man from Glad mixed with what resembled a middle-aged, stoutly built American golfer dressed entirely in white right down to his shoes and laces sat casually on one side of the bench. I jolted. "Beautiful day," he smiled, but his dark brown, intense eyes in sharp contrast to everything else about him terrified me. I thought of Satan. How cliche. And so very Catholic. "You're welcome to have a seat," he added. Thinking that a graceful exit might not be the politest thing to do, I slowly placed half of my seat on the other end and gazed at him from the side with lowered eyes - like I usually do with scary dogs I think might attack.
I'll never know exactly who that eerie person was, because the conversation was aptly controlled by him from start to finish. He dug deep into the miserable things playing out in my life at the time. I shared more transparency in a twenty minute discussion with him than I told a psychologist over six months! "You'll find your voice," he said gently, "but you have to stop imprisoning it in your throat." We never shook hands, or hugged, and then he completely disappeared after the crest of the trail, less than twenty feet ahead of me. I searched the entire grounds. It's impossible to get lost on that trail. But perhaps it's possible to be found there, if you adhere to the concept of divinity.
Do you believe that your life is watched over or guided by the ethereal? Do you believe in angels, guides, assigned to drop in from time-to-time when worlds combine? I believe in angels among us. If I go back (now I probably will), the camera is going with me.
"Reputation is what men and women think of us; character is what God and angels know of us." - Thomas Paine
I truly believe in Angels. How many people have had their lives saved for a third of a second? Things that we can't rationalize, I think they are supernatural. I was raised Protestant in a large Catholic country, Brazil. The Catholic Churches never attacked me much when I was younger. After I matured spiritually, I realized how peaceful it is to go to a Catholic church and watch those images, and angels. I had the opportunity to visit some Orthodox Churches in Eastern Europe and the way they sanctify those Apostles and even Jesus, make you feel like you are surrounded by angel.
ReplyDeleteoops, I meant Attracted, not attacked.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your thoughts, Priscila, and your accidental word put a bit of a humorous spin on things. Thanks for clarifying :-)
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