It’s Christmas Day.
Every year, at this time, The Dallas Morning News reruns a column written by the late Paul Crume entitled “Angels among us”. It is heartwarming, bittersweet, hopeful…touches a cord within the reader at his or her emotional level that instant.
Every year, I reread this column and I am touched in my most vulnerable place at that time in my life. This day is no exception.
There is a quote in the article from Francis Thompson, a late-19th-century English poet who lived a life we might describe as one of quiet desperation on his way toward posthumous immortality. I don’t remember this quote from all the other times I have read the article. But that is part of the beauty of life…there is always something fresh to be gleaned from even the act of going back over something you have experienced before. The reason? You see it from the perspective of your growth since the last time. That is why myth is so powerful, why we can read and read again novels that made an impact the first time, why the archetypes are so important, why you can study “the mysteries” your entire lifetime and always have new insights and receive new information that is transformative. You also see it from the need you have at this point in time. It is often that need that transforms the lesson for us the second or third time around. The Universe is always sending us what we are seeking, whether we know it or accept the truth of that or not!
The quote: “The angels keep their ancient places. Turn but a stone, and start a wing.”
How I love that! The imagery…turn but a stone, and start a wing.
This started a wondering. I can make a list of the people in my life who have been angels to me, who still are angels in my life. What about those angels I never recognized as such?
I have to stop right here to interject something that just happened as I
am writing this. A text comes on my phone from someone I have only
met, in a store, twice in my life…a beautiful soul inside and out. She wishes
me a Merry Christmas and the thought of her energy makes me so
happy, so grateful for having the experience of her that I know I have
been touched by an angel…just now!
Where was I?! Oh, yes!
What about the angels in my life that were just fleeting glimpses, not unlike the shadow of a bird’s wings as it flies overhead? What about the angel that lives inside me, whose voice speaks to me, at times in whispers, other times more insistently? What about the divine plan that is a promise to each of us, even if we don’t heed its call? Is that not a form of angel? What about the hope that I have been or may yet be an angel to someone who needs one?
The article closes with these lines: “There is an angel close to you this day. Merry Christmas, and I wish you well.”
May you feel the beat of the wings.
