Angels, etc.

I was just listening to a program about the late Rachel Held Evans who became well known as someone who came from a very conservative Evangelical home, but who began to question the literalism of the Bible and wrote about this in a blog and several books before she died very suddenly in her 30s. While she became very popular nationally, the strict Evangelicals around her were very critical. Much of that criticism fell upon her father who taught, among other things, a course on Angelology at Bryan College, the college named for William Jennings Bryan, famous for helping in the prosecution of John Scopes in the famous Scopes Monkey Trial. I had never heard of Angelology before, and I’ve never been a real believer in angels. Now I’m really curious about what the curriculum is.

Disagreements about angels and such are not new. In 1765 poet William Blake saw his first vision of angels while walking on Peckham Rye. "A tree filled with angels, bright angelic wings bespangling every bough like stars." He returned home to share his thrilling experience with his parents to be met by threats of belt lashings from his furious father, who thought he was lying. His mother interceded, saving William from a whipping. 

My Great Aunt Corinne would tell stories of angels whenever she came to visit. The one I remember best was about the time her granddaughter Bonnie had wandered out into a busy street and was about to be hit by a speeding car when an angel came and whisked her out of the way. I was probably 7 or 8 when I heard this, but even then I had doubts about unseen spirits jumping into traffic to rescue children. It wasn’t until years later that I began to ask about the innocent children who weren’t saved. Did they not have a guardian angel? And if not, why not? Still I am not so cynical that I don’t believe that there are things that defy logical explanation, and I believe there is a greater reality than that which we can see and measure.

My mother has been dead nearly 14 years, and my father 32, yet sometimes just as I am waking up, I sense their presence. Also when I’m working on my family tree, exploring the lives of people who died long before I was born, I feel a connection beyond a date and a name on a page. Like Ruth Forman, I feel surrounded by souls.

Last night I watched a Nova program on the ancient Mayans. I found it fascinating. I imagine those archeologists finding fragments of a 1000-year-old cup covered with Mayan hieroglyphs must have felt something similar. Someone more than a 1000 years ago painted the story of a war on the cup, and now people in the 21^st century were reading it and making a connection to these old, old souls.

While I feel these non-physical connections, there is a surety that Dr. Held and Aunt Corinne have that I envy.