Modern life does not give us the experiences that might enlarge our vision. It hardly occurs to us that the living can have anything to say to the dying, or that the dying have anything to communicate to the living. We think that the dying are beyond our reach as they lie there, unable ot speak or respond in any way, but we are wrong. They can still hear what is said to them, even in what seems like deep unconsciousness; they can still be aware of touch... The dying need us to go as far as we can with them on the journey
Angels are messengers of God; they do exist. They are love, joy, and beauty. Their message of hope and inspiration is there to open the hearts and consciousness of all people.
Our angelic messengers protect us and guide us. Residing in cubbies watching for those moments of peril when they may be handy and of useful service, angels are the power of a higher presence. They are our patrons from the unseen.
Here in New Harmony, one of my favorite places of prayer is the sculpture of Tobi Kahn, a renowned Jewish artist from New York. The piece is called Shalev, or Angel of Compassion. It is a twelve-foot-high granite archway under which the angel of compassion is passing. She is a life-sized human figure made of gleaming bronze, and her head and entire posture incline with presence. The archway has always felt to me like the archway of the present moment, the archway of every moment. And the angel is like a messenger of the Living Presence, inclining with compassion, accompanying us and our world as we enter the archway of the present.
We attract angels by becoming the qualities that are of interest to them. When we focus on such qualities as compassion, faith or tolerance . . . we attract angelic beings that are trying to help develop that in all humanity.
I believe that angels are forms, images, and expressions through which the essences and energy forces of God can be transmitted and that, since there are an infinite number of these forms, the greatest service anyone can pay the angelic host is never consciously to limit the ways angels might appear to us.
Her eyes were kindled from the lamps of Heaven. Her voice reached through me, tender, sweet and low: An angel's voice, a music of its own. And in the center, great wings spread apart, more than a thousand festive angels shone, each one distinct in radiance, and in art.
