“Who has seen the wind? / Neither you nor I, / But when the trees bow down their heads, / The wind is passing by.”
That’s Stanza 2 from Who Has Seen The Wind by Christina Georgina Rossetti. There is another possibility…An elegant one…It’s been speculated by some people, that the wind is nothing more spectacular than angels on the move….Consider the possibilities… This is an excerpt from Falling Angels, a novel by Tracy Chevalier, author of Girl With a Pearl Earring. Chevalier writes, “I don’t much like the cemetery angels. They are very smooth and regular, and their eyes are so blank - even when I stand in their line of sight they never seem to look at me. What is the good of a messenger who doesn’t even notice you?” We would hope that we would attract the attention of at least one passing angel. Otherwise, it would be as if a cooling breeze rushed past in a hurry, on its way to cool some other brow….
Suzanne Siegel Zenkel in her book, Your Secret Angel published in 1995 by Peter Pauper Press, wrote, “Your angel’s touch can be felt in a warm summer breeze, her music heard in the melody of a songbird, and her beauty seen in a rainbow sunset. The only time an angel weeps is when her song falls on deaf ears…”
“Love is poetry and poetry is the honey of all flowers, the quintessence of all sciences, the mirror of wit, and the very phrase of angels.” Thomas Nashe
In the introduction to the collection, Angels, an Ariel book, published in 1993 by Andrews and McMeel, a Universal Press Syndicate Company, was this: “Angels have beguiled and enchanted us since ancient times. Scholars have considered Hermes, the Greek god and messenger between Earth and Heaven, to be an angel, and indeed the word Angel in Greek means ‘Messenger’.”
This is an excerpt from It Had Wings by Allan Gurganus. “Maybe other angels have dropped into other Elm Street backyards? Behind fences, did neighbours help earlier hurt ones? Folks keep so much of the best stuff quiet, don’t they?”….I wonder how many would really come to the aid of an angel in distress?
You might remember that John Travolta took on the role of Michael, an archangel in the 1996 film simply titled Michael written and directed by Nora Ephron.He definitely had a certain ‘joie de vivre’ for life. He’s in Iowa with an elderly lady by the name of Pansy, played by Jean Stapleton, and being pursued by a cynical tabloid reporter, played by John Hurt, and an expert on angels, played by Andie MacDowell. In some ways, the film reminded me of City of Angels in the sense that we see another angel on Earth trying to experience earthly pleasures. The film does give us the impression that in some circles there are those who are willing to protect an angel in need.
“Kind words are the music of the world…They have a power which seems to be beyond natural causes, as though they were some angel’s song which had lost its way and come to Earth.” Frederick Williams Faber quoted in the book, Passages of Kindness published in 1995 by Heartland Samplers. Its ISBN is 1-57095-050-4.
Do you remember this conversation in the film, City of Angels? The scene is early on in the movie, when the angels are gathering on the beach to listen to the music of the sunset, the one sensory experience they are allowed. Seth and Cassiel are speaking….”The little girl asked me if she could be an angel…”, to which Cassiel replies, “They all want wings…” Seth says, “I never know what to say…” Cassiel advises him, “Tell them the truth. Angels aren’t human…We were never human”, to which Seth says,”What if I just make her a little pair of wings out of paper?” Cassiel pushes the point, “Tell her the truth!”, to which Seth answers, “I told her.” “And how did she take it?” “She said what good would wings be if you couldn’t feel the wind on your face.”
What did I say about the wind being the passage of angels?
We’ve discussed the possibility of hearing the music in the sunrise or the sunset, as the angels did in City of Angels. I theorized that if there is a music, maybe its of a frequency slightly out of the range of human hearing…K.Martin-Kuri from the book, Walking With Angels: A Host of Inspirational and Uplifting Thoughts compiled by Julie Mitchell Marra, published by The C.R. Gibson Company, was quoted as saying, “There are colors for every angel, color is something we see only in certain dimensions, but hues exist on the spiritual plane much finer than the colors we experience. When we let color speak to us in its true celestial language, we begin to communicate with angelic beings.”
Milton in Paradise Lost wrote, “The angel ended, and in Adam’s ear / So charming left his voice that he awhile / Thought him still speaking / Still stood fix’d to hear..” When we believe angels speak to us, we take great pains to listen to the words being whispered.
Fanny J. Crosby in Blessed Assurance wrote, “Angels descending, bringing from above / Echoes of mercy, whispers of love.”
Harriett Beecher Stowe wrote, “Once in an age, God sends to some of us a friend who loves in us - not the person that we are - but the angel we might be.”
I agree, because there can be no more beautiful color than that which a friend inspires in us…
John Homer Miller was quoted in The Secrets of Serenity: A Treasury of Inspiration published in 1996, a Running Press Miniature Edition: “Circumstances and situations do color life, but you have been given the mind to choose what the color shall be…”
In yesterday’s blog I mentioned the book featuring excerpts from the scripts of the CBS series, Touched By An Angel, called When an Angel Speaks: Inspiration from Touched By An Angel, compiled by Executive Producer, Martha Williamson, a Fireside book published by Simon and Schuster. Listen to this one…”Pentimento is when one painting is painted right over another…It means the artist started painting, Oh, maybe a sunny day, but something changed and she painted something else right on top of it…People do that all the time, whether they’re artists or not…. When they don’t like something about themselves, they paint over it so no one else can see it….Our job is to help them expose their true colors to the light…”
…and what will they get in return? Karen Sunde, an American actor-playwright said, “To love is to receive a glimpse of Heaven.”
One book I recommend is Sophie Burnham’s Book of Angelspublished by Ballantine. Some people believe a peacock has the feathers of an angel. Others would want no wings, no matter how beautiful…
The words of the 1945 Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature - Gabriela Mistral, words that every mother could identify with…
“When I am in Heaven, may God give me no Angel’s wings to soothe the hurt in my heart; Spread instead across the sky the hair of the children I loved, and let their hair sweep forever in the wind across my face.”
Don Jackson
Further to your blog, I believe that some angels have fur and paws; but they will always be there to lick away a tear, to share in a laugh, and to help us to remember what is truly important in life.
- Nancyhow comforting to revive and encourage, as I prepare to co facilitate tonights’ bereaved mom’s support group, and remember to take an angel candle..
- Mary Bade