Rumors of Angels: A Survival Guide to the Holidays for Believers and Unbelievers

December 15, 2002

by Lone Jensen

There are angels among us. Yes all around us. I have it from reliable sources that there are winged creatures hovering nearby.

Now promise me you won’t tell but did you hear the latest? What? You say you can't see them? Oh, but how can you miss? They are everywhere! They play little tunes, they chime and they glow and do lots of other things few self-respecting angels ought to do, at least according to scripture and tradition.

Angels, I am afraid, have gone seriously mainstream and one is no longer safe even outside of the Christmas season. There are pretty glittering golden angels, really awful tacky angels, possible and impossible colors of the rainbow angels, and plenty of four legged angels. Angels are clearly equal opportunity employers. I have seen lots of teddy bear angels, dog angels, donkey angels, chubby pig angels, and even -- heaven help us all -- alligator angels. Well, let me tell you, that goes a bit too far. I lived near real gators in Louisiana, and believe me, there is nothing angel-like about them. Or, at least I have a hard time imagining angels lurking in the muddy bayou with sharp teeth, ready, waiting for a tasty bite. Oh, yes once you start looking you discover a veritable infestation, a full army of winged messengers.

They have even invaded our mostly rational church office. Right there on top of our main computer stands a small computer angel that glows in the dark. Whenever we are in technical trouble, we wind her up and she flaps her little day glow wings. So far though, the dreaded computer viruses have been able to get by her so maybe we need a bigger angel! And just in case you wonder, of course we have a virus program, too.

Seriously angels and angel believers far outnumber the skeptics among us. Angels are, it seems, rather serious business. Time Magazine in a survey discovered that over 60 % of our population believes in the physical existence of angels, mostly guardian angels that intervene in our lives. Many have seen them and some have even heard them. And no, I do not mean our choir or Kellie though they do sound a lot like angels. Nor am I talking about the still popular TV series where one of the angels speaks with a distinctly Irish accent. Do angels really have accents?

Visions or visitation is what seems to be happening if we are to believe the stories. What are we to make of this? We Unitarian Universalists pride ourselves on our reason, our rational approach to religion. Should an angel walk in here this morning, would we even believe our own eyes? What if they are already here, among us, wings carefully folded, hidden under a winter jacket? Look carefully at your neighbor here. How do you know? The truth is that angels have been domesticated, tamed, misunderstood, and diminished. Along with the season itself, Christmas. Despite a multitude of books about guardian angels and angels as spiritual guides, we really do not know what we are talking about. And even the tackiest angel reflects a kind of spiritual longing.

Angels have been portrayed in great and not so great art through the centuries. But when you visit the stores these days it is easy to agree with the Rev. Forester Church when he writes: "If we were angels, we almost certainly would feel sorry for ourselves. Angels are misunderstood, ill portrayed and abused even by their admirers. But angels don't feel sorry for themselves. After all angels, unlike humans, are not perfectionists. Oh. perhaps one was, but he fell from grace." Donald Barthelome said that in writing about angels very often one turns out to be writing about people. But with one difference, "We tend to take ourselves far more seriously than angels do. It is a matter of time and eternity."

Mark Twain was fond of saying that "the only reason angels can fly is because they take themselves so lightly!” Rumors of angels if taken seriously would be deeply disturbing to many of us here. As religious liberals we have a hard enough time with the holidays it seems, without looking at the possibility of angels. To celebrate with a full heart and still all hold onto our convictions seems at times as impossible as counting the number of angels that can dance upon the head of a pin.

There are times when I have felt, and gotten rather tired of the feeling, that God was a four letter word to some of us. I am grateful it is not so here in this congregation. It has also been said that the only time you would hear the word Jesus among some Unitarian Universalists is when they stub their toe. Not so here. Perhaps it is the rebel in me but when a word is taboo, I get this irresistible urge to use it! As I said last Christmas we are either a truly free religion with no set creed or we are not! We can not say that we encourage “a free and responsible search for truth and meaning" and mean "as long as you don't end up being a Christian." That becomes just another dogma.

But I do understand why some of you are uncomfortable. Alan Jones, who is an Episcopal priest writes: "I have an ambivalent attitude toward the Bible. On the one hand, it is a book that has nourished and challenged me all my reading life. On the other, I have seen people bullied by it. It easily becomes an all-too-human tool." This ambivalence extends to how some of us feel about these holidays. On the one hand there are those in the larger culture who make unwarranted assumptions. One example of this would be a public school teacher who asks his class to bring something from home about Jesus and Christmas, making the assumption that all of his pupils are Christians and celebrate this holiday, leaving out children of other faiths, not to mention violating separation of church and state.

The problem with prayer in school is how to choose one that will not in some way either offend or leave out some of the children. It is impossible unless you scrupulously include every major religion, and every simple possible sect and belief system in that particular school, including the atheists. If we did that it would be an enlightening exercise in cultural diversity, a true educational venture. But that is not the goal of those who believe that prayer can serve as a moral band-aid on this nation's ills. Religious freedom gives us the right to believe or not to believe. And that includes angels! Our perhaps most religious president, though he never joined a church, was Abraham Lincoln. At the end of the Civil War he asked us to join together again as a Nation and to listen "to the angels of our better nature."

Do you want to find angels? Really? Look in the most unexpected places and pick not that silver and gold glittering package but perhaps the plain paper sack. Angels in the Bible are usually disguised strangers who come seeking help from us.

When we do not recognize them we attend angels unawares. We fail to see the good in others and in ourselves. Let us open our hearts and listen closely for there is a beauty in this season, in the glow of candles, the trees, the greenery, and the universal symbols of hope and joy. The child in us who delights in angels as much as in Santa Claus, for whom the stories are still new, call us to celebrate this season. The child in us reflect back to us some of the wonder we once felt, when all the world was new.

To celebrate simply, with joy, to create memories rather than a credit card extravaganza is one way to keep some sanity this season. Perhaps one reason we seem to want to outdo the Magis, the holy three kings who brought their gifts to the humble stable in our own gift giving, is because we have forgotten how important stories are. Those of you who have read books aloud to small children know the delight they take in hearing the same story, told exactly in the same way, over and over again. It becomes something like a religious ritual and any deviation from the original is met with adamant protests. Children know that it is important to guard the stories that bind us together. The original meaning of the word religion has to do with just that, binding or linking together a community with a common story. And this season has plenty of them. It is the choice among them that is often seen as so difficult.

Not the unofficial theologies perhaps since Santa Claus and Rudolf has little emotional baggage for most of us but the other stories, the religious ones. Some still fear or despise religion because those stories have been used to hurt as well as to heal. There are ways of telling stories that separate us rather than binding us together as a nation and a community. Again let me quote Alan Jones, "Some citizens wish to designate the Unites States a Christian nation. This springs from a peculiarly distorted version of the Christian story. Some people in the United States believe that being Christian and standing up for "family values” means being racist and anti-semitic. No wonder that some secular humanists treat religion with indifference and contempt. We would be better off without such stories."

Indeed, but it would be good to remember that any religion or philosophy can be misused and distorted, including our own. Jesus, whose birthday we celebrate on December 25, hung out with the outcasts of society. Indeed the birth story itself hardly reflects what some religious conservatives call family values. We have an unmarried young woman and a child of, at least to the outsider, a rather uncertain parentage. And they were homeless too. And what kind of mother gives birth in a stable? Maybe she needs parenting classes. And surely all those animals around the newborn cannot be according to health regulations. Shepherds too and angels? Oh, now she is seeing things too. The power of this ancient story lies not in the literal truth. Jesus was likely born in the spring, and astronomers have yet to discover the Christmas star. But those who debate this miss the point entirely. Would they dissect poetry and complain about bad grammar too?

What is it that some of us fear? That there really are angels out there? We happily tell stories about flying reindeer, talking snowmen and the Grinch who stole Christmas without anyone objecting that reindeer don't fly and that snowmen do not talk.

“Fairy tales,” we say, “and not religious.” But I wonder. Certainly Scrooge could be said to have a true conversion experience in "A Christmas Carol" and yet I have not heard anyone say that he was really suffering from superstition and fear when he saw the Ghost of Christmas Past. By the way, if you are looking for some Unitarian Christmas cheer, look to Dickens. He was a British Unitarian. But when it comes to rumors of angels… I wonder how we would really react if I reported having seen in the sky over Phoenix a flock of winged creatures with shining haloes, singing ... a heavenly host? Surely I would quickly be dismissed as crazy, on a par with those who claim to have ridden in UF0s. The truth is I would love to see angels out there. But I do not and have not since I was about six years old.

And I know that angels were frightening to those who saw them. Once revered as powerful denizens of heaven; God's administrative and executive staff, so to speak, they are now reduced to cuddly, naked babies with glitter on their wings. Once the Cherubim were magnificent creatures, with wings of an eagle, head of a human and their bodies composed of half Bull and Half Lion. Once they guarded the very gates of Eden, much as did the real stone bulls in ancient Mesopotamia.

Once angels were God's messengers not to be trifled with, often disguised as human strangers. And to not receive them properly could lead to destruction or danger. Once one could not took upon their faces, they were too bright for human eyes and now… now Cherubs, thanks to Baroque artists like Rubens, who used his own children as models, are happy, cuddly human babies with tiny little wings. Not to be feared, but to be hung on the Christmas tree, which is of course an ancient pagan symbol.

The world is this year as much as ever, ready for some good tidings and it is as hard as ever to hear the quiet song of peace, which to me will always be the real song of the angels. But do try. Listen carefully and maybe somewhere over the insistent, constant noise of those who would divide us and wage endless and hopeless wars, you too will hear the angels sing.

Peace.