Philosopher and theologian Saint\u00a0Augustine, said, \u201cAngels are like diamonds. They can\u2019t be made, you have to\u00a0find them. Each one is unique. I know I have angels watching me from the other\u00a0side.\u201d<\/p>\n
There isn\u2019t a better time to recognize\u00a0angels in our midst. We are in a world of discord, confusion and dread and we\u00a0never know what life may throw our way. Or when. All too often there is a pile\u00a0up of difficulties, things that are out of our control, but when it gets really
rough and it feels like you\u2019re all alone, if you look carefully and keep an\u00a0open heart, earth angels show up. This concept is often misunderstood. These\u00a0angels don\u2019t have halos or play harps. They don\u2019t have wings and fly through\u00a0the air. They aren\u2019t dogmatic or filled with rhetoric. They don\u2019t wear\u00a0diaphanous tunics like Tinkerbell and wave magic wands. But they are angels,\u00a0none the less, arriving when you least expect it. They don\u2019t tell you what to\u00a0do. They don\u2019t find fault with you. They\u2019re there to witness your life and lend\u00a0you a helping hand. They offer you hope in what seems like an unforgiving
world.<\/p>\n
We all have people who are so\u00a0comforting, we turn to them when we can\u2019t find our center. A few weeks ago, the\u00a0100 mile an hour winds blew the shingles off my roof. They were all over the\u00a0neighborhood, leaving my roof exposed to the weather. A few days later when the
rains came, it rained inside the far corner of my living room. There wasn\u2019t one\u00a0steady drip so a bucket wouldn\u2019t work. I threw down a load of towels that got\u00a0soaked right away and I called the Fire Department. Within ten minutes, three\u00a0firemen knocked at my door. I had been close to panicking before they arrived\u00a0but when they came in, calm and kind, and assessed the situation, I began to\u00a0relax. I was having a visit from three angels wearing rubber boots and yellow
jackets.<\/p>\n
I had met with a roofer earlier that\u00a0day before to assess the damage and give me an estimate. I texted him late that\u00a0night about what had happened. When I got up in the morning at 7, there was a\u00a0lot of noise on my roof. I live in a canyon so I thought that it was a wild animal.\u00a0It wasn\u2019t. The roofer and his worker were already here, putting a plastic\u00a0covering all over my roof. Two more earth angels.<\/p>\n
When they started work the next day,\u00a0the banging and shuffling above my head was deafening and I did something that\u00a0wasn\u2019t acceptable to me. I had a coffee meeting set with a lovely woman I had just met\u00a0and I was so distracted, I forgot about it. I hate to waste anyone\u2019s time. I\u00a0hate to not keep my word so I called her to explain what happened and to\u00a0apologize. She was completely forgiving. She was an angel and we made another\u00a0coffee date.<\/p>\n
Angles are walking among us all the\u00a0time. The courageous firefighters who saved countless lives in the recent\u00a0fires. The hospice workers who helped my mother die. My sister when I\u2019m having\u00a0a hard time and she just listens. My friend who makes me laugh no matter what\u2019s\u00a0going on. My neighbor who drove me to the vet when my cat was injured and called me during the roof replacement to see if I needed anything. A double angel. Rescuers
and comforters are everywhere. We just have to recognize them.<\/p>\n
Sometimes it\u2019s hard because they are\u00a0not necessarily a person. They can show up as courage. Compassion. Protection. And\u00a0sometimes we have to be our own angels. Spiritual leader, Stephen Levine\u2019s wife\u00a0talked about her husband\u2019s death. They were a unit, they were living in a\u00a0remote part of New Mexico and she said, \u201cWhen Stephen was gone, there was no\u00a0one around and I had to hold my own hand.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the eighties, I was volunteering\u00a0at an AIDS hospice with 27 beds and 27 dying young men. I walked from room to\u00a0room, holding hands, bringing food, getting extra blankets and listening and
chatting. They told me their stories and I found them all fascinating. I was\u00a0aware that I might be the last person they spoke to before they died. One\u00a0afternoon, I went to visit a man named Lori who had AIDS and cancer. I stood at\u00a0the door to his room and asked him if I could come in. He said yes. I sat down.\u00a0He smiled at me. \u201cThanks for asking if you could come into my room. Some of the\u00a0volunteers just come barging in with no regard for my space.\u201d<\/p>\n
I felt a flush in my cheeks and a\u00a0lightness in my body. I thought I saw a light moving through the air and pretty\u00a0soon I realized that it was coming from me. I felt like an angel, his angel, floating\u00a0and weightless, ready to do whatever he needed. Lori began to tell me how to be\u00a0a good volunteer, what worked and what didn\u2019t. What to say and what not to say.\u00a0I was getting an education that no one else could have given me so I sat\u00a0quietly and listened. When he got tired, he asked me to please come back and\u00a0when I left his room, I realized that that angelic light had always been with\u00a0me but I had only just noticed it while I was helping someone feel a little bit\u00a0better.<\/p>\n
We are all looking for safety in an\u00a0unpredictable world, for a way to find the light in the darkness. Being an\u00a0angel means shining that bright light in the midst of someone\u2019s pain and\u00a0reaching out your hand when they need to feel connected. When you need an\u00a0angel, believe that you can find one, silence your mind and feel them fill you\u00a0with light and hope. Remember that when angels appear, we don\u2019t hear rustles of\u00a0wings. We don\u2019t see halos. But we know they\u2019re there because of the love we feel in our hearts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Philosopher and theologian Saint\u00a0Augustine, said, \u201cAngels are like diamonds. They can\u2019t be made, you have to\u00a0find them. Each one is unique. I know I have angels watching me from the other\u00a0side.\u201d There isn\u2019t a better time to recognize\u00a0angels in our midst. We are in a world of discord, confusion and dread and we\u00a0never know what […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2606,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2607"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2607\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2608,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2607\/revisions\/2608"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}