Finding Angels
by: Richard S. Clifton

Saturday Ramblins, Vol. 1, No. 8 (July 4, 1998)

(Publisher's Note: Guest contributor this week Richard S.Clifton is a writer and journalist who has had a life-long fascination with angels starting in his youth in Catholic grammar school.)

I was raised a Catholic during the more innocent 1950s and angels were a big part of my life growing up. The good nuns at St. Peter, Prince of the Apostles Parish School, were free to hand out the holy pictures of them every time we performed well on a test or spelling bee. I had a collection of holy cards featuring saints and angels that would rival any kid's shoebox of baseball cards, won not from any academic prowess, but from pulling extra duty after school or in the lunchroom. (I wonder what they're getting for a 1956 St. Michael the Archangel?)

I've been intrigued by the discussion of angels from both Jon and Judi in these pages, as well as the readers who have contributed their own stories. As both are fond of saying, there are those better angels of our nature at work because we can never be angels, not in the biblical sense, at least. The best we can be is like the angels. The Creator created them as a separate class of beings from ourselves.

It's true, we share some of the nature of angels, just as we share some of the nature of the animals who populate this earth with us. We are spiritual, like the angels, but not pure spirits, no more than we are pure animals who live entirely on instincts. We are a bit of both and thus can be seen almost as a link between the purely spiritual and the purely earthbound.

So, as the bible tells us, if angels are God's helpers, his messengers, aren't we being a bit like the angels when we do what we can to help His kingdom come? Isn't it the better angels of our nature which carry His message to others through the example our lives provide for others--lives lived in His will and service?

I guess in the end, it doesn't matter if angels come to us as white-robed, winged creatures with halos, or that kindly person who waited an extra minute in the rain to hold a door for us. There are angels there every day who serve God by serving us and being there at just the right time. We can even be unwitting angels.

I always remember a story told to me by a life-long friend named Carol. We've always managed to stumble across one another in person, on the phone or by mail at difficult times in our lives, even after losing touch for several years at a time. For some reason, I've always called her "dearheart." I have always ended our phone conversations or signed off my letters with, "So long, dearheart."

A few years ago, during a period of personal and health problems that overwhelmed her, she was taking a flight somewhere. Sitting on the plane, her troubles on her mind, she happened to look up to see a man who resembled me sitting across the aisle from her. They exchanged smiles. He returned to his newspaper and she to her thoughts. By the time her plane reached its destination, she was feeling fairly low.

As she left the plane, she passed the man who looked like me retrieving a piece of luggage from the overhead compartment. Their eyes met again briefly and he said to her, "So long, dearheart." She called me that night and we talked for hours. God's angels are where you find them.

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