Without Wings
If you are a daily consumer of the news served to us on today’s techno-media platters, you probably share my impression that the smorgasbord of opinions, “facts,” and sales pitches upon which we now gorge ourselves is both exhaustive and exhausting. At the end of any particular day it is hard not to feel bloated by multiple helpings of the “breaking” stories our media chefs have been working on. Like the scrolls eaten by biblical seers, the news we ingest can sometimes taste sweet, but most often leaves us with embittered bellies. No wonder that many of us find temporary relief in fasting from a daily news menu that leaves us with heartburn.
In the midst of January’s gastronomic news offerings I was, to quote CS Lewis, “surprised by joy” at a story covered across the media that was as uplifting as it was unexpected. A young med student named Nadia Popovici, seated behind protective glass just a few rows behind the bench at a Vancouver Canucks hockey game, spied a dark mole on the neck of the team’s assistant equipment manager, Brian “Red” Hamilton. Striking her as a malignant growth, she made a point of getting his attention and sharing her concern that he see a physician as soon as possible. What happened next was too good for the “bad news sells” media to overlook. Red’s biopsy confirmed a life-threatening, phase 2 cancerous melanoma, inspiring his doctor to share this revealing comment: “…you have an angel in your life, because if you didn’t get that thing out in five years, you would not be here.” Both the Canucks and their opponents thanked Nadia for her proactive gesture with a $10,000 scholarship to help advance her med school program.
I’m not sure which element of this story most amazes me: that she noticed such a small blemish from an arena seat in the midst of all the action; that she felt a responsibility to step into his world and share her concerns; that he actually listened and followed her advice; or that the media chose to insert a story like this into their otherwise spirit-sapping queue of news offerings. At any rate, I was touched by this modern day reminder that there may yet be angels in our midst--all thanks to a stranger who cared.
Now I suspect that for many of you, angels fall outside the range of what you find believable. I must confess that I do not put much stock in the supernatural, even when it is portrayed in the symbolisms of biblical language. That is probably why I have such little interest in the stuff that passes for adult entertainments these days. Cartoonish, WWF chiseled CGI superheroes suspending the laws of physics and physiological integrity in vanquishing an ever-changing host of monstrous villains—is this the best that Hollywood can offer to grown-ups? I suspect the enormous box office appeal for such big-screen video games is a telling indicator of how uncomfortable we have become with real life stories featuring live actors portraying real people? But I’ll leave that for another week’s rumination.
Having made this disclaimer, I nonetheless must admit that I put some credence in the existence of angels, Ms. Popovici reinforcing that belief. It stems from understanding that the biblical words for angels, mal’ach in Hebrew and angelos in Greek, simply refer to a “messenger” or “envoy” in their more than 250 scriptural references. While angels are sometimes described in celestial, supernatural imagery, most often they appear as everyday human beings delivering a message from God. In the traditions of the Peoples of the Book—Judaism, Christianity and Islam—angels can be emissaries of either favorable or ominous tidings. It is within that immense catalogue of myths and legends beyond the Bible that angels are most likely to be depicted as heavenly warriors, winged heralds, arrow-shooting cherubs, personal guardians or tempting demons.
As I ponder all of this, and consider the serendipitous fortune of a 21st Century American named Red, his future altered at a hockey game by a complete stranger, the angelic seems to me as reasonable as blind accident or dumb luck. Now Nadia was no Clarence trying to earn his wings by helping a desperate soul in Bedford Falls. Nor did she stop the action on the ice with a trumpeted descent from the heavens. Instead her appearance seems to have been triggered by that indefinable spirit that each of us possesses, a spirit that occasionally presents itself when we feel drawn to other souls like us out of both interest and concern. And when the empathy and care we feel for another stirs within us the courage to speak up or lend a helping hand, we become messengers of the truth and goodness that is the essence of divinity. Call it what we will--God, Allah, Om, Tao, or any of the metaphorical intonations we prefer—whenever the creative and sustaining energy that is life itself resonates through our words or actions, we become messengers to that something more that lies both within and beyond ourselves. And in that instant, whether knowingly or unwittingly, we become angelic. What a difference that role can make in another person’s life. Just ask Red.
It is no accident that I chose to write about an angelic revelation in Vancouver on this day in which we honor a great American, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. For his sermons, speeches and writings were, in my judgment, messages from God delivered to a strife-torn nation whom he both loved and grieved. Dr. King breathed life into the words of judgment once pronounced by the likes of Amos, Isaiah and Micah. His gospel of “turn the other cheek” pacifism emulated the sacrificial ministry of Jesus in whose name he served. And his program of nonviolent resistance applied Gandhi’s nation-altering political wisdom to the human rights movements for which both gave their lives. Few people in my short lifetime did as much to change our nation as significantly as Dr. King, and even fewer voices continue to speak with such authority. Whether those outpourings of his heart were spoken from Southern church pulpits, or on the steps of Lincoln’s grand memorial, or in an epistle written from a jail cell in Birmingham on Good Friday, 1963, they still call us to account.
“We must live together as brothers or perish together as fools.”
“People fail to get along because they fear each other; they fear each other because they don’t know each other; they don’t know each other because they have not communicated with each other.”
“To ignore evil is to become accomplice to it.”
“ Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
“Violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated ones. Violence is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding: it seeks to annihilate rather than convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue. Violence ends up defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers.”
In this era in which supernatural escapism distracts us from the soul-numbing cynicism that so marks our grip on reality, it is good that we never rule out the possibility that angels may yet be among us. But I won’t be looking for them in the heavens above, or in the beyond-belief claims of those seeking magical deliverance from all that ails us. My gaze will be on the people whose paths cross my own each day, those whom I know and those who are strangers to me. For it is among these that angels may be revealed—angels without wings—whenever my eyes of faith discern in their kind deeds and truthful words that God is, indeed, present.
