Questions for Angels

Questions for the Angels. 12/03/19

Dinner was done.  I was listening to a New Music Mix that Apple pushes out to me every Tuesday.  There was a re-recorded version of an old Paul Simon song that came on. Its title and hook line captured my ear. The song was Questions for the Angels.

How does one get to the point where they contemplate questions for angels?  Paul Simon got there, but it was never until tonight, a question that ever floated by in the ethers of my mind. I mean I was raised in the Christian church.  I know that in both the Old and the New Testaments there are angels who appear to carry out some task of divine purpose. But…questions for those angels?  

Trust me I never want to shake anyone’s faith but with all the cameras on our cellphones and with movie making equipment in existence for 130 years old or so, why have we not captured any on film? I know, I know, I can’t see the wind but the wind is real.  Also, I am aware that nowhere is it mandated in the Bible that angels appear to us, we mere more mortals, as they are carrying out their tasks. And a non-appearance by any angels for a mere 2000 years does not even register on the major timeline of the Divine, I mean eternity is a big chunk of forever.

But some things are fuzzy in my mind and maybe a question or two might resolve that blurry state. Like what do angels really do?  Why do angels even exist if we exist, I mean the whole plan of Christian salvation kind of implies we are number one in God’s choice of companions.  What motivates them except for the divine love that they exist in, and are intertwined with?  Do they have free will? Are they the instruments by which tumors disappear, you know the incurable, inoperable ones?  Do they protect us from harms we never realize were going to befall us?  Do they give us the warm fuzzies of love?

A Google search, (I know I could have said an internet search but who uses anything but Google), says that in the Abrahamic faiths angels act as intermediaries between God and humanity especially in the later books of the Old Testament. In this class of faiths, angels act as agents of protection and guidance.  Does that mean they have discretion in carrying out their work, assuming we have free will?  Are they merely messengers?  Are they divine or merely semi-divine, and what does that distinction mean? Are they only sent to us by God, or can we summon them for aid and protection?

The internet search led to a vast rabbit hole taking me into descriptions of angels in various religions, into their roles in various traditions of each religion, and so on and so forth. But to even think of asking questions of the angels presupposes God and duality of the physical and spiritual worlds. I am not sure of the validity of this presupposition, although I tend to lean toward faith fairly heavily. But if that is accurate what would I want to know of angels?

I guess the questions I would have for the angels would be the same I would have of their creator:

·       Why is there evil?

·       Why is there pain?

·       What is the meaning of all this?

·       Is there one true path to God?

·       Why is there a hell, again assuming the Abrahamic faiths are correct?

·       Why are you immortal from the get go, and I am not, at least not in my corporeal form?

·       Why didn’t you intervene when someone was inventing scrapple?

I know the phrase came from just one song in the vast catalogue of a popular music singer.  I know that it really isn’t a topic I would usually chase after, as least not so long as that man is in the White House.  But sometimes you hear a bit of conversation, or maybe a fragment of a song, and then you are gone chasing phantoms in the ethers of you mind.  Question for the Angels indeed. 

I will close with a quote from Wings of Desire, one of the greatest movies ever made.  “When the child was a child, It was the time for these questions: Why am I me, and why not you? Why am I here, and why not there? When did time begin, and where does space end? Is life under the sun not just a dream?”