The Christmas Angel

-


The angel is generally accepted to be a spiritual being, believed to act as an attendant, agent or messenger of God.  In our world of dirt, smoke and noise, many assume an angel to be simply, a person of exemplary conduct or virtue. I can see that.

When you are desperate and someone bails you out of a jam, gratitude can sometimes cloud your vision. A few weeks ago I was waiting to pay for my gas and the woman in front of me dug in her purse and put a fist full of coins on the counter. The clerk had the audacity to say to her, "Oh, no you didn't." Like it wasn't hard enough for her to be driving a beater white Dodge minivan, filthy and dented.

Her total pre-paid gas purchase was $1.47. I almost cried. I followed her back to her pump. When she turned around and saw me standing there, she screamed and jumped a little. I apologized and handed her a bill. It was really not much, but she took it and asked God to bless me. I was optimistic, but felt it was more a test of mere humanity than an opportunity to be someone's angel and be blessed by God. Maybe sometimes God just wants to see if anyone is even home or if they just left the lights on.

An angel, no, he takes a beating for you and pays the price. My angel is tin.

I don't know his name but I'm sure he looks like he spends most of his time alternating between appointments with blowtorch and baseball bat. Some people send their angels on useless runs, like some of the parents I grew up around, who sent their kid running to the A&P for a only pack of Newports.

Not me, I send mine on big ticket items; cancer, roll over and head-on accidents, crimes against children, war, refugees, drug and alcohol addiction, depression, divorce and acts of violence.

But apart from all of these kamikaze missions, my angel is there even when I am not waving my arms, pointing and shouting at the sky. Like Mister Magoo, I am fighting a myopic battle,  I step off the edge of a building right onto a steel beam just as the crane lifts it past the 74th floor.

Quietly, he deflects ten thousand other attacks and crises that I will likely never perceive.

So this Christmas, when I toast with my family. I will remember and thank my tin angel for looking after all of you. For all that you have and all that you did not get.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Christmas Bum

-
Image
When our kids were little, we lived in Washington DC. For twelve years, we'd pack all five of us and our two weeks worth of Christmas luggage in anticipation of our trip to Colorado to celebrate Christmas. The first year, we booked travel on Northwest Airlines from DC Regan through Detroit or Minneapolis. It was a staggering $589 for all of us to travel, round trip. For the next 5 years without fail, we'd have a 2-4 hour delay, miss the connection and get vouchers for 5 more round-trip tickets from sympathetic gate agents. No really, they actually existed back in the 1900's. The reoccurring punishment wasn't worth it at the time, but by the very next trip, we'd forgotten all about the screaming, snot and vomit and happily began the terrifying journey all over again.  Except for 1991. That was the one year we stayed in Washington DC. We were living on Benton Street, right off Massachusetts Ave in Georgetown. It was a magical time in our faith journey. We'd found ...
Read more

Life Without Dogs

-
Image
Say it ain't so. Tell me I didn't wake up today to a life without a dog. Fifteen years is not 'like a part of the family', fifteen years IS a part of the family. The night we brought him home, he got carsick on the drive. We got him from a sweet lady named Nora who had a boxer and a toddler. Nox (the Latin personification of night, she said) apparently bullied them both as a five month old puppy. He was already trained to poop only in the gravel part of the yard. He checked out his new home by first peeing on our kitchen floor. That was his parting shot at the vet last night when we took him in to send him off; peacefully and not painfully. One of the harder decisions one has to make in life but the right one. We'd have  preferred if he just went quietly in his sleep but someone recently told me that 'experience' only means not getting what you want in life. Tell me I'm not sitting here eating his last two hot dogs. The 2 boys from across the street came...
Read more

A Day In The Life Of An Iron-Boy

-
Image
These cobalt blue skies of September, so typical of Colorado, are much rarer an occurrence in the Northeast of Pennsylvania between Scranton and Carbondale. Still, they transport me back to the days of dirt bikes and the iron-boys with whom I rode motocross bikes. We, that piloted them, were the grandsons of Ellis Island immigrants who scraped their way to America aboard steaming, lurching ships to mine coal, build skyscrapers and grow gardens and grapes for wine. We had the luxury of navigating those same mining roads, not on our way to work as our fathers had done but in leisure, pure ecstasy in fact, on two wheels and even more often, one.  These were also the days that followed the burning of three of the ancient high schools built in those days order to speed the budgetary approval process required to build a new one. The result was a time/space conundrum that allowed us to live in Nirvana. Namely, three years of half day school session for our 7th, 8th and 9th grade years. Th...
Read more