Angels In The Supermarket

"If you were an angel who appeared on Earth in a human body, how would you flow through life? How would you avoid obstructing life? How beautifully would you offer passage through life to others?"
From "Heaven Letters" http://www.heavenletters.org

If you were an angel who appeared on Earth in a human body, how would you flow through life?

How would my life change if that is truly and genuinely what I imagined myself to be, not just when I'm sitting quietly in my house at 5 am with only silence and hot coffee for company - but when I'm running carpool or waiting in line at the pharmacy.

Would I give myself the freedom simply to grant love in sweeping abundance? Would I allow myself to accept people's quirks, big and small, just as I hope that they accept mine? And would I be genuinely content with a day that had gone by in which I had managed to do only that (and not much else)?

When I think of myself this way, as a sliver of spirit that is unified with everyone else I see, I notice that I spend less time thinking about what I don't like about something and more time thinking about what I do like about it. I notice that I spend a lot more time focusing on that which unites us instead of that which divides us. I spend less time thinking about my petty needs and wishes and more time thinking about the bigger picture. I spend more time bringing love and life and peace into my everyday life and into my home.

When each of my children were just born, it was easier to see myself as an angel. I remember a feeling of absolute fullness, one that had eluded me for many years of my life, and it came from merely sitting in a dark room with my infant and knowing that I was taking care of her needs. I was offering comfort, and there was nothing beyond that of any importance. It defies explanation , but it's something that any other parent can likely relate to. It was as though the veil between my world and my child's world was very thin indeed. And the place of her origin was close at hand; I was in the foyer of a mystical place.

As I would hold my newborn, she would stretch her neck around and gape at me. She would bug out her eyes and swat at the air with tight, tiny fists. During these episodes, she of them wore the same incredulous - albeit peaceful - expression: "Where am I?" and "How did I get here?"

Throughout life, occasionally, that feeling returns. "Where am I" and "How did I get here?" It happened to me just the other night. I had gotten up to let the dog out in the middle of the night and I couldn't help looking around my home, seeing all the photos on the walls and wondering how on earth I ended up here with my husband and my three kids and a yard and a house and neighbors. When did I become a grownup? How did I get here?

Midnight is prime time for existential angst. It can swallow a person up if she spends too much time there, especially when she insists on wanting concrete answers to big, important questions. And it cedes when I decide that it is enough, at this point in my life, to simply be that angel to myself and others. To recognize the thin veil that separates us from one another. To do things that bring pleasure and comfort and happiness and peace to ourselves and to those whose lives we touch this day.

I have to admit that when I think that I have to act like an angel, I fall short. I think of all the ways that I act petty and small, and it doesn't work. I end up telling myself that I should be more kind and loving and less judgmental, and then I end up judging myself and so being less kind and less loving and more judgmental.

But when I can stop all of that and try just envisioning myself as an angel without imposing a list of judgments and a rigid example of exactly what that's supposed to look like, I find that I naturally and automatically begin to act in accord with the perception.

And so we don't talk about it with our friends, but maybe we offer a smile and a wave when we otherwise wouldn't necessarily think to do so. We make a concerted effort to not attempt to control our kids or our spouse or even our careers, but we relax in the knowing that everything is being taken care of by the very same force from which we come. That's when we can relax enough to just be here and to create and to live and to love and to laugh, and to become what we were meant to be.

May you simply think of yourself as an angel today.