Flying Lessons from an Unlikely Angel

    "The world had been sad since Tuesday." Gabriel Marquez grabs my attention with this line in his short story, "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings." The sad world expresses itself with ash-grey skies and sea, three days of constant rain.

     During the downpour the parents of a newborn baby find an aged man lying face down in their backyard. His bedraggled wings are stuck in the mud. They’re amazed at first, but then. . . . well, the man is ancient, bald, nearly toothless. He speaks what they guess is Norwegian. They take him for a shipwrecked sailor—until the wise woman of the village points out the obvious: he has wings; he must be an angel.

"Club him to death," she says.

    They lock him in the chicken coop instead and call for the priest. He finds the winged man suspect. The old geezer smells terribly human and doesn’t understand Latin, the language of God. A crowd gathers. Curiosity-seekers gawk and jeer. Pilgrims pray and petition. The homeowners fence off their yard and charge a nickel admission. The line stretches as far as they can see.

    The angel ignores them all. Eventually, the visitors and villagers lose interest, distracted by some new wonder. The courtyard falls silent. The angel’s hosts don’t mind. They’ve made enough money to better their situation.

    His eyes rheumy with age, the angel wanders house and yard, bumps into posts, seems not long for this world.

    Then one day the wife sees him attempt flight. He careens about the yard, crashes into the shed, ploughs into the vegetable garden. At last he lifts off. She breathes a sigh of relief, both for herself and for him, watches until he becomes a small dot on the horizon.

    End of story. And the beginning of its impact on me.

+ + +

    We human beings have such a messed up relationship with the divine. Sure, drop an angel in our laps and we’ll take notice—then take advantage or try to turn a profit. Soon enough our attention wanders. Magic unfolds beneath our noses and we count it beneath our notice. We’re messed up, indeed.

    Or maybe not. Maybe we’re simply human. T.S. Elliot writes: “‘Go, Go,’ said the bird. ‘Human kind cannot bear very much reality.’”

    The birds I live with keep driving this message home. Every day my pet chickens present me with fresh eggs—the stuff of miracle and mystery. Yet I take them for granted.

    You’ve seen the inside of an egg. Nothing magic there. A yellow ball of pus sailing a translucent sea of snot. Mmm. I’ll have mine over easy, please.

    But put a fertile egg in our home incubator—as we did this spring—and 21 days later a baby chick emerges. Mouths open, my husband Dave and I watched life literally unfold, take a deep breath, start kicking about and knocking into things.

    This little winged miracle has since lost its luster, become just another chicken in our home flock. Another mouth to feed and water, another bird to lock in at night. Another reason to clean out the coop.

    Chicken shit happens. And human kind cannot bear too much reality.

+ + +

    I might as well have been a Norwegian castaway dropped with a thump into the middle of my very straight, very conservative church-going family. It wasn’t wings but horns they thought I’d grown when I came out as a gay man. What to do with me? Club me to death? Call in the priest? Lock me away? They tried everything they knew.

    Not until my wings grew strong enough, not until I could unfurl them, careen about the place, finally take flight . . . not until I became a dot on their horizon did my true nature show itself.

+ + +

    Maybe that’s how it is for each of us—we are born with tattered feathers, thrash about, run headlong into walls. Only when we recognize the reality of the divine within, the miracle of our being, only then are we able to cut loose and fly.





Image: Louis Tiffany's window, "Angel of the Resurrection" (1904), Indianapolis Museum of Art, compliments of Wikipedia

AH, MEN! AMEN!

I can live on glimpses. I have to. By choice, my husband Dave and I make our home in a secluded rural area. This offers us much in the way of tranquility, lessons from nature, a quiet retreat from the world. What it doesn't offer is men. Most weeks I can count on my fingers the number of different men I see—Dave and my several male coworkers—and still have my thumbs left over.

There are months when I don't make it into town at all. Used to, Dave was in town every weekday for his job; he could run errands, get the groceries. Now in retirement, he still gets to town more often than I. Those times I do land in civilization I arrive ravenous for the sight, sound and smell of living, breathing male flesh. Hunger is the best sauce, says the proverb. When I'm on full alert, even a walk through the grocery store serves up a saucy feast for the senses. And don't even get me started on Saturday mornings at the lumberyard.

And then there was the other Tuesday. Oh my gosh. I was on my way to work when I saw him. Shirtless, he stood at the end of his parents' driveway, hoisted two empty garbage cans. This threw his shoulders back, thrust his chest forward. His pecs were popping, biceps flexing as he hefted the twin containers. I wanted to slam on the brakes, gawk and gawk some more. I wanted an 8 x 10" glossy. Autographed. With a phone number.

He's the neighbor's boy, college kid home for the summer. I first saw him from a distance about a month ago, out in the field helping his father bale hay. He looked beautiful. Dumb, maybe, for having stripped off his shirt while haying, but mostly beautiful. Thing is, for me nearly every man looks gorgeous from a distance. My imagination fills in details, usually in his favor. And mine.

I had not seen this man face-on, close-up before. Some things are worth the wait. Some moments last forever. As I say, I can live on glimpses.

I can see him even now. Blonde curls wreathe a classic face, rounded full lips, strong chin. Suntanned skin ripples over a shapely body. He might have stepped out of a sacred oak tree or descended a sky bridge from Mount Olympus. Striking, striking man. He is a 3-D iteration—in living color—of the men I pant after in photo books.

And then I flashed on past him, cursing under my breath the oncoming truck that made me wrench my eyes back to the road. I silenced the radio so I could savor the moment, savor him, fix him in mind's eye, exult over such perfectly sculpted pecs occupying space within three-quarters mile of our house. Ah, me. Ah, men. Amen.

Surely such beauty doesn't inhabit every oak tree between home and work. Or maybe it does. Maybe the whole world is sacred, reveals itself as such to anyone who is looking.

His looks have stayed with me. I've watched for him ever since. Begun to think I made him up, or if not, saw more than there was to see. Maybe he's not that good looking after all. Maybe I have an overactive imagination.

And then I think, well, so what? If the rapturous vision doesn't always hold up under close scrutiny, so what? There's plenty of ugliness run amok in the world; I know this. I don't think it would be such a bad thing if we all saw Greek gods in oak trees . . . if we all saw the sacred in the everyday, the divine in the ordinary . . . if we started treating each other as if we were all made of stardust, as if we were all somehow celestial beings.

I caught a glimpse of the ineffable in the college-age son of a neighbor standing cheek-to-jowl with trash cans. And you can bet I keep my eyes peeled every time I pass those oak trees at the end of his drive. If I watch closely, maybe I will see him again.

Or maybe, if I'm attentive and willing to slow down, maybe I'll look within and catch a glimpse of god as close to me as my own heartbeat. The mystics tell us the divine dwells within—within me, within you, within all life, all beings. In all that is, there gleams some spark of the creative energy that animates the world. Not in every instance so visually arresting—alas!—but still, when carefully considered and understood, every bit as beautiful.

This article appeared in the September issue of The Community Letter.