A friend asked me via email, “… just wondering why you are terrified of every angel? Even good angels?”  The source of the question was the poetic assertion from Rilke, “Every angel’s terrifying” that I chose as a tagline for this blog.  Her question came straight, not tongue in cheek, rhetorical.

I do not believe in angels, in the same way as I know this Waffle House coffee cup sits on my desk.  The coordinates are different.  I understand Rilke’s assertion as an attempt to say that there are depths to our lives, which if we dare to plumb, contain terror and blessing.  The psyche is subject to madness, as well as to visions of extravagant  beauty.  The sculpture of David for example, coming from the imagination of Michelangelo.  Those possibilities haunt us, and if we are persistent to pay attention, we may assign them meaning, and make them a feature of our lives.  An angel, as a bare intimation, — may become the occasion of something sublime, or of something terrifying, as concrete as is the coffee cup before me on my desk.

Yesterday, was February 2nd, was the 2nd anniversary of my sister’s passing.  She is two years younger than I.  I felt haunted by her absence last night.  I slept fitfully.

Why should I be seated here writing this?  Why should she be gone?  There is no reason, one way or another.  There are many causes.  A cause is not a reason.  Linda did not have a happy life.  She was schizophrenic her entire adult life, and on medication which had unwelcome side effects.  She was also a type 1 diabetic.  These illnesses had profound effect upon her ability to work, to make friends.  For an adult, work and friends are the heart of satisfaction, where we find happiness, such happiness as we may have.

To say all that, is to say I felt visited by my sister’s absence yesterday.  I felt a sadness that our relationship was not closer than it was.  I hardly knew her.  There were realities in both of our lives which we could not overcome, in order to have a more close, a more normal brother and sister relationship.  In retrospect it seems as if these conditions were evil, terrifying angels, that obstructed both of us.

Now, what is my take-away?  What lesson is there for me to learn, what is to be incorporated into the life that I have.  Just this.  There is no guarantee of anything in this life.  No warranty, none at all.  Life is received, as is.  No one chooses their birth family, the circumstances and dynamic of those around them.  Nevertheless, we are inexorably shaped by those individuals, their attitudes, their actions.  As a young adult, leaving the nest ready or not, — you will play the hand that you have been dealt.  I’ve made no mention of the impact of your genes, whether you’ve the disposition for a chronic sickness.  I’ve not mentioned the possibility of an accident, a fluke happening that changes everything.

I know all that I have said is unclear.  As I write, unsure of precisely what all of this means for me, could there be a meaning any meaning for you the reader?

And so it goes with encounters with angels.

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How about a song.  Could there be any other for this day?  I’ve leaned on this tune before, but that’s ok.

I climbed a mountain and I turned around
And I saw my reflection in the snow-covered hills
‘Till the landslide brought me down