Angels All Around

There are angels among us. Now, I don't know what your idea of an angel is. I hardly know what I conceive them to be, yet I know my life has been touched by them. Wherever grace is, an angel has just passed. Wherever peace descends, an angel has had her way. Wherever joy lives, an angel lives there too. I don't speak here of a halo and flowing gowns kind of angel, the kind of angel who lives in ethereal realms and occasionally pays a visit to lowly humans to bestow kindnesses. No, in my life at least, they seem to have materialized out of thin air and emanated, usually, from one of my fellow human beings.

You know, like when it's late, you're exhausted and you're in the grocery store to pick up a few things. In line a woman senses your low spirits and makes a point of smiling and making eye contact. She didn't have to do that, she could have remained in her own little world waiting for the checker to finish with the customer insisting on her second price check. Angel.

The guy who sees you struggling with your packages and rushes to help. Angel. The mothers, whether or not they have children of their own, who nurture and love and support everyone around them. Angels. The people who see an unrelenting flow of vehicles in their rear view mirrors and stop to let you drive into the flow from a side street. Angels. Folks who smile and wave and spread joy and helpfulness wherever they go and whether or not they know you. Angels.

They're everywhere. They come in a wide array of sizes and shapes and disguises. Very often we are not even aware of them. Be alert and you will find them. All around. 

 Are you an angel? Yes. Yes, you are. And the degree to which you know that is the degree to which you bring your angel magic into the world.

Finding Leonardo

In the Palazzo Vecchio's Grand Ceremonial Chamber in Florence, Italy there is a mural which was commissioned by the ruling Medici family and painted by architect and painter Giorgio Vasari during a remodeling of the hall in 1563. In one of the battle scenes depicted in the mural there is a tiny flag with the words "Cerca Trova", seek and ye shall find. This small flag, to a San Diego engineering professor by the name of Mauricio Seracini, has been taken as a clue, a cryptic message from the 16th century as to the whereabouts of one of Leonardo da Vinci's legendary masterpieces, "The Battle of Anghiari", which had adorned a long wall of the hall but disappeared after the remodeling. For decades, painters such as Raphael were said to have traveled to the hall to study the mural, which was Leonardo's largest painting, three times the width of "The Last Supper", but then it vanished. Sercini postulates that Vasari, known to have admired da Vinci's work, found a way to preserve the mural behind his own, leaving a clue on the small flag as to it's whereabouts. A scientific team, led by Sercini, has already found evidence to support this theory and, after obtaining permission from the government of Florence, intends to spend the next year using sophisticated high tech equipment to prove it definitively. It is then hoped that the Vasari fresco can be carefully removed to extract Leonardo's masterpiece and then replaced. How astounding that this missing masterpiece could have been so very close over all these centuries, hidden by the masterful fresco which covered it. 

I can't help but point out the analogy here to our own personal quests to be a human version of a "masterpiece", whatever that may mean to any of us individually in terms of success, intellect, beauty, wealth, spirituality or altruistic qualities. We consistently and doggedly search outward, never quite finding that masterpiece we look for. Perhaps, though, we are looking in the wrong direction. Perhaps, right beneath the surface of our astoundingly complex human exteriors, in the stillness of inner space, our masterpiece waits to be discovered.

Cerca Trova.

The Rainbow

One evening, when I was leaving the gym after a workout, I entered the parking lot and noticed that it had been raining. I glanced up at the sky in time to see one of the most stunning rainbows I have ever seen.  They are always beautiful, but this one was a full semi-circle that went the whole way across the sky and was vibrant shimmering color. As I walked along enjoying this spectacle I was approaching a young girl who was walking towards me with her eyes averted. "Hello, how are you?" I asked.  She glanced up and with a cursory smile, she said "Fine, thank you" and kept walking. Then I blurted out  "Did you see the rainbow?!"  Her face lit up into a gorgeous smile.  "Yes!" she said, and then she was past me. It was only a moment in time but for that moment we were both emotionally aware of the beauty that hovered above us, and we were friends - parking lot strangers, but rainbow friends.