Looking Through The Window; More Angels Than Angles

Windows are greater than a source of light to brighten our homes and buildings. They are more than a window-washers drudgery. Windows open us from the inside to the outside bringing new perspectives. They connect us with the life that is going on beyond ourselves. Frederick Buechner wrote that "If you look at a window, you see flyspecks, dust, the crack where Junior's Frisbee hit it. If you look through a window, you see the world beyond." He is telling us to notice more than all of those obvious shapes, twists, and turns. Instead, I think he would like for us to look for and envision the unseen. Hidden in plain sight there are more angels than angles.

Children have it much easier seeing and embracing angels than those of us who have left Neverland in favor of time-clocks. We who work more and live less find it difficult enough getting through the day with completed agendas and task lists. Examining the head of a pin to wonder about perched celestial beings is an exercise somewhere between ridiculous and inane. Imaginary Friends, Guardian Angels, Monsters, and pals like Puff the Magic Dragon are whimsical at best and rubbish at worst. There's no way we would follow Alice down her rabbit hole. Even precious metaphors on the other side and through the window are usually ignored or dismissed.

When I was a boy, I traveled far and wide with My Old Grandpa. We went everywhere together, talked about the mysteries of clouds, things growing in endless fields, the mean monster who lived under our basement stairs, people who hurt me, and every other imaginable thing. If I was to write a book called Me and My Old Grandpa, it would boggle the mind. There were times when my parents overheard our conversations. I would be chatting it up in the backseat of our Chrysler on the endless way to somewhere-or-another and one of them would finally ask who I was talking to. Embarrassed we had been found out, I would tell that it was just "Me and my Old Grandpa." Of course, their queries didn't stop there. They asked whether it was Grand Dad Jones or Daddy Baum? I would stammer that it was neither. Exasperated, they would finally leave us alone. I knew they weren't able to see him or to hear his wise and reassuring counsel.

He donned a tall, wide-brimmed hat and dressed in a crumpled three-piece suit like farmers once wore to town on Saturdays. My Old Grandpa had rather unkempt hair and beard beneath soft, smiling eyes. His hands were large and calloused but gentle and comforting. His voice was soft, tender, and sometimes mischievous. In one way I was sorry he was invisible to them, but in another, I was glad to have him to myself.

We could all find that there are angels among us if we would start looking through our windows again instead of at them. They show up whether we want to accept it or just chalk up God-given miracles as coincidence. We could stop trying to explain the unexplainable and just go with it. Because just as certain as the angles we see so clearly are the angels at our side and all around us. I once wrote that they come just in time and in various shapes, colors and sizes.  The love and support they bring allow us to endure and overcome.  We also have the ability to be angels in the lives of people that we touch throughout the day. The angelic truth is that life is wonderful and we are all challenged to carry this news to others. Light shines in the midst of the darkness through our combined interventions. Because when forces of sacred and secular are joined, the revelations and possibilities become endless.

Endnote: Several years ago, our cousin Joan French discovered my great grandmother's photo album. It had been stored away among her mother’s things for so many decades that its contents were unknown or unremembered. Among the pictures was one of her husband, my great grandfather, Nelson M. Jones. None of us living descendants had ever seen his face. But to my delight, there he was…a Guardian Angel and Invisible Friend…None other than My Old Grandpa.

Nelson M. Jones 1895

God Shows Up

"God could easily give you grain and fruit without your plowing and planting. But He does not want to do so. . . . What else is all our work to God—whether in the fields, in the garden, in the city, in the house, in war, or in government—but just such a child’s performance, by which He wants to give His gifts in the fields, at home, and everywhere else? These are the masks of God, behind which He wants to remain concealed and do all things.” ~ Martin Luther

I have been writing and thinking about masks this week.There are so many psychologists and philosophers who teach of our tendencies to hide behind them.  Carl Jung’s concepts of individuation revolve around the integration of false and true self.  Masks are the symbol of our hiding, pretending, lies and illusions. I have come to believe that there are sacred disguises…human ones, ones presented in the beauty of nature, ones revealed in stars and sky…which are the Masks of God,

Martin Luther understood that God interacts with us and shows himself in countless ways beyond our understanding.  G. K. Chesterton wrote a verse about the ‘million masks of God’.  Joseph Campbell told Bill Moyers that the images of God are many.  He called them the masks of eternity that both cover and reveal the Face of Glory. I think this is at the heart of our existence and the center of an experience of being God’s Beloved Child.God shows up.  I have seen him in the eyes of men and women in a homeless shelter in Asheville.  I have been touched by him on the waiting wall by street kids in Fort Lauderdale.  I have heard his cry in the voices of those who suffer addictive illness.

God is not a remote deity who waits grumpily on a throne of judgment to pounce on our wrongdoings and many sins. He not only shows up as a vulnerable and broken savior who willingly dies on a cross, but also beckons us to follow him there.  He shows up as ‘angels unawares’ in ancient scripture. He reaches for our steadying hand in the person of our grandchild.  When we are told that God is omnipresent, this is what they are talking about.The masks of God are everywhere.  Look around.  God show up.  He tells us, in the words of the Prodigal Father to his resentful son; “I am with you always.  Everything I have is yours.”

Robert Kenneth Jones is an innovator in the treatment of addiction and childhood abuse.In a career spanning over four decades, his work helping people recover from childhood abuse and addiction has earned him the respect of his peers.His blog, An Elephant for Breakfast, testifies to the power of the human spirit to overcome the worst of life’s difficulties. We encourage you to visit and share this rich source of healing, inspiration and meditation.

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Bob Jones’ blog An Elephant for Breakfast