Confessing Angels
If I were going to tell you a story — to confess something true that I have held in my heart like a secret — I would have to tell you the story about an August night in a hotel bar in Indianapolis, two dear friends, and the angels.
But before I can tell you about the angels, I suppose I need to back track a bit. I have to tell you that I was never really sure about angels until I was totally sure about angels. This is important for you to know, because when you think about the types of people who believe in angels, you probably wouldn’t imagine someone like me. Not that I’m any weirder than the next guy (well, okay, maybe a little weirder). It’s just that angel-sorts are usually wispy and ethereal; they are usually gentle and soft-spoken people who radiate light.
Mostly I radiate salty language.
I am hardly wispy, and not at all ethereal. I am visceral and very much here, very much made of matter and the attitude I hide behind. I offer to the world a persona that has been carefully cultivated for self-preservation. I have often been told that people find me intimidating.
Mostly these are people who do not know me. The people who do know me usually laugh when I tell them people think I am intimidating, because my friends know I am mostly scared of almost everything, especially feelings, and though in public I will always speak up for the underdog, in private I might be afraid to speak up for myself.
Anyway, I am here to tell you about the angels.
But first, I have to tell you about seminary. I have been a Christian for a long time, and a lover of Jesus even longer. I’ve been on staff at the big, shiny, skinny-jean-pastor kinds of churches, with all the bright lights and smoke machines and loud rock music. But I never really fit in there, what with my salty language, my affirmation of the LGBTQIA community, and the way I don’t really ascribe to the whole “women should be silent” bullshit.
I have always been mad in love with Jesus. That started when he came to visit me on the side of my house when I was three (long story). I have also always known things I wasn’t supposed to know. I knew the name of the man I would marry when I was five. I know who is about to call or text me, like, all the time. My mother always says that I would freak her out when I was a kid, because just when she started to think about making pork chops and green beans for dinner, I would say, “So we’re having pork chops and green beans for dinner?” I see flashes of light around me often, and sometimes in very old places I’ll sense whole scenes of action from eras long before me. My dead visit my dreams not so much on the regular, but often enough that I sometimes wish they would schedule appointments on my calendar so I can prepare snacks. Because if the other realm does not have snacks I don’t think we can call it heaven.
The point is that while I was living in the world of Christian rock music and shiny-toothed pastors and Evangelical patriarchal mindsets, I was also having experiences that I didn’t think my churchy friends would appreciate, because they might be more aligned with what I now call the Divine Feminine. Like seeing big, white, glowy orbs of light fly right in front of them when they weren’t looking (or, more precisely, that they didn’t see). Or having glasses fly out of a bartender’s hand when my dead friend was feeling feisty and wanted to get my attention. It was as if I had two inner lives — the one that was the “good Christian” and the other one who was crazy in love with Jesus, had experienced the strange, beautiful, glowy-ness of the Christ energy (long story) and who had experiences that in other ages may have gotten me burned at the stake on my church’s front lawn.
But seminary — at least, any good seminary — will take your religiosity and break it to bits. It will force you to examine your beliefs and make sure they are really worth believing. The point of this deconstruction is not simply to leave you shattered, but rather so you can be sure that you actually believe what you say you believe, be able to explain why, and then reconstruct a faith that is actually aligned with your soul.
For me, that process involved looking at the pieces of my shattered faith scattered all over the ground, and realizing that a whole lot of them were utter garbage. As I sorted through the shards, a strange thing happened. I would pick up a piece of patriarchy and wonder how that got in there. I would notice piles of legalism, and swiftly sweep them into the dustbin with satisfaction. Things that pointed to a sadistic and psychotic God — like atonement theory — quickly followed suit. When I was done, I noticed that this sorting process had left these wide open spaces that God could fill up with all the experiences of the Divine that I had had since I was a child. The visit from Christ. The dreams. The knowings. The invisible whispers in my ear that literally left breath on my neck and moved my hair and the deep intuitive hits and the wisdom that comes from somewhere far outside of me and that I can not call my own.
It was around this time that my friend Mia, a psychic, told me, “The angels want to work with you.”
I’d always kind of thought that being able to talk to dead people would be really cool, but angels? “I don’t know if I believe in angels.” She gave me one of those looks we give people in New Jersey when they are being very stupid.
So I started working with angels.
It felt really weird at first, but once I got used to their energy — the way they made their presence known, the way the air changes when they want to get my attention — I started to have fun and enjoy their presence. I wasn’t entirely sure what the whole point of it all was, though. I mean, what’s the point of playing with angels if you can’t save the world?
Then one Friday night in August, 2018, everything changed.
I found myself stuck in Indianapolis after my flight home was canceled, hanging out with a couple of friends at a hotel bar. Ted (I’m changing the names of my friends because they deserve to tell this story their own way) and I usually fly out of Indy within minutes of each other — he to one of the New York airports and me to Newark — and our flights had been cancelled within minutes of each other, as well. As we took the shuttle to the airport hotel and agreed to meet in the bar for a drink once we’d gotten settled in our respective rooms, I grabbed my phone and said, “I’m going to invite Jake to meet us for a drink.”
“Good idea,” Ted said.
It was a good idea. But it was also a strange one. I didn’t really know Jake very well at all, and out of all the friends I had in Indianapolis, it was strange that he would be the one who came to mind to invite for a drink. To this day, I’m not sure why he was the one I decided to text. I can still see the image of my phone in my hand, and the very bossy text I sent to him. It simply said, Flights cancelled. Come meet Ted and me for a drink.
Just as strange was Jake’s response: I can do that.
About an hour later, we were sitting in the hotel bar, Jake on my left and Ted sitting across from us in a comfortable arrangement of chairs and coffee tables. Ted had ordered snacks, we were each nursing drinks, and we were sharing stories about our pasts.
That’s when the air began to change.
I felt my right side start to vibrate with subtle energy; I felt the pressure of presence on my cheek. I looked up and realized there was the slightest impression of light all around us, outlines like auras that told me there were beings in the room that not everyone could see. We were surrounded by a ring of angels, and it all felt very official.
My silent response was, “Oh, hell no.”
My silent response was, “Oh, hell no.”
I was still getting used to this whole angel thing. It was not something I had told a whole lot of people. I still wasn’t entirely sure I wasn’t crazy, or making it all up in my creative little head. I was not about to tell my two friends that the angels were there for them. I mean, first of all, they were men. My experience had been that men were less prone to accept these types of things, more likely to try and find a “rational” explanation. Women just felt safer when it came to things like this.
They were also seminary students. I was completely aware that church-y types of people are not the safest people to talk to about angels. It’s one of those things where you just never know. They could be totally open to it, or they could want to hit you over the head with their Bible and then drag you out and chuck you off the nearest cliff, into the river to see if you float.
Both Jake and Ted are also super intellectual. Neither is the type you’d think would sit around chatting about angelic beings standing behind them. Though I considered them friends, I did not know them well enough to say, “So listen, there’s an angel here who wants you to know that you that you need a sacred place so she can minister to you,” and still be sure they wouldn’t take me out to the parking lot, find a stick to tie me to and set me on fire.
I mean, you never know.
But angels can be annoyingly insistent at times, and they had some things to say. I already knew that Ted was deeply intuitive and empathic — we’d spoken about that in depth in the past, the way he can walk into a room and know exactly which person is in pain, and how to minister to them. He acknowledged that he has this ability, and he thinks about it in the Christian terms of spiritual gifts (he’s not wrong). We’d already talked about how this might drain him, and the angels were being clear: they wanted him to create a sacred space where he could go and be with them, so they could minister to him, refresh him, and strengthen him as he went about his empathic work in the world.
But how to talk to two intellectuals about angels?
I tried to sound like a boss lady and offer them “advice.” I told Ted about needing a sacred space. I let the words come through me — I just didn’t tell Ted they weren’t coming from me. I vaguely remember saying to Jake, “Don’t worry, there’s a message for you, too.” Ted was resisting the message, saying he didn’t have time. I remember at one point holding up my hand and saying, “Some day, you are going to receive this message and do what you’re being asked to do.”
Then, I turned to Jake.
“You’re a prophet,” I said. The words came for Jake, too, though I don’t remember them now. That often happens — I don’t remember the words that come out of my own mouth when they are not my words to start with.
The pretend advice giving worked for a while, until that moment a while later when I came back from the restroom (where I had said a few “holy shits” and “what the fucks”) and Jake looked me straight in the eye and said, “Ok. What is happening right now?”
I feigned innocence. He persisted. “Listen,” he said, “I have a category for everything in my life. When something happens, I just figure out what category it fits into, and then I know how to respond. I don’t know how to respond to what is happening right now. I don’t have a category for it. I feel like I’ve left the space-time continuum.”
I was both a little terrified and a little intrigued at the same time. Obviously, Jake felt something; he had an awareness and he was open to it. I’ve learned that just the tiniest bit of faith will allow the angels to do their work — the smallest crack in your armor will let their light shine in. Jake obviously had a soft spot, a place they could touch and he would feel and acknowledge them, and they were making themselves known. So I took a deep breath, looked into his eyes and said, “Ok, so you have a lot of help around you.”
He said, “Yeah, I know I have a lot of people in my life who help me.”
I said, “No. I mean you have a lot of help,” — at this point I started waving my hands around in a circle like an idiot — “around you.” He looked at me like he might be considering calling an ambulance. I had to clarify. “Angelic help. Angels. There are angels here. Right now.”
“I don’t believe in angels,” he said.
That conversation began not just a deep friendship with Jake that I treasure to this day, but also a deeper relationship with those beautiful beings who surrounded us that evening. After that night, Jake had his own experiences that confirmed for him the existence of the Spirit world and in some ways set him on a new course in his life — one in which, I think it’s fair to say, he considers himself a mystic and someone who is in deep relationship with the Divine. Those stories are his to tell — not mine — but as time went on, he encouraged me to share the truth with people I love who I was sure would think I was crazy. He urged me to step into the fullness of my own power and strength and the truth of the fact that I am a woman who talks to angels. For that reason and many others, our friendship has been life-changing for me.
Jake encouraged me to step into the power of what the angels bring to my life, to claim it and own it and live into it. For that encouragement, I am eternally grateful, and I am finally taking the advice. Though I have hinted at this strange truth a few times before, in my newsletters and other essays, this is the fullest telling I have made, this confessing of angels.
I am grateful, too, that the people I love who I was scared to tell have responded not just with understanding but with excitement — and this is not just because they are wonderful people. It’s also because the angles have come through for them. Since that night in August, I have done readings for people who have received deep healing, wisdom and guidance from these beautiful beings. Sometimes, I have been able to bring through ancestors, sometimes the angels, and always, the message is one of love, of care, and of unconditional acceptance.
So I guess it’s time for me to offer the same unconditional acceptance to myself. I know many people will think I am strange, or possibly delusional, and maybe even lying. There is nothing I can do about them. All I can do is give a nod to the angel who is standing in front of me while I write this, nodding her approval, and tell her to please make sure this post lands in just the right in box or social media feed, so that if there is someone out there who needed reassurance that there is another realm with beautiful, divine beings who are here to rock our worlds with love, then yes. Be encouraged, because yes there is. They’re beautiful. They’re here. And they love you like crazy.
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