We see the fresh snow falling after supper and immediately bundle up and head outdoors. (Boy, have I changed!) We purposelessly run around and achieve no achievement except the sheer fun of being a part of this upcoming storm. It doesn’t matter how much, it only mattered that it was drifting down and we were a part of it.
It isn’t long before we throw ourselves into the white stuff and stretch out our arms and legs. We made angels. We opened our mouths to capture a few of the flakes while our creation continued to be created. The difficult part came in the exodus. We didn’t plan that far ahead but if our creation is to be then we must someone release ourselves from this newly created imprint. Slowly we rise to what would be the angel’s stomach and in one quick jump we’ve succeeded in leaving our angel in tacked. We stare at our new creation for ten seconds until the next attraction attracts us. It’s still snowing and there’s more time remaining before the adult curfew.
Years pass by and “legacy” becomes our new adult word for that snowed angel. What imprint will remain when we’re gone? Will new snow just cover the angel that we’ve painstakingly spent years creating? Will that new young guy they just hired shovel over our joyful angel? Or better yet, will he even see the angel that we created?
Was all our stretching for nothing? The previous generation gave us a hard time for new ideas and the next generation now smiles at us without even knowing our name.
I stretched out many angels in my life and the beauty of any angel is that it is never recognized or acknowledged to me. The angel is discovered and lived in the least place and person I know. Someone comes up to me and says, “What you said in a sermon ten years ago has stayed with me since then.” I have no idea what I said or who she is but I know that my stretching helped to stretch her. Happy angel making.
Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.
Soulful Muse 