Someone was staring at one of the angel curio cabinets at work (with angels remembering a deceased love one) and as I walked by she said, “I like to talk to him.”  I was about to give her one of my quick, smart remarks and say, “Just so long as he doesn’t talk back” but I didn’t.  (I do have a filter, believe it or not.)

Later I thought, “would it be that weird if he did talk back?”  After all, it’s from the mind’s eye that he’s speaking.  (How many eyes does the mind really have?)

September 29 each year we honor the greatest of angels and today (October 2) we honor the lowest but, happily, those closest to us.  After all, what would Michael, Raphael or Gabriel have to say to me when it’s the little ones that hover and bother me like a wasp on a summer’s day.

They can become pesky little things telling me to be a little nicer – a little less harsh toward others and a lot less harsher to myself.  Tolerance comes easily when you’re young but somehow, somewhere we gain those strong, unbending opinions along with the judgements and evaluations of someone else.  That’s where those flying pests enter the picture.

What are these pesky little things guarding?  Very often they are guarding us from ourselves.

Let me surprise you.  These lowliest of angels are guarding the best parts of us.  Those parts that we’ve either ignored or forgotten about.  Those parts that show God in our words and deeds.  Those parts that hold up hope as a true virtue when every one around us says that we’re crazy, “We’ll never have peace in the Mideast,” “We’ll never make friends again with Iran,” (even though we were friends for many years.)

Those angels are telling us that we do have the right words inside us when someone is hurting, we do have caring eyes when someone’s hurting and then the courage to approach him/her.  That we do have nothing to fear because fear is fruitless to this flying, invisible presence of God’s love and mercy.

15 people for a Thanksgiving meal at my home and my young nephew was harrying us, so my sister, the cook, dismissively said, “Go count all of the angels in Joe’s house and I’ll give .25 for each one.

He came back minutes later and proudly said, “280.”  She owned him $70.00.  I don’t know if she ever paid that young 10 year old but I believe in faith that we have as many or as few as one of these pesky, flying creatures guarding us.