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Sunday, June 29, 2014

Angels

A picture of a little sandal-footed angel reminded me of gate-keepers everywhere, protecting our backs (and fronts too, for that matter) from the rigors and threats and temptations of our day. An angel looks like—well, we don't know, do we? We like to imagine them as majestic and powerful, ungendered, beautiful—just the way the Renaissance painters presented them to us.

 

Or little baby angels, putti, smiling enigmatically, cheek resting on hand, blond curls topping sweet faces.

 

What an angel looks like is totally beside the point. They may not even have an "appearance," a physical manifestation. Perhaps they are no more—and no less—than a felt sense in our bodies, our awareness that we are supported and surrounded by Universal love.

 

But that doesn't prevent us from doing what we humans like to do: imagining the look of something, and drawing that image. So in the picture I saw the angel wore a shapeless long red gown. Its feet were in clunky sandals, its wings were feathered, and it had a dear little happy face drawn with an impossibly fine pen. Topping it all was the halo, the artistic convention representing the aura, the energy field of the body. Because enlightened/holy people (though angels aren't "people") supposedly have richer, more visible auras, they are often depicted with haloes. It might be helpful to remember that a halo is within the grasp of each of us.

 

 

 

Copyright 2014 Ann Tudor

Sunday, June 22, 2014

Blue Sky, Smilin' at Me

 

I was walking down our street in May, headed for the subway. As I began to cross to the other side (mid-block, as usual) I twisted my head to check for traffic and here's what I saw: a patch of sky so deep a blue, so smooth and even, that I thought at first it was a painted backdrop. Perhaps I've been seeing too much opera and theater, but I saw it as a painted screen of an unimaginable depth of color. Good sense kicked in immediately and I knew it was indeed the sky, just the plain old sky revealed at the end of our street, framed by trees with emerging leaves.

 

Several questions arise: Why did I continue on my way instead of stopping to breathe in the sight of that blue sky? Was this an unusual day for skies? Besides the sky being cloudless, was some other meteorological event taking place? Or was it simply the normal sky, and I had never truly seen it before, even though I have crossed that street and turned my head at the same spot for over 31 years?

 

Tell me, indeed, why the sky is blue.

 

 

 

Copyright 2014 Ann Tudor

www.anntudor.ca
http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com

Sunday, June 8, 2014

Dreaming of Wings

No dream of wings for me.

Flights are few,

though occasionally those of fancy

nudge me into delight.

Or a wisp of whimsy whisks my over-serious mind

into could-be, what-if,

let-it-happen, and wow!-where-did-this-come-from?

 

Wings form from shoulder blades,

from arms extended, offering,

gathering, connecting.

Wings, having budded,

take over mind and heart,

and all becomes possible.

If I had the wings of an angel. . .

 

Clothes make the man;

do wings make the angel?

Come fly with me.

We'll come in on a wing and a prayer.

 

 
Copyright 2014 Ann Tudor

Sunday, June 1, 2014

A Layered Life

Layers. Oh yes, that's me. Or that is I, as I was once taught (thanks, Sister Alma). The layers are compressed wave-lines. My life has been (until now—and probably will remain until the as-yet-undetermined end) one long graph line.

 

It's up, then down. Up, then down. One line, smoothly connected but never straight. (The only time it will be level is when the heart monitor flat-lines in that finality that we all know from TV hospital shows.)

 

If you compress that up-down line, pushing in from each end, it will collapse upon itself like some emerging mountain range and the cross-section will show the strata of my days—as layered as bacon.

 

This little piggy ate fat one day and lean the next. Fat, juicy joy today. Lean, dry desert of depression tomorrow. The layers of my life.

 

 

Copyright 2014 Ann Tudor