Angel of Compassion

After I "received" the initial image of this vignette while waking on Halloween morning 2006, it continued surfacing episodically, and somewhat intrusively, during my usual morning meditation (lectio-divina-style reflection on the Prayer of St. Francis). During its "emergence," I sobbed as I experienced an overwhelming sense of spiritual consolation and peace. At the conclusion of my meditation, I felt compelled to go to the computer and write it before it "escaped." I continued sobbing, drooling snot and tears into my keyboard. What does it mean? I couldn't begin to tell you. But it might be subtitled "a safe passage home."

He felt a sharp stabbing pain in his neck as he crashed through the windshield. Already slipping into shock, he heard rather than felt his body hit the pavement. The pain in his neck remained intense.

Yet the angel of death was also an angel of compassion.

“Do you enjoy watching your son play soccer?” he asked, as he deftly slipped his hands into the man’s chest and began squeezing the air out of his lungs.

“Yes . . .” the man mouthed, unaware of his own breathlessness, desperately diverting his attention to the strange luminous being standing over him. As he gazed into its somber yet softly radiant eyes, his pulse quickened, the pain seemed to widen into a panoramic murmur, and the dark street scene faded into a concession stand at the auditorium where his son was playing forward for the home team. Though the strangeness of his surroundings struck him, his mind instead latched onto a stark sense of otherworldly familiarity. He heard an upswell in the crowd’s cheers as he turned to avoid bumping another in the busy line. A loud sound erupted from the loudspeaker, reminiscent of an air raid siren, and even louder still, the announcer’s voice and a tumultuous roar from the crowd. Though the words of the announcer’s joyful cries seemed foreign--or perhaps as words are heard by a newborn’s infant mind, not yet conditioned by language--he somehow knew that his son had scored and the entire home section was on its feet in triumph. He wanted to laugh, but instead of sound emerging, he noted the onset of a soft, yellow light that distantly responded to his gladness. As he slipped backwards into the space above, he smelled popcorn and saw the light approach from the edges of the scene, washing out the image of the periphery as it gently bled into the center. When at last the light swallowed him, the final images of happy faces flickered in his awareness like an afterimage, and then flashed out. Now he could hear his own glad laughter, distant and echoing. As a gust of wind from passing traffic blew a minor collection of leaves and trash past his face, the agonal stiffness in his body broke, and he was gone.