Our angel-laden tree: a lovely annual
reminder to think even more widely about Angels
in the arms of a galaxy light years from
here?
Does the breath of such messengers summon
and challenge
creatures who think, but who most strange,
appear?
IF wings pulse and breath stirs unknown beings to listen,
prepared to respond to their Maker’s
desire,
that message will ring out with love, truth,
and wisdom,
and on that far world, peace and justice inspire.
About this poem
It is
strange how ideas come together sometimes. I had for a while been wanting to
write a poem reflecting on how things like tranquility which arises from being
beside still water, or awe at the beauty of a vivid rainbow, would translate into
another world with completely different forms of life and landscape: and then
to express that imagined experience as part of God’s cosmic economy. It was
proving very difficult!
Then,
at an art-based lecture in our local cathedral, I saw several representations
of the Annunciation with varied angels bringing God’s salvation message to Mary
The
ideas drew together. If we believe in a God who created the cosmos, the angels,
his messengers, would be unlikely to be mandated to confine their activity to
earth! Would they not be ready to approach any sentient beings anywhere in the
universe? So if they do carry messages elsewhere for that Creator (which does,
of course, assume a probability that somewhere in the vastness of the universe
there are such creatures of flesh - who will likely be totally different from
us in appearance) the messages the angels carry will be consistent with those
we have come to understand are those of our loving, just and all-wise God. Earth-centred
experience of a mystical kind is shifted into a material cosmic arena. Hence
the poem.
If you warm to the theme of the realm of God encompassing the whole of the known universe - and heaven, you might like to explore I Imagine The God Who Created the Cosmos.
If you warm to the theme of the realm of God encompassing the whole of the known universe - and heaven, you might like to explore I Imagine The God Who Created the Cosmos.
UPDATE December 2020
When this poem was written in 2015, the discovery of EXOPLANETS was a new field. An exoplanet is a planet orbiting any star other than our sun. Since then more than 4000 have been identified and the total number increases almost day by day. Many of those planets have moons as well! The implications of these discoveries are that there are almost certainly billions of exoplanets, so the likelihood of sentient life elsewhere in the universe rises with every new discovery. So, if we believe that God is Creator of the whole universe and Angels are His messengers, then it feels reasonably probable to me that His messengers will be able to take on forms that appear benign to other beings. Thus I look back at the writing of this poem with a deep sense of wonderment that it came to me when it did. Definitely food for thought!
There is a superb NASA website that records all the exoplanet discoveries and all of the Work in Progress towards increasing that number. You can find it at https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/
