There’s an angel that appears to me once in a while.  This being has an extra-terrestrial look about it — rounded head, big eyes, smooth pale body.  I saw it first in 1979, standing over me while I slept.  “Get up,”, it urged me, “there’s somebody here, get up”.  I dragged myself from a groggy, foggy alcohol-induced sleep to discover my backdoor had been smashed.  I screamed and screamed.  The neighbors came.  I don’t know what happened to the intruder or the angel.

My mother saw this being in a dream at the time of her cancer diagnosis.  She and I walked in her garden the following weekend.  “An angel came to me,” she said.  “He told me I had a year to live, and I’m okay with that.”  She described the visitor and I could not help smiling.  I told her about my guardian and we fell silent.

The same angel has appeared to me in dreams over the years.  It always bears a message to me, from God, I suppose, or perhaps the Universe, or the great cloud of divine life from which we all emerge and to which we will all return.  I pay attention — after all, that angel saved me once, and in point of fact, my mother died 11-1/2 months from the day she had that dream.  So I think that angel knows something and pay close attention.

I saw that angel in my dreams last night.  It stood to one side as I struggled on a brambled path.  I glanced over at it once, and I think my expression might have been accusatory.  The angel merely held my gaze until, in my dream, my face relaxed and a sense of well-being overtook me.  “Be grateful every day,” the angel suggested.  “Be grateful for something, every day.”

Call this angel a figment of my imagination.  Call it my subconscious, my mother’s subconscious, or an hallucination.  I don’t mind.  You can think what you like, I’m perfectly comfortable even if you want to consider me delusional.  I’m still going for gratitude.  Beyond complaint-free living all the way to living in a state of grateful grace.  Come along, if you like.  The path might be strewn with rocks and thick roots and we might have to struggle over some rocky cliffs.  But there will be a stunning vista at the end of the road, and a pool of clear, sweet spring water, and a lovely tree beneath which we can sit and rest.  And there will be angels.