EDITED to change “seeking” to “socking,” because apparently Maclin Horton can read and I can’t!

I don’t want to be any angel but my relations with them have improved over a period of time. They weren’t always even speakable. I went to the Sisters to school for the first 6 years or so… at their hands I developed something the Freudians have not named–anti-angel aggression, call it. From 8 to 12 years it was my habit to seclude myself in a locked room every so ooften and with a fierce (and evil) face, whirl around in a circle with my fists knotted, socking the angel. This was the guardian angel with which the Sisters assured us we were all equipped. He never left you. My dislike of him was poisonous. I’m sure I even kicked at him and landed on the floor. You couldn’t hurt an angel but I would have been happy to know I had dirtied his feathers–I conceived of him in feathers. Anyway, the Lord removed this fixation from me by His Merciful Kindness and I have not been troubled by it since. In fact I forgot that angels existed until a couple of years ago the Catholic Worker sent me a card on which was printed a prayer to St. Raphael. It was some time before it dawned on me Raphael was an archangel, the guide of Tobias. …The prayer asks St. Raphael to guide us to the province of joy so that we may not be ignorant of the concerns of our true country. All this led me to find out eventually what angels were, or anyway what they were not. And what they are not is a big comfort to me.
–letters of Flannery O’Connor