{"id":47568,"date":"2024-09-29T07:09:44","date_gmt":"2024-09-29T14:09:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/monkeymind\/?p=47568"},"modified":"2024-09-29T07:09:44","modified_gmt":"2024-09-29T14:09:44","slug":"of-angels-devas-messengers-between-the-worlds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/monkeymind\/2024\/09\/of-angels-devas-messengers-between-the-worlds.html","title":{"rendered":"Of Angels & Devas: Messengers between the worlds"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a>
Plaque with censing angels
Metropolitan Museum of Art
circa 1170-1180<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

I\u2019m much taken with the feast of Michaelmas, sometimes also called the feasts of the saints Michael, Gabriel, Uriel, and Raphael. Or, in short the feast of the Archangels.\u00a0It\u2019s an important holy day in my personal if wildly eclectic spiritual calendar.<\/p>\n

This festival touches on the liminal. The dream. The miraculous. I don\u2019t note it here on this blog every year as it rolls around, but I do revisit it every few years.<\/p>\n

An archangel is a chief or principal angel. Angels are supernatural beings who often serve as mediators between the heavenly and earthly realms. It appears angels enter Judaism and later Christianity through the influence of Zoroastrianism. Where they got it, I don\u2019t think we know with any certainty, but on first blush it does sort of look like they\u2019re a positive adaptation of local deities by monotheistic religions. Way better than making the devils of one sort or another.<\/p>\n

In Buddhism<\/a> we have devas. They don\u2019t precisely map angels. In the West there is a romancing of individual immortality that doesn\u2019t exist in the same way within the Buddhadharma. But basically all the religions of any antiquity have their supernatural aspects.<\/p>\n

And wherever they come from, the idea of spiritual beings that muck about between heaven and earth, whispering warnings, making announcements, and occasionally directly intervening, certainly has its appeals.<\/p>\n

And, I suggest, some realities.<\/p>\n

And so on this festival day I find myself thinking of what those mediators between heaven and earth might be for me.<\/p>\n

I have found in my life that we live and breathe and take our being within the meeting of two worlds. The problem is the two are not actually two. Nor, are they precisely one. So, when we open our hearts to the realities we find our vision complicated, mysteries emerge, the divine erupts into the ordinary.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve described this visit<\/a> with an old friend on several different occasions. It\u2019s an important moment for me.<\/p>\n

She\u2019s an Episcopal priest who is also a Zen teacher, attending a mass she celebrated. Among the small band of mostly elderly people I suddenly noticed \u201cthe whole universe was present. All the angels of Western faith and all the devas of the East were present and circling around that little altar that somehow became the navel of the cosmos.\u201d It wasn\u2019t precisely what happened. What happened was people gathered around someone praying with bread and wine. And.<\/p>\n

And those devas, those angels were there. Both. Both worlds. Many worlds.<\/p>\n

Later I was attending a Zen Buddhist<\/a> service where the doshi, the principal celebrant, was another friend, a Japanese Soto Zen priest. In Zen \u201cservices\u201d the liturgical act of reciting sutras, offering incense, and bowing, is all done with the intent of thanking and offering any merit surrounding those acts to the healing of the world. I watched my friend take a stick of incense and hold it to his forehead. The act itself was grace itself. So, simple. So pure. Just that. Just this. And, in that moment I saw the same thing, for me the same thing, as my friend the Episcopal priest holding in her hands a bit of bread. Worlds were taken apart and then put back together again. But, new. Fresh.<\/p>\n

And there, they were again. All the angels and the devas circling around\u2026<\/p>\n

There simply are moments when the two worlds come together. There simply are moments when the angels, the devas do indeed travel between heaven and earth.<\/p>\n

And then every act, every step, every word becomes a mystery, a communion, a sacred dance.<\/p>\n

The place between.<\/p>\n

Within our silent hearts we can witness the whole mystery.<\/p>\n

It is always waiting. All we have to do is enter the silence and witness.<\/p>\n

A song of the archangels\u2026<\/p>\n