We Heard It From On High

Fake news angel. Angels aren't girls.

Did you know Angelology is a thing? The study of angels? I'm going to admit right up front: I suspicioned that, stacked up against the other sciences, it might lack rigor. But I was wrong. It's got rigor out the wazoo.

My primary source is an article by a gentleman who graduated from seminary school fifty years ago, became a pastor, died, and went home to be with the Lord, so he's got credentials. Dr. Keathley pointed out that just as there are many forms of life lower than Us, we should expect that there are forms superior to us, if not quite as fancy as God. If there was nothing between us and God, that would be like a vacuum. In space. Which would be silly. So dollars to doughnuts it's filled up with angels.

Not only that, but almost all of the heathen mythologies posit the existence of lesser deities. We generally ignore heathen mythologies, but they had to have gotten the idea from somewhere, even if they got everything else wrong, like God's first name.

But the possibility of angels becomes a certainty when we realize that the Bible told us so. Because the Bible is God's word. We know this because God himself told us, and God wouldn't lie outright, although he was not above messing with Job just for fun. Even the weird bits in the Bible that contradict each other are proof that it must be God's word, on account of He is mysterious. Slam dunk, in the can, mortal lock, shut the front door.

As supporting evidence for the existence of angels, we can start with the fact that God is Spirit; and there's a material kingdom, and an animal kingdom, and a human kingdom, so it stands to reason--I believe it's reason it stands to--that there is a spiritual kingdom also, with angels in it. (Dr. Keathley leaves out the viral kingdom and the phlegmish kingdom but those should remain below us, unless there is a terrible reckoning down the line.) Also there is the undisputed fact that a significant portion of Americans believe they have felt the presence of one or more angels, although not as many as believe in aliens and trickle-down economics.

Now THIS is an angel.

What a lot of people don't know is that eventually, if we play our cards right, we will surpass the angels and even be in a position to judge them, and wouldn't that be awesome. Our ace in the hole is that we were created in the image of God and the angels weren't. Yes, we just learned the angels are not physical but spiritual just like God, but if God weren't spirit he'd totally look like us. So once we're redeemed, we'll slide right by them into the end zone and score. Nanner nanner, angels.

I'm willing to go along with this up to a point, even the biblical fact that angels were created before the earth (so, over 6,000 years ago), but when humans arrange that convenient end run around the angels I surmise God's Word has undergone some editing. This is a suspiciously fine result for ourselves. I'm not anticipating it myself. I don't suppose if anyone were to redeem me they'd even get so much as a toaster out of the deal.

The Slovenly Host

A large percentage of people report being watched over by angels. Angels are supernatural beings deputized by God to watch over people, because even though he is all-knowing and omnipresent, he would like to have a day off now and then. In fact, according to Genesis, he invented days off. Ordinarily it would be a little creepy to think of things watching over you, but angels are presumed to have your best interests at  heart. They may drop the ball every now and then, sure. But they're not personally going to mess you up.

I don't have angels of my own. I didn't really need any; I was born lucky. But I have plenty of people watching over me. Probably hundreds. Technically, they're spiders. But I feel honored to have them. They just hang out by the ceiling and make little cottony nests and go about their tiny spider business, and a fine business it is: eating insects and keeping an eye on things. They can do that. They have eight eyes and they can look at a lot of different stuff at once. Angels get distracted, but spiders are on it. One pair of eyes checks the direction of light (in our house, it's coming from the TV). One pair has telephoto lenses. The third pair swivels, and yours don't, Mr. Fancypants Primate. The fourth pair gets basic cable. Spiders rock.

House spiders in particular may have evolved to live with myopic people. I have to really think about it to notice my spiders, and yet, when I do, they're all over the place. I'd say most of ours are on the ceiling in the TV room, although they drop down from time to time on little magical circus threads, just to get a closer look. Then they go back to the ceiling to watch over us.

In spite of the fact that I have had a thriving and undisturbed community of spiders in my house for decades, I'm not sure I've ever been attacked by one. Maybe. I've woken up with an itchy, persistent sore about three times. It's always on my butt, and it's not a big deal. I assume I roll over on them in bed, and so I can't say as how I blame them for objecting. But a lot of people are terrified by spiders, and hate them strenuously, even though they hardly ever hurt anyone. They'll do anything to keep them away and they want to kill the ones that make it through. They feel exactly the same way about Muslims. Spider eradication, in fact, is a plank in the modern Republican platform. It's too early in the campaign for specifics but they'll get around to it. Just as soon as they can figure out the best way of killing spiders while simultaneously poisoning the environment and enriching Dow Chemical, they'll get back to us.

Not house spiders, but a favorite photo, so here it is.

The Orkin site, which is devoted to providing the consumer with poisons for all manner of natural beings, solemnly intones that the "signs of an infestation" (I'm sorry, that is a loaded word: "presence" would have done nicely) include The Spider or The Web. Yes, that is true. In fact one of the surest signs of spider presence is the spider. The signs of an infestation of humans include Plastic and Massive Unprecedented Destruction Of The Environment. Orkin does not supply a Human-B-Gone. They totally would--ethics are not a consideration--but they aren't interested in exterminating the species with the wallet.

Spiders are entirely carnivorous. But they don't take down big game. They're all about eating insects and, significantly, other spiders. So if you really hate spiders, you should really like spiders.

Oh Yes I Chickadid

I'm as surprised as anybody. Apparently I am going to write about my chickadees again, just as I have every spring since I started this Murrmurrs enterprise, in spite of the fact that I have been observing chickadees closely for all that time and have nothing new to report. There's never anything new. I still can't tell them apart. I don't know if Ricky and Lucy are back again or if it's their grandchildren. I don't know who's egging and who's fertilizing. I don't know if they know.

We (Dave) took the chickadee house down for the winter and hauled out the old mattress and swabbed the decks and a couple weeks ago Dave began to get antsy about getting it back out there in time for nesting season. I didn't think they really started nesting until later in April, but we (Dave) put it back out there and fifteen minutes later a couple stopped by to have a look. And they looked ready to make an offer.

The birdhouse in question is mounted on a pole eighteen inches from the window in my writing room. The writing room is a place where I sit down and things either come out or they don't, much like another room in this house. What the writing process looks like, to the casual spectator, is a nearly motionless woman sitting in front of a computer with her head cranked to the side to stare out the window. The charitable observer might assume that she is staring into the middle distance waiting for her muse to strike, but she is not. She is staring at chickadees and not writing at all.

This writer does not employ a muse. Perhaps the chickadees are your muse, I've heard, and that is an adorable possibility, but there are muses, and then there are muses. Mine would be the sort that says "lighten up, dude, you don't have to get that done today--what say we go out and get hammered," which is a fun, if not useful, muse. It's all fine with me. I'm not the kind of person who thinks watching birds is a waste of time. But for all intents and purposes, I do not have a muse, nor am I aware of any angels working on my behalf. If I do have angels, they are shootin' the angel breeze with each other and shrugging and saying you're on your own, kid. (As long as we're on the subject of spiritual squatters, I would like to take this opportunity to deny emphatically that I've got the devil in me, despite what you may have heard. Those noises are coming from a perfectly natural bacterial process.) I'm getting through life without any supernatural aid that I know of, but I do have a matched set of spring chickadees I can count on.

And I do mean matched. This is the year I am bound and determined to observe them so strenuously that I will be able to tell them apart. I've started researching on the internet, but I'm not sure I can count on everything I read. So far I've learned that chickadees eat seeds (check), insects (check), and skunk

fat (whuh?), which I think would annoy the skunk, and who does that more than once? But I will soldier on. We here at Murrmurrs are very concerned about the rights of women and gays, extinction,

poop, war, and the fate of the planet, and we assume you are too. But if you would rather hear about my chickadees, stay tuned.

Because it's nesting season, and there's a lot going on right now in a sky near you. There's singing and dancing and fluffing and puffing and casing and chasing and if you haven't noticed any of it, it's time to pull your head out. Up. I meant Up.