Angels Who Watch Over Us All

This time of year we see storefront displays with angels, their wings expanded in glitter and feathers, gossamer wings like they were faeries, hands clasped in prayer or delicately playing a lute or slim trumpet. I've always been fascinated with angels, and believed in Guardians ever since I was a small child.

We all have times in our lives when we feel someone is looking down on us. There are certain things that happen, that seem so incredibly fortunate that we cannot explain them any other way. In romance, there are miracles of the first chance meeting, that first sparkle in the eye, the time when one thought and resulting feeling travels from one person's heart straight into the heart of another. Little fat cupid is an angel, depicted as a child with a bow and arrow, displaying his impetuous side, forever smiting men and woman, speared and tethered, unable to flee from the bonds of love.

Angelic lore predates the Bible. We've seen them described in many religions. Winged, sporting halos in Western religions, wingless in Asian religions. You can find angels described in Islam and in Hebrew writings. Hindus and Buddhists as well. Early angelic art shows them living in tall trees, or with wings, depicting they live on a different plane, closer to the limitless and mysterious sky.

Early Christian texts tell stories of Lucifer falling to earth with a third of the angel population of heaven, indicating some angels turned dark. These revengeful and manipulative beings are said to prey on man  through trickery and ill will. Some angels are bringers of death and destruction.

While writing my first book, Heavenly Lover, I explored some of the theories I'd run across as a child, as well as stories told me by my grandfather, and read to me by my father. It became something I thought about: what would happen if an angel fell in love with a human?

This became the basis for my story. I set up the world, Heaven isn't 100% perfect by design. The Underworld isn't 100% evil by accident.  I wanted my angels to be Guardians and dark angels. I wanted them to have a relationship with a Higher Power I call Father. And I wanted them to have been human at one time, but have their memories erased upon entry to Heaven. To add a twist, I put an angel cemetary in Heaven, and made the heroine have some memories of being human she wasn't supposed to have. There was a small tear in the "perfect" fabric of the universe.

I created a Heaven with a Grand Playhouse, various teaching locations, including a greenhouse garden and huge potting shed and a radio station. I wrote all this background without using any of it in the first three books I've written. But I know this place, have drawn a map of it and have experienced (in my dreams) sitting through plays they perform there every Friday night: Peter Pan. This is the story about a boy who never wants to grow up, and about his Guardian who is willing to die for him. In my version, Tinkerbell is the lead character, not Peter Pan. My angels often fight for the chance to play that part. And in my Heaven, little children who become angels are in a cherub choir, and they are plied with unlimited candy, since they never get cavities and will never grow old. They are spirited, unruly, and run around with large pockets filled with sweet treats. Their smocks are wrinkled and smeared, their cheeks sticky and smelling of sugar.

In my second book, just released, Underworld Lover, the dark angel finds a human whose soul he cannot take. He discovers, like in the first book, that there is a higher calling than being an angel. All the important battles, all the creative variety occurs in the human world, not in the Underworld or Heaven.

I am writing the fourth book now. I have a mistake occurring. My hero was transformed into a Guardian angel in error. He had been attacked and thought dead. But he wasn't. He was already immortal, but got fitted with wings and forced into classes by a Guardian trainee. He tries to hide his attitude. But he harbors inferiority feelings about being a big mistake, and doesn't want anyone to see it, until he goes over the edge, which is where the story starts.

I hope that you enjoy this little taste, an excerpt I wrote last year at this time, which will be part of Book 4 of the fallen angel series: Gideon. Here we have Gideon explaining an angelic symbol to his lady love. Perhaps you'll recognize it.

GIDEON’S LOVE

“There is a symbol that started with the angels. You won’t find it in churches or cathedrals, but it is ours, nonetheless.”

His warm brown eyes nudged their way into her heart, his dark lashes fluttering up and down as he spoke, fanning the flames of her desire for him to take her again.

“What is it?” she asked, afraid to speak, breaking the warm space between them.

“Guess.”

“Give me hints.”

He smiled. “An angel in quiet contemplation, bowing in reverence to something more precious than life itself.”

She closed her eyes. “I can’t see it. I see the angel but I don’t see the symbol.”

“Watch.” He delicately held the pink fingers of her right hand, and softly pressed them around a No. 2 yellow pencil that suddenly appeared. He leaned into her, his chest against her back as she sat on his lap, his other arm gently residing on her left hip. The simple, intimate act was stirring. She inhaled deeply as he pressed the graphite vein to the smooth white vellum of the sketchbook materializing on the table. The scratch became an arched curve, like a backwards comma.

She’d seen that pattern before. It was the line of radiance the orange sunglow gave to the outline of one wing, as he stood in a golden field late in the afternoon.

A smile slowly curved the ends of her lips. He was watching every movement she made. Her mouth felt naked and quivered to mate with his. He lowered his head, his long sensual fingers still cradling hers on the page. Her breathing became notched and ragged as his face approached hers and she drank from the softness and the wonder of their love. His warm flesh melted into hers and her mouth opened to him, like her soul opened to him to touch her in every way.

When he pulled back, she was filled with loss. He focused down to the drawing and applied pressure to her fingers again.

“And now for the other one,” he whispered.

Under his slow, deliberate tutelage, he made another curve, opposite to the first one, beginning and ending by touching the two corresponding spots of the other image.

And there it was, the symbol she would forever associate with angels until her last days:

A heart.

            It wasn’t a symbol of death or sacrifice. No struggle. Part curved, part straight. Two halves becoming one, touching identical places on the other and becoming one whole symbol from two separate and distinct parts, something neither could do without the other.

            She had seen him stand in front of her naked with his head so bowed his wings looming above, arching with grace. His strong shoulders would cast a shadow of power over her, his head lowered in complete and utter devotion.

            Pure love.

            Gideon’s love.

            Everlasting love.