There is an angel standing at the gates of paradise, who holds a double-edged sword and prevents any of us mortals from entering. God himself stationed the angel there long, long ago as a consequence of mankind’s fall from grace. I think about this angel a lot now, even in the daylight when I’m normally concerned about the terrestrial problems and issues of this world; but especially I find myself thinking about this angel during the night, when my thoughts and my emotions are not so affected by this world’s gravity.

At night I see him standing at the gates impenetrable to my advances; he stands there like towering flames of fire, flashing his swords this way and that. Those blades cutting through the air with violent crashing. They sound like helicopter blades punching the air. They do their job. I’d like to return. I’d like to enter again. But who am I? It seems a lost cause, I wonder…how can I get past him? How can I get back inside?

There is nothing that matters to me quite so much as this; no question, no issue nearly as important to me as getting back inside those gates. However, truth be told, I have more than a passing suspicion that it is a good thing I’m not allowed back in there, in my present condition. How would I respond to that perfection; to that sublime purity, that absence of sin which permeates that world? How could I live again in Eden? I am so far from that perfection. My thoughts are not pure. My own sinfulness might incinerate me—justly—before I could take my first full stride through the gates.

But even if I were somehow allowed to enter for a moment—as a cosmic test, or as a joke—how might a conversation with a passing angel go? It would be an embarrassing affair, at the least: trying clumsily to elevate myself to his level of virtue, to match his integrity and blessedness; attempting to hide my pettiness; pretending to understand the purity of his perception; and trying to comment upon eternal truths with him, but from my narrowly circumscribed perspective. I fear that I couldn’t hold up my end of the conversation. It would become quickly evident that I didn’t belong there, not yet anyway, not as I am today.

So, it is very likely a good thing that I can’t get past that angel. God only knows. Still, I greatly desire to do it. But I’m distracted from these thoughts by the sound of the rain hitting the window pane, and the faint gray light gathering beyond the trees, slowly revealing their shapes and networks of branches in the brightening dawn, reaching towards the sky and each other. What if I could travel through the air like a bird and dance between the leaves, laughing like the winter wind? A group of tiny birds gather to eat the suet hanging outside my window pane. Ten, fifteen, twenty, coming and going from the nearby branches. Gliding across invisible waves which carry them lightly through the air to their food, disappearing again into the dense forest silhouettes. Some see me through the window watching them. Their tiny black shining eyes reflect awareness. We’re alive, little birds, you and me. We are close enough to whisper. They tweet and twitter; they flap and flutter. I hold my breath and hope. I could touch them but for the glass between us. The suet cage sways back and forth from its thin metal chain, as the last of them vanishes into the neighboring woods.

I close my eyes now. I was so near to something just then. There was a chance in that moment. I had felt it. I could taste it in my soul, the taste of a possibility. The warm air of the room fills my lungs as I inhale, while searching myself deep within, searching to find something special which is true, which resembles what exists behind the gates. I strain to find it and am unable, so I open my eyes again and glance at the television. It was the morning news. The anchors moved their lips seriously, but I could hear nothing. I had muted the sound. I usually mute the sound. I don’t like what they have to say. I smiled because I couldn’t hear them. I don’t think they understand the stories they are telling; they are too preoccupied to even begin looking for that gate.

~FS