Angels among us

February 22, 2025

Photo by Matthew Henry on Unsplash

You don’t have to not believe in something you can’t prove is true.—RK

Ah. I’ve heard that a double negative is hard to interpret, and here I’ve thrown a triple negative at you. Don’t. Not. Can’t.

Here’s what the AI bot alerted me to about double negatives, with some concern:

A double negative is considered hard to interpret because it uses two negative words within the same clause, which essentially cancel each other out, making the intended meaning unclear and potentially creating the opposite of what was meant to be conveyed; in standard English, this is usually considered incorrect grammar and should be avoided for clear communication.

Sounds serious. I expect the executive order any day now.

But the interwebs then relents with this further thought:

This construction is widely considered unacceptable in formal language, but many writers and speakers use double negatives to intensify or emphasize a negative meaning…. So, in a way, the negative meaning is not intensified but rather made positive.

Huzzah! And oh, happy day. Now throw in another negative, and you and I could break the internet. But here is what my triple not-not means, and the thought for today: No one can tell you what to believe or disbelieve. That is entirely up to you. Why? Two questions: Who’s to say, and according to whom?

Years ago, I discovered the work of Caroline Myss, a teacher of mysticism and author of, among other titles, Anatomy of the Spirit. Once, during a series of lectures based on that book, Myss pointed out the foolhardiness of thinking we can pin down God and the mystery that surrounds us. “What makes you think you cross the street safely without the help of an angel?” she wondered aloud.

It’s a fair question, and it stuck with me. I can’t prove the existence of angels, even though as a young Catholic boy I prayed to my guardian angel every night. But I can’t disprove they aren’t all around us, maybe thousands of them, either. Neither can you, I humbly suggest. Who’s to say? According to whom?

And this is why I say you don’t have to not believe in something you can’t prove is true. It’s the essence of religious freedom, at least for us religious-minded folk, but it may be the essence of freedom over all. And it’s something no one can take away from you.

I still recall, vividly, the night when I was twelve years old and decided not to say my bedtime prayers for the first time in my life. No Hail Mary, no Our Father, nor these words, which are embedded in my consciousness in their sing-songy way:

Dear angel of God, my guardian dear,
to whom God’s love entrusts me here,
ever this night be at my side,
to light and guard, to rule and guide.

Amen.

I made a conscious decision to not call on my guardian angel to watch over me that night. This was no small thing: I thought there was a good chance I wouldn’t wake up in the morning. But I had reached a point where I had to know what was true—what to believe and what not to believe.

When I awoke the next day and found all my limbs intact, no devil jumping up and down with his pitchfork, and no angel sitting at the end of my bed glowering at me, my world changed. It’s a learning process, I suppose, this finding out that no one else owns the truth of us or our unique take on the world. I didn’t know it then, but I was free.