Are you experienced?
Say hello to the angel in you.
Some years ago, I befriended a guy named Tony. We went to the same the gym. Tony and I never exercised together but had countless conversations in the locker room before or after our workouts. Marriages, careers, takes on life: Leave it to locker room philosophers to figure it all out (while hearing our knees crack as we struggled to put our street shoes back on).
It was an unlikely friendship. Tony, a short, bald, mustachioed guy who was proud of his Greek heritage and spoke in loud staccato bursts, was an unabashed fan of our 45th president. I, a bespectacled writer-type with an exercise-resistant paunch and a reserved nature I attributed to my Irish Catholic upbringing, was a dyed-denim-blue liberal from birth. Still am.
But all was forgiven, for Tony had some great stories from his younger days. There was the time he was at a New York City nightclub in the late 1960s and a young woman walked up to him out of the blue and asked him to dance. They bopped around to a few blues numbers — just fun, nothing romantic; Tony remembered that his dance partner struck him as a bit too free-spirited for his taste as she twirled about in her long skirt. But then the club lights flashed, signaling that a band was about to take the stage, and the young woman told Tony it had been fun dancing with him but she had to get up there. That’s how Tony learned he’d been dancing with Janis Joplin.
Another night and at another NYC club, Tony was standing alone down near the stage when another young guy in his twenties, a soft-spoken African-American man, asked him how he was doing. They chatted for a while. Tony recalled the fellow being pretty deep yet down-to-earth, just very friendly and easy to talk to. Then the announcer came on: “Ladies and gentlemen … please welcome … Jimi Hendrix!” The young man turned to Tony, smiled and said, “Sorry, I gotta go. Nice talking to you.” And he bounded up onto the stage and grabbed his guitar.
I was thinking about Tony and Janis and Jimi today because for various reasons I’ve been looking for angels lately, and you never know when one might cross your path. In a sense, Tony was an angel for me, because he showed me that I could disagree with someone’s politics but enjoy their company. Also, because enough years have passed since those locker room sessions and a few hundred miles now separate Tony and me, those days seem like a dream to me now. There’s a gauze over it all. It almost feels like I imagined him and all those conversations.
Janis and Jimi, so long gone, well, they’ve been angels for quite some time now, both having left the planet too soon at age 27. Yes, they struggled with demons. But who doesn’t? No, neither was always a paragon of virtue. But who is? I’ve never seen the job description for an angel, but I have a hunch I know what the Heavenly Resources Department would discuss with new applicants during the interview, and there is plenty of room for error.
Position: Angel, First Class
Employee Status: Exempt, but please note that overtime is expected.
Roles and Responsibilities:
Keep the steering wheel straight when your assigned human dozes off on the highway.
If two people start falling in love but back off, squeeze your wings to nudge them closer together again.
Create moments of doubt. Then plant the thought that doubt is the one thing guaranteed to create certainty.
Leave clues. Drop bread crumbs. Lead the human to life-changing decisions they think they thought of themselves.
Drop in unexpectedly. Show up in the offbeats. Then exit the stage. Disappear. Leave truth in your wake.
Make them wonder whether they’d seen a ghost. It’s good for the soul.
Sing the blues now and then. Channel the entire universe into a single cry. Haul a guy out onto the dance floor so later in life he can recall when he brushed against wings of joy.
Play a mean guitar. Turn chords into poetry. Chat with a random stranger so years later he realizes that even a brief candle can leave a lingering flame.
Other roles and responsibilities as needed. (Editor’s note: Suggested edit inserted by God.)
Artists such as Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix who visit earth for only a short while — who exit the stage early but leave massive trails of bread crumbs to help us find beauty and truth — I think that’s angel territory. I’m not sure why, but I don’t think angels ever grow old. Janis and Jimi died young but will be with humankind always; their music will be played, celebrated and reinterpreted years from now the way Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179) or Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) keep getting rediscovered. And to the discoverer, their music will feel fresh and new, the way profound art and truth always do.
Of course, Tony, Janis and Jimi aren’t the only angels in my universe — or yours. Everyone who has ever bestowed kindness on another or helps them see their way through to another day qualifies for the job. You can be dead or alive. You can be short or tall or paunchy. You can be just about average at everything.
The truth is, we are all angels — as Jimi announced at the end of his rock masterpiece, “Are You Experienced?” not necessarily stoned, but beautiful. You don’t have to be in an altered state to grab the wheel, gently guide someone else to understanding, do good works silently (like a ghost here and gone), or sing the blues. You don’t have to be extraordinarily gifted. If you’ve lived at all — and if you can read these words, clearly you have, or at least made it past fifth grade — you have been someone else’s angel. You have helped someone see that they are beautiful and worthy of love.
Think back on your life. Haven’t there been times when you sent a handwritten note, dried someone’s tears, celebrated someone’s milestone, held the hand of a grieving friend or relative, hugged someone who dearly needed it, walked up to the wallflower at a party, or simply sat and listened, one of the most angelic things one human can do for another? Or fill in the blank — you get my drift. Isn’t there at least one moment you are secretly proud of? Even if you don’t think so, I guarantee that if you and I had five minutes together, we would quickly uncover such a moment. Because my own little angelic contribution to the world as a minister-magician is to help people touch base with their own magic. Everyone has some.
Be assured, then, that you have qualified for the job. For isn’t it true that to be human simply means to be an angel in training? And if you’ve stumbled now and then in your attempts to bring heaven down to earth, remember that trainees are allowed to make mistakes. To err is human, divinely so.
Maybe we don’t recognize our angel-icity because it is only now and then that we spread our wings — not day in and day out like some full-time job where you suit up every morning in an employee locker room where the lockers are extra wide. Look back at that job description: Angels do best in the offbeats. We drop in, we drop down, then disappear. We leave clues in the form of random acts of kindness. And if every so often someone clips our wings, isn’t it amazing that in most cases our wings regenerate themselves and grow back by and by?
In his movingly triumphant classic, “Angel in Manhattan,” singer/songwriter Ellis Paul tells of a blundering angel who falls to earth in what may be the world’s most cynical city. “Call out the paparazzi, the television crews,” Paul goads. Despite being called a fake and having her wings torn at, the visiting angel responds with miracles and love. The mayor calls a press conference, where the angel is grilled. “It felt like a trial,” Paul sings, “but she smiled as the questions were called.”
"What do you say to detractors, who claim you're just some actor?"
She said, "The question here, is 'Do I believe in you?'"
We can’t all be musical geniuses or purveyors of some other outsized talent or impact. We can’t all be obvious angels. But we can believe in each other. I think one of the lessons life teaches us is that being kind, something within the grasp of every mere mortal, is simply the right thing to do. What we may not realize is there is a greatness to it, something wing-worthy. In the case of Tony’s stories about Janis and Jimi, angelic not for hit records, not for incendiary blues performances, not for legendary lives, but for asking someone standing over by the wall at a nightclub to dance, or chatting with a lone stranger standing at the foot of the rock club stage. And in Tony’s case, regaling someone who was looking for angels all those years ago about a couple of heaven-on-earth encounters. (I’ve always been searching.)
Humdrum ordinary things, these little acts. But they say, “I see you, which means I believe in you.” You don’t need wings to be an angel — or a wailing guitar, or a God-given full-throated howl of a singing voice. You just have to let your heart fly from one angel to another. As someone who delves in mystery, I can assure you that the distance is short, the impact long, and when you see the angel in someone else, you will, with gladness, come face to face with the angel in you.
Still working your magic and ministry! These posts are precious gifts. Thank you and bless you.
Just WOW! Wise and wonderfully human.