...there are at least two ways to understand what it means to have our hearts broken. One is to imagine the heart broken into shards and scattered about—a feeling most of us know, and a fate we would like to avoid. The other is to imagine the heart broken open into new capacity—a process that is not without pain but one that many of us would welcome. As I stand in the tragic gap between reality and possibility, this small, tight fist of a thing called my heart can break open into greater capacity to hold more of my own and the world's suffering and joy, despair and hope.
~ Parker Palmer in A HIDDEN WHOLENESS: THE JOURNEY TOWARD AN UNDIVIDED LIFE
I see the angels as the creating presences within all things and all things as evidence of their presence. It is not, I believe, that all things are left on the doorstep of the earth by the angels without a trace of their source. Angels are the messengers who are also the message; they are the things of the world in their activity. Seen through spirit, all things are angel activities, and for that reason, the material world makes a spiritual difference. The work of angels takes place in the invisible; however, traces of angels always carry the mark of an authentic symbol, a uniting of what is above with what is below. As nature imitates the heavenly, so must we learn to do so consciously. The first discipline to be learned to achieve this capacity of working in harmony with the angels is meditation.
