Spiritual Sunday #12: The Boy in White

For more Spiritual Sunday posts, I recommend that you wander over to the website of Charlotte and Ginger, who host the Spiritual Sunday meme.

Because I do not blog on Sundays -- keeping it as the sabbath -- I use older posts (forgotten perhaps but hopefully still good enough) from one or another of my blogs that seem appropriate for this meme. Yes, I know I could post on Saturday instead, but typically I can pulled in too many other directions to post on Saturdays, or I have a post that has been written in advance and posts automatically on that day. In any event, it seems to work to bring out the older posts that many have not read before or ones from other blogs I maintain that readers of 100th Lamb may not know about. In 2009, I posted a true story from my childhood, called "The Boy in White." (It is in my book, Blest Atheist, as well. I re-posted it once for Fr. Christian's (Blessed Is the Kingdom) Sabbath Sunday meme (no longer available) and thought that, given the winter season now upon us, it might be an appropriate tale to share again.

Wishing you a peaceful Sunday!

Friends Are God's Way of Taking Care of Us

A friend sent me the following story. It is too good not to share even though neither of us knows the source other than that it is reputed to have been written by a Denver hospice physician. (The quote in the title is by Eeichido Oda, author of One Piece, in which Monkey D. Luffi, the protoganist, makes this comment about friends.)

Here is the physician's story:

"I was driving home from a meeting this evening about 5, stuck in traffic on Colorado Blvd., and the car started to choke and splutter and die - I barely managed to coast, cursing, into a gas station, glad only that I would not be blocking traffic and would have a somewhat warm spot to wait for the tow truck. It wouldn't even turn over. Before I could make the call, I saw a woman walking out of the quickie mart building, and it looked like she slipped on some ice and fell into a gas pump, so I got out to see if she was okay.

When I got there, it looked more like she had been overcome by sobs than that she had fallen; she was a young woman who looked really haggard with dark circles under her eyes. She dropped something as I helped her up, and I picked it up to give it to her. It was a nickel.

At that moment, everything came into focus for me: the crying woman, the ancient Suburban crammed full of stuff with 3 kids in the back (1 in a car seat), and the gas pump reading $4.95.

I asked her if she was okay and if she needed help, and she just kept saying 'I don't want my kids to see me crying! ,' so we stood on the other side of the pump from her car. She said she was driving to California and that things were very hard for her right now. So I asked, 'And you were praying?' That made her back away from me a little, but I assured her I was not a crazy person and said, 'He heard you, and He sent me.'

I took out my card and swiped it through the card reader on the pump so she could fill up her car completely, and while it was fueling, walked to the next door McDonald's and bought 2 big bags of food, some gift certificates for more, and a big cup of coffee. She gave the food to the kids in the car, who attacked it like wolves, and we stood by the pump eating fries and talking a little.

She told me her name, and that she lived in Kansas City . Her boyfriend left 2 months ago and she had not been able to make ends meet. She knew she wouldn't have money to pay rent Jan. 1, and finally, in desperation, had called her parents, with whom she had not spoken in about 5 years. They lived in California and said she could come live with them and try to get on her feet there.

So she packed up everything she owned in the car. She told the kids they were going to California for Christmas, but not that they were going to live there.

I gave her my gloves, a little hug and said a quick prayer with her for safety on the road. As I was walking over to my car, she said, 'So, are you like an angel or something?'

This definitely made me cry. I said, 'Sweetie, at this time of year angels are really busy, so sometimes God uses regular people.'

It was so incredible to be a part of someone else's miracle. And of course, you guessed it, when I got in my car it started right away and got me home with no problem. I'll put it in the shop tomorrow to check, but I suspect the mechanic won't find anything wrong.

Sometimes the angels fly close enough to you that you can hear the flutter of their wings."

I know how the writer feels every time God calls upon me to use His credit card.

Things Are Not Always What They Seem

The story below has run around the Internet for some time. The author, as far as I know, is unknown. Still, the story is worth the telling.

Two traveling angels stopped to spend the night in the home of a wealthy family. The family was rude and refused to let the angels stay in the mansion's guest room. Instead the angels were given a small space in the cold basement. As they made their bed on the hard floor, the older angel saw a hole in the wall and repaired it. When the younger angel asked why, the older angel replied, "Things aren't always what they seem."

The next night the pair came to rest at the house of a very poor, but very hospitable farmer and his wife. After sharing what little food they had the couple let the angels sleep in their bed where they could have a good night's rest. When the sun came up the next morning the angels found the farmer and his wife in tears. Their only cow, whose milk had been their sole income, lay dead in the field. The younger angel was infuriated and asked the older angel, "How could you have let this happen? The first man had everything, yet you helped him," he accused. "The second family had little but was willing to share everything, and you let the cow die."

"Things aren't always what they seem," the older angel replied. "When we stayed in the basement of the mansion, I noticed there was gold stored in that hole in the wall. Since the owner was so obsessed with greed and unwilling to share his good fortune, I sealed the wall so he wouldn't find it. Then last night as we slept in the farmers bed, the angel of death came for his wife. I gave him the cow instead. Things aren't always what they seem."

Similarly, God's answers to our prayers and the ways in which God provides for us may seem obtuse to us at the moment that they occur. (See, for example, the total misunderstanding of God's seeming inaction when a farm couple encountered difficulties, recorded in the short story, "When All Disappears.") In the long run, when the future unveils that which we do not know at the moment, we find that no matter what we had prayed for or hoped for, in the final analysis God knew best!

Yes, this is my 100th post on this site!

Angel of Beirut

Were I to have had any doubt about God protecting me, one incident in the Middle East would have dispelled it. I had traveled on university business from Jordan to Lebanon (a trip that put me on the “search her on every leg of every trip,” i.e. “randomly selected for search” list at airports worldwide for a while).

One morning in Beirut I started down a ghetto-looking street, devoid of vegetation or people, wondering if I had somehow misunderstood the instructions that the hotel clerk had given me in French. (French and Arabic are the two lingua francas in Lebanon. Of these, I chose to speak French. My mastery of French was greater than my capacity to communicate in Arabic, and I certainly looked more European than Arab although when I donned hijab — a headscarf — I could surprisingly pass for a Middle Easterner in looks.)

The stone buildings on the Beirut street stood stoically silent as if on guard, comrades of mixed color and size, humbly displaying the wounds of past wars for any accidental passerby. Some had chipped corners and broken stairs. Most were bullet-ridden.

As I walked down the street, a man suddenly appeared. Where had he come from? He looked directly at me and called out to me.

“You are not from Beirut, are you?” he asked in excellent English although his countenance was definitely Arab. He then commented, “You look Western.”

“I am a Westerner,” I answered cautiously, careful not to mention my American heritage. In the Middle East, I was always honest but never candid. If, in any given situation, I could pass for European or, as more often happened, a Russian, I did so. It was safer, given the war in Iraq and highly emotional reactions to Americans in the Middle East in general.

In response to my admission, the man replied, “In that case, you don’t want to be walking down this street. It would not be safe for you. Where are you trying to go?”

I crossed the street to where he was standing so that we did not have to continue to shout. He waited patiently, without moving. Coming up to him, I explained that I was looking for an ATM. He directed me to another street. I thanked him and walked away.

I thought he had remained at the spot where we had spoken, but as I was passing through the intersection only seconds later, I turned and saw that the spot was empty. How fortunate, I thought at the time, that he was in the right place at the right time to protect me. Later, I wondered how he could have disappeared so quickly?

But who was he? As Ashley Siferd wrote in her guest blog on this site last week, there is someone watching out for me. Wish I were worthy of it! Well, I may not deserve it, but I do love it!!

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Adapted excerpt from my book, Blest Atheist. Other excerpts from Blest Atheist can be found on my other blog, Mahlou Musings, where I have double-posted this post, as well, for convenience of readers of that blog, who tend to differ from readers here.

For more angel stories on this blog, click here. For more angel stories on the Mahlou Musings blog, click here and here.

Beth Niquette maintains a blog of angel stories that you might like to read, and I would point out that Sr. Lorraine is looking for angel stories for a book should you have any to share.

In conclusion, may you always be watched over by angels!

Blest Guest Wednesday #3: There Is Someone Looking Out for Me (Ashley Siferd)

Since early August, it has been difficult for me to post regularly although I have somehow managed not to let more than a few days go by between posts. Considering that my crazy travel schedule is definitely going to continue for a few more months, I have been able to bring a little sanity to the blogging part of my life by asking for help. Some wonderful fellow bloggers have been willing to write guest posts for me on Wednesdays, hence the name "Blest Guest Wednesday." As today's "Blest Guest," I asked Ashley Siferd, who has been with me on this blog from nearly its very beginning and who writes a blog called If Necessary, Use Words. I think you will find her life, her blog, and her post here interesting. Here goes:

There Is Someone Looking Out For Me

While I don’t recall ever having a face-to-face encounter with an angel, I do believe that they are present in my life. Of course I think that those human beings who carry out certain kind acts that occur on a daily basis (like holding open a door for someone with full hands or picking up a person’s books that fell) are angels, but in this context, I mean the spiritual, ethereal beings who serve God.

I have never doubted the existence of God. Sometimes I have found myself thinking about the question, “Well, what if there wasn’t a God?” but I have never ever thought of an answer. I know that He in fact is there because on numerous occasions, I have felt His presence or that of someone who was helping me, like an angel.

I am not a terrible driver. I will admit that I have a certain degree of road rage, yes. However, I am careful. I’m both a defensive and offensive driver. But being both doesn’t mean that I will avoid every potential hazard or dangerous situation. Once while turning left onto the two-lane highway, the lady in the left lane either completely forgot that I was there or just didn’t care. She started to drift over into my lane while we were turning, and there was nowhere for me to go. I had just enough shoulder to move over, but it wouldn’t have helped because she just kept coming!

Her car should have hit me. Miraculously though, it did not. Puzzling to me also was that I was not enraged with her. I felt a calm presence in my car. I was safe and not angry. I couldn’t explain it. That is when I first realized that Someone up there is watching out for me.

I’ve recently had a few “almost catastrophes” in the car. Most of them have been not so nice folk who have nearly t-boned me while I have been going through a certain intersection. If you are driving up the hill next to my dorm, you do not have a stop sign but everyone else does. I always slow down so that I don’t get smeared, but apparently some people just don’t like to obey the law. Amazingly (and miraculously!) enough, my car and most importantly my life has been spared. Protected.

The other night I was driving home on the interstate. I had been told that bad weather was coming, but when I left campus, it was nice out…what bad weather were you talking about? I had just merged onto the interstate when it began to rain. I don’t enjoy driving on the interstate at night. I hate driving on the interstate when it is raining. What do you know? It starts raining very hard while I was driving home at night. The perfect storm, I guess, right? Well I had never had that unfortunate combination before. All I could do was pray and sing along with my mixed CDs. Even though it took me a lot longer than normal, I made it home safely. I found out later that I had been driving through a storm that had prompted several tornado warnings in the area!

Now every time I get in the car, even if it is just to go down the road two miles, I ask my guardian angel and my extra driving angels to watch out for me and to be in the car with me. I pray for a safe journey for me and the other drivers around me.

I’m sure that there have been numerous occasions when my angels have hit the palms of their hands on their heads in bewilderment, thinking, OMG what are we going to do with this girl? What was she thinking? I know I’m oblivious to some things that go on around me, but they certainly are not. I’m thankful for their constant vigilance, but I’m even more thankful that God has granted His angels charge over me. Lord knows I need them!

The Boy in White

For some time, I have wanted to post about the boy in white, but I have hesitated because the story appears in my book, Blest Atheist, and I have generally posted excerpts from that book and my other publications on Mahlou Musings, rather than here. There are differing audiences between the two blogs, but I think the story can also appeal to readers of this blog. So, I will summarize the story here. You can find the longer, more complete story that is closer to the original in the book on Mahlou Musings.

The story of the boy in white intertwines with many of the leitmotifs of this blog. I began this blog with discussions of abuse (physical, sexual, and emotional) and blessings, and the story of the boy in white, which comes from my childhood, contains these leitmotifs as well as hints of the supranormal/angelic, which have also been discussed here at various times. Here is the story in brief:

On one bright, cold winter day, I dragged my sled three houses down our New England street to our neighbor’s teton-shaped hill, where all the children in our area of town gathered to race down to the mostly untraveled country road below on sleds, cardboard, or whatever else was available. I pulled my sled up the hill, waving to the other children in the neighborhood but mainly concentrating on the anticipated thrill of the ride. We were a community of children in the sense that we all knew each other, but our sport was an individual one. We did not share adrenaline-spurred shrieks of fun, but rather we quietly felt the thrill that defined the fun of New England downhill sledding.

That afternoon as I was pulling my one-person wooden sled up the hill a third time, I noticed a young boy, clad all in white and definitely not adequately covered for the sub-zero temperature that rosied our noses as they protruded from the scarves wrapped around our necks and faces and tucked into the hoods on our coats. I puzzled over the boy in white only momentarily as I mounted the hill and then the sled and began my third downhill run toward the road. Suddenly, about half-way down the hill, the boy in white, well blended with the surrounding snow in my visual field, began moving across the path over which my sled was about to speed.

“Get out of the way!” I yelled. I was as much annoyed at his being in my path as I was afraid of hurting him. He stepped back, and I briefly caught his sad look as I zipped past.

The memory is old and the details lodged in the mind of an 8-year-old whose perception of the world had moments of extremism. Therefore, I will not insist that every detail was precisely as I remember it today. What I do remember precisely, however, was being shaken by my own unkind words. I hurried home, towing my sled and a bundle of regret and concern. Somebody had to help the boy in white! He was wandering through the New Hampshire cold with no coat! He would freeze on the hill or anywhere else in our neighborhood. He seemed so oblivious to his surroundings and to the cold. He must be poor, indeed, I thought. We did not have much when we were children, but we always had warm clothes, and we were always bundled up, displaying a “cared for” look.

“Ma,” I called as I dropped the rope of the sled and ran into the house. “There is a boy on the hill without a coat. He is going to freeze! We have to help him!”

“Well, let’s go,” she said. I could not point him out through our window, so we set off for the hill. By the time we got there a few minutes later, however, he was nowhere to be found. We looked farther afield, but we saw no lad in white. Ma asked some of the other children, but none remember seeing him. I was at a loss to explain to Ma why he was not there, but she was not angry this time. In spite of her inability to love her children in an altruistic manner -- indeed, she was a highly abusive parent, one frequently emotionally out of control -- whenever someone in the greater community needed help, Ma was always jolly on the spot. Those two seemingly mutually exclusive attitudes — cruelty to her children and kindness to the community — made it difficult for us children to understand Ma. It also made it difficult for the community to understand our reaction to Ma for the community’s experience of her has always been positive.

As for the boy in white, I never saw him again. My friends insisted that he never was there, that he was a figment of my imagination that had frozen in the cold and was hallucinating snow images. Not a boy in white but a boy of snow. Still, I can see him today as clearly as I saw him on the hill so long ago. Today, I wonder if he was not there to teach me a lesson in kindness, in neighborly love — and to reveal perhaps why Ma may, indeed, live in grace, in spite of all her earlier cruelty and self-absorption for when there was a need for a Good Samaritan, Ma was usually the first volunteer. Perhaps God was using her, too? If God could use an atheist, as I was for so many years, then perhaps a believer with a temper, like Ma, might also be a potential instrument.

The long-ago lessons of the boy in white, unspoken lessons that allowed my subconscious, rather than conscious, mind to develop a morals-based value system, also showed me two important things that have dramatically shaped my life. First, I realized that day that there were two faces to Ma. That provided the foundation for the forgiveness that God required of me years later and which came easily once God pulled me out of my beloved bramble bushes. What God forgave me, I can certainly forgive others. Where God took me back, I can certainly take back others. Tit for tat gains nothing for no one. Forgiveness heals. That is one of the great lessons God has taught me on more than one occasion.

The second conclusion I came to all those years ago on the hill was that unless I was careful I would grow up to be the same hothead as Ma: my instinct had been to yell at the boy in white. Certainly, I did not want that. From then on, I worked hard to be the opposite of Ma. (Of course, I would tell her so from time to time when she was in the middle of beating, kicking, biting, or otherwise abusing me, and that did nothing to endear me to her; rather, I usually got an extra helping of the physical abuse as a result of my “big mouth.”)

How young I was when the boy in white crossed my path! Decades later, I can only conclude that God has always been with me. I have just been slow in seeing the linkages. I am grateful that now I can see them. Once again, God is spoiling me (and I love it).

Destiny!??

Just one more angel story from Sufi (Islamic) wisdom, please. I just cannot help myself. I love these stories.

This story is called "Escaping the Design."

A man who lived in Baghdad once saw the angel of death in the market. It was obvious that the angel of death was staring at him.

"He must have come to take me," the man said to himself. "I must escape!"

And so the man went quickly to the governor's house who was his friend. "You must help me. The angel of death is here in Baghdad. He has come to take me."

The governor said, "How would you like me to help you my friend?"

"Send me, send me away on your fastest horse to Damascus."

And so the governor ordered that the fastest horse in Baghdad was to be given to his friend. In only three days, a record speed, the man arrived in Damascus! No sooner had he arrived, however, than he saw the angel of death near the eastern gate.

"You actually are here," the angel said.

"What could you possibly mean?"

"Well, I was very surprised to see you in a market in Baghdad because I knew that I was supposed to take your soul three days later in Damascus. How you managed to get here this fast is beyond my comprehension!"




Many thanks to the bilingual author, Dr. Omar Imady, who translated them from the original Arabic and published them in a wonderful little book, Metaphors of Islamic Humanism, so an English speaking world can read them.


EM: The man tried to escape his destiny but could not. Predestination is a view held by Sufis and some others. What, if anything, do you think is pre-destined? I had to look up Catholic dogma on that question (obviously, I am still new to Catholicism). I was happy to see that it did not depart from my own understanding.

The Angel in the Desert

As promised yesterday, here is the Islamic angel story. It was published in a book, called Metaphors of Islamic Humanism (subtitle) by Dr. Omar Imady and is re-printed here with permission.

The title of the story is "The Angel's Instructions."

There once was a man who was traveling through the desert. The journey took longer than he expected and soon all his provisions were gone except for a small jug of water and a loaf of bread. An angel carrying water and food was sent with this command: "When he drinks the rest of his water and eats his last loaf of bread, give him the water and food."

And so the angel observed the man from a distance, waiting for him to drink his water and eat his loaf of bread. But the man was so afraid of finishing his supplies and being left with nothing that he simply couldn't get himself to do so. Whenever he was about to drink or eat, he would say to himself, "But what will happen to me if I were to finish my water or eat my last loaf of bread? I must hold on to them, they are all I have left."

And so he would continue to walk and the angel would continue to observe from a distance.

Sometime before sunset, the man collapsed on the sand. In one hand, he held that very last loaf of bread, and in the other, that small jug of water. The angel, still carrying the food and water, kept on observing until it was clear that the man had died.

"How strange are the children of Adam," the angel said as it ascended to the sky.


EM note: It all boils down to trust, doesn't it?

Lizzie's Angel Story

The lives of my children and me have been filled with blessings (e.g., my miraculous healings and the miracles experienced by Shura and a benefactor). We have also been been helped by real-life angels, i.e. God's kind and talented professionals, as in the case with Noelle and Doah, whose bios can be found here.

Most puzzling and heart-warming was the rescue of my oldest daughter by what appears to be a bona fide angel. Lizzie at the time was living, working, and attending school in San Diego. Coming home late one night after babysitting, she was hit by a drunk driver. The small truck she was driving was totaled. The drunk driver, who did not stop to help, had pushed her into a concrete retaining wall near a place where the highway was being repaired, and that had caused the truck to roll, coming to rest on the passenger door. Lizzie could not get the driver's door open, so she tried to escape via the window between the cab and the truck bed. As she started to squeeze through, she heard a male voice telling her to stop and let him help her. A brawny man, whom she assumed to be one of the road workers, kicked in the window, helped her out of the truck, and carried her across the highway, pointing out that her truck was right in the middle of Highway 5 and she could easily have been hit by approaching traffic because drivers would have had trouble seeing her in the dark. He stayed with her at the construction side until the ambulance that he said had been called showed up, helped her onto the ambulance, then left. She was taken to a nearby hospital, where doctors examined her and found her in perfect shape and the police showed up to take a statement. When she told them about the kind construction worker who had helped her onto the ambulance, the police interrupted her. "Ma'am," one of them said, "the ambulance attendants told us that they found you wandering dazed by yourself at the construction site." (The ambulance had been called by a passing truck driver.) Confused as to what could possibly have happened, Lizzie called Caltrans. No, they had no one working that site on that night, but they put the story on the front page of the Caltrans newspaper, asking for the unknown hero to step forward. No one did. Lizzie, being a psychologist, then determined that perhaps she had dreamt up the incident and had simply exited the truck on her own. She went to the place where the truck had been towed. It was so demolished that it would have been difficult for her to get out -- and the window was broken where someone had kicked it open! Perhaps she kicked in the window on her own and did not know it. However, there were no scratches on her body, and the angle was difficult (directly over her head because the truck had been on its side). So, no evidence of any sort. No clear answer. And there ends Lizzie's story.

I have room only for a summary here, but I wrote about Lizzie's angel in detail in two places. The first was published in a book by L. A. Justice in a fairly straightforward story called "Angel on the Highway." Later, I wrote a more artistic version of the experience in a story called "The Merging," which was published in a collection of short stories from the Middle East. (I was living in the Middle East at the time that I wrote it.)

Tomorrow, I would like to share an Islamic angel story with a very interesting twist. I hope you will return here to read it.

In the meanwhile, Lizzie now collects angel memorabilia - dolls, pins, cards, you name it!