In America in 2019, all you need to do to ignite controversy and recrimination is breathe, think, and go online. I wrote about an experience with someone I think might be an angel yesterday.

Once upon a time, that story might have lived for a few minutes without some pious grump wagging his or her finger at the author.

Not in our world.

Seconds after I wrote about a mystical encounter I had with a person I think must have been an angel, the wolves were out and howling. There is no idea in the world any longer that has the right to live in peace for a few minutes and just be considered, without being labeled, sneered at or corrected.

I do not  believe in ghosts or God, but I have always believed in angels, I  have often encountered them in my life and while I can’t  say for sure they exist,  or prove it, I can tell you I believe they exist, along with more people than I ever imagined.

You will have to make up your own mind about angels, I’m not here to argue with people about what I think.

Debra, a true child of social media, was one of the first to scold me for my post:

“If she was really an angel she would have explained to you that single use plastic is killing our planet. Please stop buying bottled water.”  Angels were nothing to her compared with plastic water bottles.

I told her that if my new friend was an angel, she would not let people tell her what to do or say, and I told her what I thought of people who tell me what to write, say or do, and she fled, as they usually do.

I hope she made it over to CNN or Fox News, they will love her there. Blame it on my angel.

George was sarcastic about it, the voice of the cynic: He said he found it hard to believe an angel would come down from heaven to help me buy some bottled water. Maybe, I answered, she had come to brighten up some grumpy people.

Just about everyone else who responded believed the woman I saw was an angel, and  there was all kind of testimony about the angels other people have seen.

The technical definition of an angel is a “spiritual being believed to act as an attendant, agent, or messenger of God, conventionally represented in human form with wings and a long robe.. .Some dictionaries define agents as a person  of exemplary conduct or virtue.

Angels in the Bible are instruments of both good and evil.

I guess I would define angels in  a broader and less precise way.

I think angels roam the earth looking ways to help, uplift, comfort or protect people. I think angels are spirits that have territories, they can take any form they like, human or ethereal, and look for all kinds of ways to help us, inspire us, guide us through trouble. Quite often, they take the form of compassionate human beings. They can be animals or ghosts or winds from the East.

I don’t know if they work for God, or if they are gods. I don’t know if they exist inside of us or outside. I don’t care, either.

The Kabbalah is full of angels, the Hebrew mystics believed that there is a structure to the universe and that angels are an integral part of the system. They guide us, send us messages, and intervene in our lives if necessary..

“There are both positive and negative angels at work all around us,” says the Kabbalah Center. “Which angels you attract depends upon your actions. According to The Zohar, when you hurt someone, break a trust or act cruelly, you beckon destructive angels in your life. Conversely, when you share openly and commit acts of loving-kindness, you attract positive angels and Light. Therefore, you are directly responsible for the angelic forces influencing your life.

These positive and negative forces existed in the world long before we were here. Some of the best known angels have existed forever: the Angel of Death, Archangels, and Guardian Angels. Different angels serve different purposes. While angels may step in to save your life, they can also help take you to the next step in your spiritual evolution. Sometimes, a problem is solved “mysteriously” or a “coincidence” leads things to turn in your favor.”

My idea is that if I believe in angels, they will come to me, and if I don’t, they won’t. I believe they do follow my search for a spiritual life. When I open a book certain I’ll never find the passage I want and find myself right on the page I was looking for, I am certain an angel interceded. This happens often to me.

The writer Lang Leav described the experience of encountering an angel in this way:

“One day you meet someone and for some inexplicable reason, you feel more connected to this stranger than anyone else–closer to them than your closest family. Perhaps this person carries within them an angel–one sent to you for some higher purpose; to teach you an important lesson or to keep you safe during a perilous time. What you must do is trust in them–even if they come hand in hand with pain or suffering–the reason for their presence will become clear in due time.”

I’ve learned not to argue my beliefs – angels or otherwise – with strangers, it seems pointless to me and intrusive. You either see angels or you don’t, you either believe in them or you don’t.  I don’t need for everyone to believe what I believe, and I make a habit out of not hating people who disagree with me or think differently.

Angels are not something anyone should be argued into or out of. There are all kinds of mysterious and inexplicable happenings in the world, there could as easily be angels as not.

I think to see angels one needs to be flexible and open, as I am working to be. I think angels can take many forms, my idea of an angel doesn’t involve politics, pre-planning or choice. To me, angels can inhabit the forms of teachers, dogs, strangers and passersby.

I believe Red is an angel. I think Sue Silverstein might be one. I think some of the beautiful refugee children, loving and trusting despite years of torture, abuse and poverty, might have angels inside of them or in their consciousness.

I might encounter an angel in the form of a feeling, or an insight, I often feel angels are sitting on my shoulders when I write, I feel a surge and clarity and excitement when I have a good idea or interesting thought. When I met Maria I thought at first she might be an angel, she was so good and loving and honest, and she made me feel so good about myself for the first time  in a lifetime. I doubt an ordinary human can do that without some angel waving a wand or blowing a kiss at them.

I got 30 or 40 comments right away, and almost all of them from people who had similar encounters with angels. It is much more common than I thought or then most people might think.

Here is one story that stuck in my mind from a mother out West:

When I was young , my daughter had some medical problems. They thought she had a brain tumor and in fact she did have a small growth on her pituitary gland that messed up some functions. I remember vividly that I was sitting in a waiting room late at night alone while they performed a test for which they had to put her under. I don’t remember when I became aware of the fact that there was a lovely senior woman on either side of me just making conversation and offering reassurance but they were there the whole time I was waiting. The room had one door and the doctors came to speak to me when she was safe and the test was over. There was no possibility of anyone exiting the room because we were blocking it. I turned before leaving to go see my daughter to thank the women for their kindness and they were gone. I know they were angels. There is no doubt in my mind.

I heard story after story, many reflecting my own experience at Walgreen’s Saturday.

George missed the point. My angel was probably buying something in Walgreen’s, that’s why she was there. Fifty feet away, she heard me tell the cashier I brought the wrong water, and  she  used her powers to scan the shelves and see that I was wrong. She transported  herself in seconds to stand along side of me and tell me that I had the right water.

I was filled with warmth and light and happiness, feelings that far transcended the issue of whether or not I bought the right water. She  just happened to be there and did some good, hearing things she couldn’t have heard, appearing suddenly in places she couldn’t be. And then she went off on her rounds.

She was radiant and beautiful in a very different way. I had the sense she could be in many places at once.

But she was an angel, in my heart, I know it. I would not presume to tell anyone else to know that or believe it, I can only speak about it from my own heart.