More on: angels

To sing of origins is to set a course
to anoint a present where cows and angels
cowherds and shepherd kings
all shine in heaven’s light

It’s three a.m., that empty hour
when gangs of theologians prowl the streets looking for some stray angel to accost.

What angel will descend this night, will light this wire-strung alley to draw the fallen upward?

Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, “Surely God is present in this place, and I did not know it!” Shaken, he said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the abode of God, and that is the gateway to heaven.”                      …

Do you remember the seraphim in that Romanesque fresco we were looking at in the room of the Master of Pedret? They looked straight at us, hands outstretched, as if they refused to die under the effects of depigmentation that was erasing them from the kingdom of light. They’re symbols of love—Hosanna, Hosanna, Hosanna—peeling and…

And they rent their garments and painted their foreheads with ash in supplication and lament. The bright stone of the moon bent down, still upon the water where they stood to the knees in cold reflected stars. Breeze in branches made the sound of women wiping their eyes with paper or breathing in an icy…

I like this moment when there is nothing more I need to do, when I have emptied everything on the counter— eggs, bread, apples, and some chocolate I will give my children after homework— and I am free to study the checkout lady’s red face ever so slightly gasping for air, the quick hands of…

The first angel Ian drew was silent as the sun on empty fields of snow. Nothing was fast or slow, the world not yet begun. The second angel Ian drew sang green out of the ground. Birds of the air, rejoice. Let fire find its voice, each river its own sound. The third angel Ian…

He does not shampoo your carpet or show you how to brush it clean. He does not shower you with roses for Sunday’s wedding or funeral. He does not put his hand in your hair or ask if your spouse is at home. He only opens a book of words in two columns, one in…

The following excerpt is taken from Chris Hoke’s new memoir, Wanted: A Spiritual Pursuit Through Jail, Among Outlaws, and Across Borders, published this month by HarperOne. FOR SOME TIME I’VE IMAGINED all of us having a fragile nerve inside of us, like a spiritual antenna deep within our core. Some people, I’ve thought, simply have…