Angels Unaware

Strangers, Angels, Visiting Firemen

angels Unaware

“Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing so some have entertained angels without knowing it.”—Hebrews 13:2, NRSV.

Early in our medical careers, as my husband and I had the opportunity to help develop departments at Arkansas Children’s Hospital, we spent several weekends a month recruiting out-of-town physicians seeking positions in our specialties. 

We also had three small children we wanted to be with, especially on the weekends. So we usually took our children with the visitors on tours of Little Rock and treated them to lunch in the afternoon. We often ate at a hotel restaurant with an indoor glass elevator and escalators. When the children had enough to do at lunch, they entertained themselves by making several bird's-eye-view trips up and down the hotel's elevator and escalators. 

I don’t know if this term is still in fashion, but we would refer to the visiting physicians for our children as “visiting firemen.” The phrase is still a common part of our family vocabulary.

Many of these “visiting firemen” indeed became “angels unawares,” as the King James Bible translates this verse from Hebrews. We had no idea how we would be able to work with those we were recruiting, but we took a leap of faith. They changed and healed children’s lives and influenced us as well. Several came from other countries.

They helped us put out fires when the politics of medicine reared its ugly head. They taught us, by their presence, to be grateful for them every day as we tried to solve, identify, and change the course of children’s diseases, consulting with each other in community rather than making decisions by ourselves. Their presence and wisdom transformed me from an anxious person to a grateful one. They brought peace, one of the fruits of the Spirit in Galatians 5. 

The most significant gathering of strangers we now encounter is at St. Mark’s food pantry. But soon they, too, are no longer strangers. Many, indeed, are angels. They ask for prayer, yet know how to pray better than we do. They have very little, yet they share it with others. Many bring their neighbors who cannot drive. They repeatedly tell stories about how blessed they are. Perhaps this is a sign of an angel who lives in gratitude.

I share with spiritual friends that I have learned most often from strangers that gratitude is a path to our soul and the God within us.

If you or a loved one became sick during this pandemic, you met many strangers who were angels, unaware. But we don’t need to get sick to see the angels. They bring our mail. They work in our grocery stores, pharmacies, and food pantries.

Today, we also remember Macrina Wiederkehr, who died near this time in 2020. Her book, Tree Full of Angels, speaks to what we are all trying to say.

Joanna. Joannaseibert.com. https://www.joannaseibert.com/

X-Ray as Art

X-Ray as Art

Guest Writer: George Taylor

white Calla Lilly

In 2002, my “photography” took another unexpected turn when we acquired a digital fluoroscopy unit (a device that captures still and video X-ray images). We needed a moving target to simulate blood flow in the arterial system, so we put two fish in a bowl and took an X-ray movie of them swimming around. The resulting image was a lovely translucent yin-yang pattern formed by the two circling fish. 

I became fascinated by the potential of radiography as art and began experimenting. X-rays allow us to use highly sophisticated technology to create a photogram, one of the oldest and simplest methods of reproducing an image.

I began to image flowers on a whim. Whatever the underlying drive, one thing is for sure—I had an epiphany that day. When the first image appeared on the computer screen, I immediately recognized the haunting similarity between the plant and animal kingdoms. Radiographic images reveal, in stunning detail, the archetypal structures and patterns repeated with elegance and precision across every living organism, from the radial symmetry of the human brain to the unfurling splendor of a fiddlehead fern.  

I began a single-minded campaign to image just about everything I could fit under the X-ray machine—from endless varieties and configurations of plants and flowers to seashells. In a sense, I became obsessed with identifying and cataloging how structure, texture, color, and function move fluidly across boundaries, from plant to animal, from animate to inanimate—all with incredible grace, continuity, charm, and captivating beauty. Their inner structures, hidden from view in visible light, become their most striking features.

At times, these ordinary objects take on a new identity. A flower becomes a puff of smoke or an underwater creature, swirling with its partners in an aquatic ballet. A sand dollar becomes a delicate piece of lace, and an old handmade lace mantilla resembles the X-ray tracings of subatomic particles in a linear accelerator.

Finally, X-ray art has enabled me to use the same technology I have used for 40 years to detect diseases in children and to transform it into a means of revealing the inner beauty of nature.

To see more X-ray art, I invite you to visit my website <taylorimaging.net>, à browse à X-ray Art.

George Taylor, MD

Joanna joannaseibert.com

Silence, Secret Easter Garden

Silence, Secret Easter Garden

Langley in the Secret Garden at former College of Preachers

“What will your secret garden look like? The point is to begin slowing your life and focusing your attention. Listen, and in the quiet, you will hear the direction of your heart. The garden of silence is always there for us, patiently waiting.” —Anne D. LeClaire, Listening Below the Noise: The Transformative Power of Silence (Harper Perennial, 2009).

One of my favorite young adult novels is The Secret Garden by the American-English author Frances Eliza Hodgson Burnett, who also wrote Little Lord Fauntleroy and A Little Princess. The Secret Garden tells the story of an unloved ten-year-old English girl who, after her parents die, is sent to live with her grieving uncle in his remote country home on the bleak moors of Yorkshire. Her unhappiness, aloneness, and the heartache and isolation of those around her heal when she begins caring for and restoring a secret garden on the manor house grounds.

I watched the 1993 British film starring Maggie Smith with my daughter and granddaughters, and later saw the play with a granddaughter. This story resonates with the child within us, the creative part of us—the side we so quickly abandon for more pressing matters, which is a significant connection to the divine within us.

The Secret Garden also shows how nature’s sounds, smells, and sights can quiet and calm the grownup “wounded committee” in our heads—and heal and transform our inner child. We all should have a secret garden, a place to gently reconnect with the God within ourselves and the divine in each other. It is a safe place where the Spirit’s presence is more easily felt, as Psalm 32:7 says: “You are a hiding place for me; you preserve me from trouble; you surround me with glad cries of deliverance.”

Talking about our secret garden, our hiding place—often a place of silence—can be an opening to the divine within spiritual direction.

So many friends planted new gardens during the pandemic. Nurseries and garden centers were thriving. As we continue to plant and watch them grow, let us also contemplate our own secret garden, where a very holy part of us lives and grows. 

Anne Gornatti’s Secret Garden

Joanna. Joannaseibert.com. https://www.joannaseibert.com/