[4 Video Angels Lsm Ls Magazine Ira 01 01 Ira Sis In Woods
Hanne Rylaarsdam
Headstones on either side of the path leaned like a listening crowd as my boots crunched heavily on the gravel, loud as an invitation. My heart beat faster. I weighed the span of path ahead of me and behind me and stopped. This was the spot.
That evening, like this one, the sky was striped purple and dull orange as around me the graveyard sank into shades of blue. The church tower was square and black against the fading sky, the balding tree branches reaching over the wall like grasping fingers. I remembered the huge, hunched shape I had seen on the tower, and how it had lunged into the air above me, unfolding dark wings the size of sails and swooping out over the trees.
When we walked into the pub a flicker passed over the faces of everyone there before the ripple died and the rhythm of their conversations continued. It looked the same, from the orange and brown paisley carpet to the dark wood bar, varnish slick with pools of condensation and ghostly cider rings. It still smelled of beer and disinfectant.
I nodded, transfixed by her warm brown eyes. I watched her sit down beside Myra and Ralph Timms, who looked older and smaller and more papery than they had when I had last seen them, aged 18. A year or two before that Myra had accosted me one Saturday while I was waiting for the bus.
After a fitful night I woke up late, drank some coffee, and ate some flavourless cereal. I decided to go to the woods, and kept my head down as I passed through the village. As I passed the church I glanced over the wall and saw Mark dragging a white and red side of beef out from the back of his Land Rover. He hefted the glistening carcass onto his shoulder, and carried it into the church.
When I climbed over the stile from the road and onto the path through the woods, the past and the present started mingling more peacefully. The trees were still coated in shaggy lichen and wreathed with ivy and glossy holly branches. Most of the leaves had turned and fallen already, and I enjoyed their rattle and crunch under my boots, and the smell of the mould rising below.
It was round and shallow like an acorn cup. The outside was dense with twigs and whole branches, the inside was full of springy moss, lichen, and grey feathers. I knelt on the rim, which crunched under my knees but felt firm, and carefully climbed inside. I sat for a moment in the centre, then lay down, curled like a fern bud inside the great nest.
People were crammed in every pew, and as we walked towards the chancel each face turned towards us, flushed with anticipation. I saw that the tall Victorian painting behind the altar had been covered with an enormous fabric hanging embroidered with oak, ivy, and holly leaves in a twisting design. In the centre, surrounded by a spiked halo of orange, yellow, and gold thread, was a figure with a human body in a pale shift, and wings spread like an angel. But its head was too large and too round, and it wore a heart-shaped white face, round black eyes, and a pointed beak.
The altar below it, I noticed, was covered with meat. The carcass that Mark had been carrying had been hacked apart, and sat in bloody chunks on the altar cloth, pink and red slabs with white fat streaks. The half-ribcage lay open like a fleshy shell.
She kept hold of my hand as the song reached its crescendo, and the scraping claws drew closer and another screech tore through the church. My heart was pounding, and I watched the bell tower door with the same fevered anticipation as my neighbours. First the shadows flickered, then there was a blur of white feathers, and a huge, dark grey talon skidded clumsily on the top step.
Helen dropped my hand and walked to the pulpit, the villagers sat down again. Myra gestured to a space in the front pew and I sat down beside her and Ralph. As the giant owl shredded and gulped the raw meat from the altar, throwing its head back and shuddering horribly, Helen began to speak.
It swung its gigantic pale head from side to side with an eerie gliding motion, and seemed to look directly at me with its terrible, black, shining eyes. A shiver ran through my whole body and I was on my feet and running out of the church.
Sarah Jackson writes gently unsettling stories. Her short fiction has been published by Wyldblood Magazine, Ghost Orchid Press, and Tales From Between. She is a member of SFWA and Codex writers group, and co-editor of Fantastic Other magazine. She lives in east London UK and has a green tricycle called Ivy. Her website is sarah-i-jackson.ghost.io.
Andy Graber is a self-taught artist who also likes to write very short poems.
He attempts to add a lot of mystery and hidden beauty to most of his drawings.
His drawings can be interpreted however the viewer chooses.
It was not Christmas, it was not even wintertime, when the event occurred that for me threw sudden new light on the ancient angel tale. It was a glorious spring morning and we were walking, my wife and I, through the newly budded birches and maples near Ballardvale, Massachusetts.
That I am a scholar who shuns guesswork and admires scientific investigation? That I have an A.B. from Harvard, an M.A. from Columbia, a Ph.D. from Hartford Theological Seminary? That I have never been subject to hallucinations? That attorneys have solicited my testimony, and I have testified in the courts, regarded by judge and jury as a faithful, reliable witness?
We frequently took walks in the country, and we especially loved the spring after a hard New England winter, for it is then that the fields and the woods are radiant and calm yet show new life bursting from the earth.
There were six of them, young beautiful women dressed in flowing white garments and engaged in earnest conversation If they were aware of our existence they gave no indication of it. Their faces were perfectly clear to us, and one woman, slightly older than the rest, was especially beautiful.
Her dark hair was pulled back in what today we would call a ponytail, and although cannot say it was bound at the back of her head, it appeared to be. She was talking intently to a younger spirit whose back was toward us and who looked up into the face of the woman who was talking.
Neither Marion nor I could understand their words although their voices were clearly heard. The sound was somewhat like hearing but being unable to understand a group of people talking outside a house with all the windows and doors shut.
Perhaps I can claim no more for it than that it has had a deep effect on our own lives. For this experience of almost 30 years ago greatly altered our thinking. Once both Marion and I were somewhat skeptical about the absolute accuracy of the details at the birth of Christ.
The story, as recorded by St. Luke, tells of an angel appearing to shepherds abiding in the field, and after the shepherds had been told of the Birth, suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest (Luke 2:8-14).
Today, after the experience at Ballardvale, Marion and I are no longer skeptical. We believe that in back of that story recorded by St. Luke lies a genuine objective experience told in wonder by those who had the experience.
All of us, I think, hear the angels for a little while at Christmastime. We let the heavenly host come close once in the year. But we reject the very possibility that what the shepherds saw that night 2,000 years ago was part of the reality that presses close every day of our lives.
And yet there is no reason for us to shrink from this knowledge. Since Marion and I began to be aware of the host of heaven all about us, our lives have been filled with a wonderful hope. Phillips Brooks, the great Episcopal bishop, expressed the cause of this hope more beautifully that I can do:
As an angel announcer, it should not be missing in any decorated Christmas crib: the Archangel Gabriel. But what else is known about the angel who brought the good news of the Lord to Mary? Find out all you need to know about the Archangel Gabriel in this article
The word archangel comes from the Greek: An archangel is a divine angel with a arche means beginning and angel means messenger. An archangel is a divine angel with a leading position within the group. While ordinary angels take care of the individual, archangels like Gabriel carry command of God's far-reaching decisions for entire peoples or communities. According to the Bible, there are seven archangels. So it says in John's secret revelation (8:2): "And I saw that seven angels stood before God; seven trumpets were given to them. However, only three are known by name (Gabriel, Michelangelo, Raphael). In the hierarchy of angels, which dates back to the Christian author Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagita, the archangels are in the third group together with princes and angels.
The angel Gabriel is the herald of visions, messenger of God and one of the angels of higher rank. He makes God's message understandable to people and helps them to accept it with a pure heart. Until 1970, Catholics celebrated the feast of the Archangel on March 24. Today, the highest-ranking angel is commemorated in the church together with the Archangels Michael and Raphael on September 29 (Archangel's Day).
In the Islam, the angel Gabriel, called Jibrīl in Arabic, plays a central role. Because he acted as mediator of the Koran at the Prophet Muhammad. It is mentioned, for example, in sura 2: 97-98: There it should be expressed that Allah will become an enemy for all those who reject him and for his angels, including Gabriel.
According to Daniel's book (chapter 8), the angel Gabriel looks "like a man". In Christian art, Gabriel is depicted sometimes with male characteristics and features, sometimes female sometimes as a hybrid. His role as an announcing angel is characteristic of his representation. It is characterized by the white lily with which he is depicted when the birth of Jesus is announced to Mary, the mother of Jesus. The color white is here as a symbol of spirituality and purity.
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