The Angels Have Gone Away
The angels don’t play here anymore. The angels have gone away.
They flew away when the selfishness and shallowness rose up in clouds and blocked the last feeble tendrils of sunlight that once shone on me. Now my everydays have turned into discordant dirges defining a darkness where only demons and devils dance to the discordant music.
The angels don’t play here anymore. The angels have all gone away.
Musing now…
I can barely remember when the angels flew near and watched over me and I lived blessed by their love. I can vaguely remember the beautiful silver glint of the sun’s reflection off sweet golden angel wings. It was a beautiful and fortunate time in my life yet I was blithe and cavalier and I took those lovely angelic halcyon days for granted. I deserved them after all — I had them coming to me. The universe owed me.
In my life the angels have come to visit me quite a few times but I never appreciated them when they were here. I took them as my due — I was special and I deserved the blessings of life.
But then I realize it’s not just my life the angels have abandoned; there’s a dearth of angels in this sad world of selfishness, avarice and hate.
On the news site yesterday, I saw a ten-minute clip of millions of starving children in Africa and didn’t see a single angel there. What I saw were ravaged children with bloated bellies, being caressed by weeping desperate mothers who were more than helpless to provide nourishment to their own babies. How often those poor people have had to watch their children die… hearing that last weak and futile scream for something, anything, to eat.
But the world is awash in money and food is everywhere – wasted everywhere. Still I watched as a a poor mother tried to feed her family of three young children with a pitiful soup made from a six tiny leaves she plucked from a sickly tree that grew nearby. This will be the last meal she’ll make from that tree this season. There are no more leaves left on that tree.
I watched as a mother’s tears dripped onto the distended belly of her starving child and watched as the mother wailed in abject grief when the child died in her skinny weak arms. I watch as the mother’s tears ran in rivulets down that poor child’s belly.
We spend trillions on wars and cars and guns and cell phones and makeup and gourmet cuisine. We deserve it – we are somehow the chosen ones, but is only by dumb luck we weren’t born in a place like those poor mothers’ children. It is only by providence that we never did haved to feed our children with a few shriveled leaves plucked from a sick gnarly tree.
While I’ve been busy on my tablet and you’ve been busy on your smart phone, ten-thousand more poor, helpless children died and the most we can say is –“What a shame. Pass the butter please. What can I do about it?” The biggest shame is that’s what we always say — we shrug and say “it’s too bad” and go back to worrying about the really important things like a new computer, our Facebook pages, buying a new phone or finding a new person to date – you know “the one!”.
The angels don’t play here anymore. The angels have gone away.
I didn’t recognize them when they were here before. All the good things that came my way when the angels were here have long since been perished ins swirling clouds of shallow selfishness and the endless quests for self-validation and self-gratification. That quest, of course is always futile. The angels don’t play here any more. They’ve long since flown away.
Somewhere the sun still shines pallid and weak. It will never be as sweet or as warm or as bright as it was when the angels graced my life. The demons and the dark sad, sick birds of death circle around waiting for my spirit to relinquish the last frail ounce of hope I have managed to keep inside.
The angels don’t play here anymore. There aren’t many angels left in this world of deep yet shallow darkness. While I wrote this, 12,000 babies just starved to death while our politicians spent enough on getting elected or re-elected in that same span of time, to have saved every single one of those poor, dying children and ten times as many more.
It’s easy to say, “what can I do about it?” and carry on with our lives and our shallow pursuits. But I can’t seem to can’t get the images of that mother’s tears rolling down her dying baby’s bloated belly. I look around. I seems to me we’re all so selfish and self-centered, and some so greedy, and some so needy, that we actually believe that saying “what can I do about it?” is a valid excuse. With excuses made we then can go about our lives and forget how terribly those poor starving children suffer. Though we turn our faces away from the horror. Our thoughts drift away from that suffering… but all the while children and babies are starving to death. And a mother’s tears drip down off the poor starving child’s body and drop silently to the parched earth below.
As long as we don’t have to look at them or be reminded of them, the “what can I do about it” excuses us and assuages our tender consciences; ignoring their plight allows us to pursue really important things:
“Wait until I tell my Facebook friends about my new boyfriend.”
“Wait until everyone sees my new boat (new car).”
“I can’t wait to get until the new iPhone. comes out!”
“We’re going to dinner at that new four-star restaurant tonight. I’m so excited.”
Right now all I can see in my mind’s eye are all those poor, starving children. I know that every single one of them could be easily fed for a week with the food I throw away every day.
But what can we do about it?
The angels don’t play here anymore. They angels have all gone away.
What can I do about it?
What a sad place indeed our world is today. You have written, in a most interesting and observant way, this horrible truth.
I live on the opposite side of the world from you in an isolated country still fairly wholesome and simple in many ways. BUT, I can see this evil worldwide creeping trend of which you speak. I suppose it is only a matter of time.
Can’t be brief, but will try. Does God care, is there a caring God ? Why does the creator allow this ? Well my understanding is: It is about Love, to raise our consciousness to have a level of compassion and Love. It is a system about Karma, bible says you reap what you sow. Jesus said : The poor you will always have. So what to do ? Pray, request Spiritual Guidance, send in the Angels, Spiritual Guides. I pray request with : Thy Will be done and add to it, So Help Me God ! Read, daily the Serenity Prayer :
God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.
And then act on it. Best effort attitude, really all you can do. I think God says to me, Mike I’ve got this ! But if you want to get involved, to learn of Love and Patience it will open up your Heart, as well as others.
May Blessing Be !
Mike S
Don’t give up. There are angels everywhere you just don’t see them very often because the media like to show the bad news. There are big organizations and people who are working hard to help these people with food and medicine. I help support a family in Mauritania through World Vision. It’s a drop in a bucket I know but if everyone did something like that would n’t it be great. Mr Rogers used to say when a catastrophe took place “watch how the angels came rushing out to help”.