"Angel Time," I whispered. What did I envision?
He spoke again. "The glance of The Maker encompasses all time. He knows all that is, was, or will be. He knows all that could be. And He is the Teacher of all the rest of us, insofar as we can comprehend."
Something was changing in me, completely. My mind sought to grasp the sum total of all he'd revealed to me, and as much as I knew of theology and philosophy, I could only do this without words.
There came back to me some phrases of Augustine, quoted by Aquinas, and I murmured them softly under my breath:
"Although we cannot number the infinite, nevertheless it can be comprehended by Him whose knowledge has no bounds. "
He was smiling. He was musing.
A great shift in me had now taken place.
I remained quiet.
He went on.
"I can't rock the sensibilities of those who need me as I've rocked yours. I need you to enter their solid world at my guidance, a human being as they are human, a man as some of them are men. I need you to intervene not to bring death, but on the side of life. Say that you're willing, and your life is turned from evil, you confirm it, and you're at once plunged into the danger and heartache of trying to do what is unquestionably good."
Danger and heartache.
"I'll do it," I said. I wanted to repeat the words, but they seemed to linger in the air before us. "Wherever--only show me what you want from me, show me how to do your bidding. Show me! I don't care about danger. I don't care about heartache. You tell me that it's good, and I'll do it.Dear God, I believe You have forgiven me! And give me this chance! I'm Yours."
I felt an immediate and unexpected happiness, a lightness, and then joy.
At once the air around me changed. The colors of the room blurred and brightened. It seemed I was being lifted out of the frame of a picture, and the picture itself grew larger and fainter, and then dissolved around me in a thin and weightless and shimmering mist.
"Malchiah!" I cried out.
"I'm beside you," came his voice.
We were traveling upwards. The day had melted into a fine purple darkness but the darkness was filled with a soft caressing light. Then it shattered into a billion pinpoints of fire.
An inexpressibly beautiful sound caught me. It seemed to hold me as surely as the currents of air were supporting me, as surely as Malchiah's warm presence guided me, though I could see nothing now but the starry heavens, and the sound became a great deep beautiful note, like the after echo of a great bronze gong.
A sharp wind had risen, but the echoing tone rose over it, and there came other notes, melting, vibrant, as if from the throats of so many pure and weightless bells. Slowly, the music dissolved the sound of the wind into itself entirely, as it swelled and quickened, and I felt I was hearing a singing more fluid and rich than anything I had ever heard. It transcended the anthems of the earth so obviously and indescribably that all sense of time left me. I could only imagine listening to these songs forever and I felt no sense of myself at all.
Dear God, that I ever abandoned You, turned my back on You ... I am Yours.
The stars had so multiplied in number as to seem the sands of the sea. In fact, there was no darkness apart from brilliance, yet each star pulsed with a perfect iridescent light. And all around me, above, below, beside, I saw what seemed like shooting stars, whipping past me without a sound.
I felt bodiless, in the very midst of this, and never wanting to leave this again. Suddenly, as if it had been told to me, I realized these shooting stars were angels. I simply knew it. I knew they were angels traveling up and down and across and diagonally, their swift and inevitable journeys part of the warp and woof of this great universal realm.
As for me, I wasn't traveling with this speed. I was drifting. And yet even that word carries too much the weight of gravity for the state in which I found myself completely at ease.
Very slowly the swelling music yielded to another sound. It came hushed and then ever more urgent, a chorus of whispers rising from below. So many soft and secretive voices joined in this whispering as it blended itself with the music that it seemed all the world beneath us, or around us, was filled with this whispering, and I heard a multitude of syllables, yet all seemed to be sending up one simple plea.
I looked down, amazed that I had any sense of direction. The music continued to fade as the sight of a great solid planet came into view. I ached for the music. I felt I couldn't bear losing it. But we were plunging down towards the planet, and I knew this was just and right, and I didn't resist it in any way. Everywhere the moving stars still darted to and fro, and there was no doubt in my mind at all now that these were angels answering prayers. These were the active messengers of God, and I felt utterly privileged to be seeing this, even though the most ethereal music I'd ever heard was now almost gone.
The chorus of whispers was vast and in its own way a perfect yet darker sound.These are the songs of earth, I thought, quite consciously,and they are filled with sadness and need and worship and reverence and awe.
I saw the dark masses of land appear, spectacled with myriad lights, and the great satin gleam of the seas. Cities were visible to me as great webs of illumination appearing and disappearing beneath the layer upon layer of dim cloud. Then I made out smaller configurations as we moved down.
The music was altogether gone now, and the chorus of prayers was the melody that filled my ears.
For a split second, a multitude of questions came to me, but at once they were answered. We were approaching Earthbut in a different time.
"Remember," Malchiah said softly against my ear, "that The Maker knows all things, all that is past and present, all that has happened and will happen, and what might happen as well. Remember there is no past or future where The Maker is but only the vast present of all things living."
I was utterly convinced of the truth of this, and absorbed in it, and again an immense gratitude filled me, a gratitude so overwhelming that it dwarfed any emotion I'd ever consciously known. I was traveling with Malchiah through Angel Time and back into Natural Time, and I was safe in his purpose because that was his grasp.
The myriad pinpoints of light, those moving at great speed, were now thinning, or deliberately fading from my view. Just below us, in a well of whispering and frantic praying, I saw a great group of snow- covered rooftops, and chimneys giving to the night air their reddened smoke.
The delicious smell of burning fires rose to my nostrils. The prayers had words and varying intensity, but I couldn't make out what they said.
I felt my entire body take form again, even as the whispering enveloped me, and I became aware too that my old garments were gone. I wore something that felt like heavy wool.