I’ve been thinking about angels lately.  Guardian angels especially.  I had never much considered them before this past year, never really thought deeply about the extent of my own belief in them or what it means. Yet in looking back over my life, there were times and events when, well, it was more than just blind fate, more than being lucky, that I am still here.  Who are these beings who watch over us?

Those who speak of angels often describe them as male, or appearing as young men.  Icon often depict them in an androgynous way, neither male nor female, able to be read as either or both.

  I recall a newspaper account of a woman whose car went over a cliff.  She was badly injured, very badly, with broken legs.  She realized that she would die in the ravine, that nobody would see her on the steep, wooded slopes.  Somehow she…