Like Angel Voices

When I heard the sound, I opened my eyes. It wasn’t even daylight yet. Looking at the clock I saw that it was five o’clock. Perhaps early to wake up by someone else’s standards. Not unusual by mine. What was surprising was the sound of laughter. It was so high and light and happy that it sounded like the laughter of angels.

To be able to laugh like that is a gift.

To have such a voice that it melts in with angels’ voices is rare and wonderful.

I thought what a lucky man I am to have heard it!

While that may be an unusual thought to have at such an early hour of the day, it was also most timely. As difficult as any of our lives may be at any given time, we can never be thankful enough for the good that comes into our existences.

There was a recent article online in which an elderly Trappist monk from Mepkin Abbey in South Carolina was quoted as saying that the Covid-19 quarantine has returned them to being real monks. The difficulties and challenges of life in an epidemic had removed extraneous outside influences on their real lives. They were shut off from the outside world unlike any time in decades. When I passed that along to a friend who has been an enclosed nun over sixty years, she agreed. Before the changes of the middle twentieth century in their worlds, they had the solitude which we tell ourselves we’ve had with the world closed by the epidemic.

Then they could more easily hear angels’ laughter.

Over the last year, in spite of what we might tell ourselves, our world has remained very open. We are so used to invading the privacy of each other’s lives that any sort of distance boggles the mind. The interrupted noisiness outside and inside our lives disrupts what we mistake for normal.

And so, when I have heard angels laughing during this time, frequently it has been about how foolish are we humans over the return to quiet. Silly, to be frank. Being out of circulation, when well exercised, makes the soul grow. It is God gifting us.

Are you willing to be more now than you were when you started reading this?

Possibly frightened and scared, as well courageous enough to move yourself into new interiorities?

We humans wallow in bravado. It’s how we pretend to ourselves and anybody who may be observing us that we’re tough. We can handle any obstacle that tries to stop us in our tracks.

It’s a lie we tell ourselves.

How many have succumbed to fear during this epidemic? People harmed themselves and others. Some died. Some murdered. Some ran to booze or drugs or whatever they pretended to themselves could help them escape the reality of themselves.

Rather than drowning ourselves in more — more substances, food, exercise, social media, our drug of choice — we can do the hard thing.

Deal with reality.

Dig down deep into the very depths of your soul. Past any part of yourself you’ve ever been before. Search for what you have never seen and then keep going on.

Stretch yourself out in every direction.

How much are you willing to be truly happy? Do you have the daring to let yourself go, to laugh with the angels?

What would happen if you decided you had more important goals in life than being Number One in your field?

There was a once-upon-a-time that some very smart, talented and dedicated people offered to help make me well-known because of my spiritual work. Yes, it would have meant giving up the life I knew. It meant travel, being in the press, glad handing and putting myself out to people. At the time they offered — and it was a great offer — I felt it wasn’t possible. My life had been turned completely upside down over the prior two years by a series of event which had brought new responsibilities. An entirely unexpected turn in life.

I found my existing responsibilities to myself and other people were too important to set aside for something I may have wanted.

And that’s okay.

There have been many times in the decade since that I have heard men, women and children laugh like angels. They have laughed with the angels and with each other.

Like angels, they have laughed with great joy.

And that is the very best.