Dispatching Angels

When Alma, Timothy, and I were starting to write Ask Your Angels we put out a call for other people’s angel stories. The angels had come into our lives in three very different ways and we wanted to hear about other encounters with the angelic realm. We received stories from a man who had been rescued by the angels in Vietnam, and several from people who were saved from deadly accidents on the highway. At the time, and even today, I have two responses to these stories – I am deeply moved by them – and I am deeply troubled by them. Why did the angels save one soldier, while more than a hundred others perished in that deadly explosion? Why were the two women who wrote us saved from horrific accidents on the road, while every day countless other people die?

There have been several studies on long-distance healing that indicate that people who are prayed for heal more quickly than people who aren’t being prayed for, even when those people don’t know that they’re being prayed for and don’t know the people who are praying for them. Frankly, I have the same mixed feelings about this kind of prayer that I have about angelic intervention. Part of me is awed by these accounts and part of me is deeply troubled. I don’t like the idea that if I have ten friends praying for me while I lie in a hospital bed, I will get better. While you, who have many trusty good and loyal friends – won’t get better because your devoted friends aren’t praying for you. I’m not sure that I want to live in such a world.
But I can’t deny the angel’s presence in my own life, and I can’t deny the observations made in the studies about prayer. All I can do is come back to the mystery of human existence, the wobbly nature of our planet, and the different ways that our souls grow while being here, moving slowly toward wholeness in staggeringly difficult ways. And I come back to what the angels have taught me about prayer and about how we can all make a difference in the world.
It’s odd to be politically on the left, when I often find myself in alignment with people on the right, not in the specifics but in general. I believe that our purpose in being here is spiritual and that we can’t separate spirituality from politics, which isn’t a popular stance with most of my Lefty friends. And while I believe in evolution, I see it as a reflection of the Divine at work in the universe, which puts me in agreement with those fundamentalists who support the idea of “intelligent design.” (Although there are times, looking around me, when I’m not so sure how intelligent the Designer was.)
The angels tell me that prayer can make a difference, that prayer sends energy to people and places that need it. And they tell me that our prayers don’t fill the gap of a God who’s slack in Its attention to us – instead, our prayers for each other and for the world are part of God’s design for us as Its sub-assistants in creation. And the angels also tell me that one of the best ways that we can work toward global transformation is to enlist their support in our prayers and in our spiritual work. It’s what they exist for.
Whereas we can race toward someone else to help them when we see that they’re in trouble, the angels live in a parallel domain to ours, one that co-exists with our world, but is also separate from it. They tell me that the only way that they can enter our world is by invitation. We have to open the door for them. When we do that they can enter, and when they enter they can be “dispatched” to different people and places, bringing comfort and support. It would be nice to say that every time the angels are called in they bring exactly the help we want, a cure for cancer, an end to bloodshed, a healing for the world. But life is more complex than that, we don’t always get what we ask for, and we don’t always make use of what is given to us. But the angels tell me that when we invite them in they always come, and if we are open to them we will always feel their comfort, (which is always a blessing, but sometimes a disappointment, when we wanted more.)
The following exercise was given to me by the angels to share with you. It’s a simple process through which you can become another one of God’s angelic dispatchers. You don’t need any special training to do it. Unlike some meditations, which ask you to be quiet in a quiet place, you can do this exercise anywhere and everywhere, sitting in your car at a long red light, standing in a long line at the bank, or in a slow line in the supermarket. In fact that’s one of the angels’ favorite places for dispatchers to do that work. There are often racks of newspapers and magazines by the checkout stand, with headlines and cover stories offering us guidance about who to dispatch the angels to, and where to direct them.

  • Wherever you are, sitting or standing, alone or with others, take a moment to feel the beating of your heart. Know that this beating connects you with all other living beings, with the angels, the beating heart at the center of our planet, at the center of the sun, our galaxy, the universe, and know that your beating heart connects you with the beating ever-present heart of God.
  • Take a moment to think of individuals who are in need to comfort and healing. These can be people you know or don’t know. Imagine as you think of them that an angel is being sent to them to wrap them in its loving wings.
  • Next, think of families, communities, groups of people who are in need of help, from natural disasters, wars, poverty, and other painful situations. Picture in your mind’s heart that teams of angels are being sent to them, bathing them in divine light.
  • You can send angels to endangered species, to polluted regions, to war-torn parts of the planet. Be open and creative about where you dispatch angels. Picture hosts of them descending upon places where disease, poverty, and war are devastating lives and destroying the planet. See them pouring down through the clouds bringing love and light into the world.
  • You can do this process as often as you like, wherever you are. After you have dispatched the angels, take a moment to thank them for coming into our lives.

Today such angelic arrivals in our world are rare, but over time, as more and more of us do this work, we will find that the human and angelic realms come close and closer. This will help to shift the energy of the world and accelerate our movement toward global healing and peace. Every one of us alive today is here to participate in this transformation. If this tool for change calls out to you, use it and teach it to others. The angels are reaching out to us, and it’s up to us to open the door to let them in.