JunoMagic ~ satismagic

SIMONE MARTINI: The Angel of the Annunciation, 1333;
Tempera on wood, 23,5 x 14,5 cm, Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp.

The Angel of Patience

by Anselm Grün

To wait patiently is not “en vogue” today. The poet Ulla Hahn writes, “Blessed are the waiting, / They are quickly overtaken, / By the rushing globe. / The hottest piece of world / does not distract their gaze / from the promised way.” There is something to this beatitude, of how paradise belongs to the patient ones, that makes the Angel of Patience visible.

The German word for patience is “Geduld” and derives from Old High German dulten – to bear, to endure and is connected with the Latin word tolerare, tolerate. In the new testament of the Bible the Greek word for patience hypomone actually means “to stay beneath”, to persevere, to endure. Sometimes the meaning was interpreted in a passive way, as if we simply have to accept everything. In the early Church patience had much more the meaning of perseverance and pertinacity in the tribulations that besieged the Christians from outside. In Romans 5, 3f Paul said: “And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also; knowing that tribulation worketh patience; and patience, experience; and experience, hope:” And in Colossians it is asked: “that ye might be (…) strengthened with all might, according to his glorious power, unto all patience and long-suffering with joyfulness;” Hypomone means in this case the “steadfast endurance, as it is shown in battle, if you hold the position you have against all attacks of the enemy”. This actually still has some meaning for our lives today. Because it means steadfastness against all attacks from outside. Patience is in this case not passive suffering, but active endurance and perseverance. It proves itself to be “persistent power of resistance”. Paul associates longanimity with it, too, makrothymia. The Greek word means someone who has great courage, an open mind, a wide heart, someone who can wait. The old German word “Geduld” has acquired both aspects of meaning during the course of history: steadfastness, endurance, but also the ability to wait, longanimity, the ability to wait and watch until a solution can be found.

The Angel of Patience may teach you the ability to wait. This is by no means a natural ability to have nowadays. We tend to want the solution at once. But often it needs a long time for a blossom to flower. We need patience for our own development. We can’t change ourselves instantly. Change happens slowly and sometimes imperceptible. The images used in the Bible are still relevant today: that is what Jesus spoke of in the parable about the seed that grows on its own (Mk 4, 26-29). James, too, uses the farmer as an example in his exhortation for patience: “Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain.” Many people want to see evidence of success at once, when they have started a project. They want to control the progress of their therapies, and they want to see the results of spiritual guidance at once. Obsessed with measuring rates of success, they overlook what is slow to grow inside them. They would need the Angel of Patience very much so that they take time for processes inside them. True growth needs time. Everything that springs up quickly also withers quickly again.

To have patience does not mean to ignore everything that can be changed and should be changed. But you may have patience with yourself and with a situation that cannot be changed and that demands rather an attitude of cheerful serenity. The Angel of Patience wants to support us, too, if we have to suffer through something, if there is a hurtful situation that needs to be endured. Conflicts in marriage, problems in the job cannot always be solved, or at least not quickly. In those cases it is also necessary to endure the painful situation you cannot change quickly, in which you can only hope for a solution, with patience. But patience does not mean that you always have to come to terms with conflicts or that you always have to go for bad compromises. In patience lies the power to work towards changes and transformation. However, time is very important with patience. We have to give ourselves and others time so that something may change.

Patience is also necessary in sickness. This, too, cannot be dealt with at once. The ability to endure is becoming less and less common these days. To endure patiently, to stay beneath, to persevere – there is little demand for these virtues today. And yet we would need them so much to master our lives and to deal with the problems of our world, filled with hope. Therefore I wish that the Angel of Patience may be with you, so that you won’t give up if you are in difficult situations, if there seems to be no solution for a problem at all. The Angel of Patience may give you strength to endure, so that faith and transformation may occur in your life.

© by Anselm Grün, 50 Engel für das Jahr, 1997;
 translation by JunoMagic.

Image at the centre based on “Radiant Angel” by Edward P. Tadiello.

The Angel of Devotion

by Anselm Grün

Children can put their hearts completely into their games. They don’t allow anything to disturb them. They lose themselves to their games. They give themselves completely to their games. The artists of the era of the Baroque have often painted angels as children who are playing with complete devotion. The Christmas angel that Matthias Grünewald painted on the altar of Isenheim is completely absorbed by his play. According to the art historian Wilhelm Fraenger angels are for Grünewald “vessels of heavenly lust and joy… the epitome joyfully abounding beatitude”. Thus angels in art are masters of devotion. They are totally here and now, they give themselves completely to what they are doing at the moment. After his death it was said about a Jewish rabbi: the most important thing for him was whatever he was doing at the moment. The Angel of Devotion obviously had let him in on the secret to devote himself completely to the moment.

A scientist can be completely devoted to his work. She does not let up in his efforts until she has found a solution. A crafts person can do his job with utter devotion. But ultimately devotion relates especially to two things: devotion in love, in sexuality, and the mystic devotion to God. Whatever else devotion may mean in my life, it is most poignant in the devotion of love. The sexual act is the climax of all devotion. The partners forget about themselves, they get completely involved with each other, into the other, they merge into one. An act of devotion means letting go of yourself completely. You don’t cling to yourself any more because you are afraid you could lose yourself. You cannot lose yourself, because you know that you will fall into loving arms.

What reaches its climax in sexuality, happens in every kind of love. If you love another person, you are devoted to them. You don’t want to stay within yourself. You want to be with the other person. You want to give yourself up to that person, because they mean everything to you. Devotion such as this affords us an experience of a new kind of wealth. Someone who gives herself to a loved one, will be rewarded by this love so that she feels richer and more alive and freer than ever before. Many people cannot give themselves up to anyone. They are full of mistrust that their devotion could be abused, that they could lose themselves that way. Especially people who want to stay in control of everything, who want to control their emotions, their relationships, their words and deeds, because they are afraid of making mistakes or showing any vulnerability, are unable to give themselves up to anyone or anything. They lack an essential aspect of a successful life. Who is not capable of giving herself to someone or something, will ultimately stay alone forever. She cannot truly encounter anyone else. Without devotion you cannot love and without devotion you cannot live.

It is said about saints how they gave themselves to God completely. They offered themselves up to Him. They prayed to God and asked Him to do with them what He would. Today we have difficulties with prayers of such all-out devotion. But the saints gained their freedom with this devotion. They could face the future full of confidence. They knew that every He planned for them would ultimately be good. This prayer by Klaus von der Flüe is famous: “O my God and my Lord, take me away from myself and give myself to You, wholly as Your own.” This prayer turned him into a mystic, completely transparent for the reality beyond our reality. And that way he could become a peacemaker for his contemporaries, an angel who showed them new ways, because he had kept away from the controversies and could look at every in relation to God.

Devotion does not mean to give yourself up, but to find yourself in a new way. Such devotion, says Jesus, is the prerequisite for a fruitful life. Sometimes pious people use their religious activities to cling to themselves, to their security and their salvation. But then their life becomes infertile. And they will never experience the wealth and vibrancy that result from devotion.

I wish that the Angel of Devotion may teach you the art to devote yourself to your work, to loved ones, and to the One Who is love itself. This kind of devotion will richly reward you. It will guide you to freedom and profound confidence that your life will be good. You can let yourself fall. The shields you have built up around you by clinging to yourself will break apart. You feel alive and free. Your life will be fruitful. Devotion will let you flower.

© by Anselm Grün, 50 Engel für das Jahr, 1997;
 translation by JunoMagic.

Song for December 16:

(Click pic!)

Pegasus
by Hans-Jürgen Hufeisen,
album “Pegasus – Melodien der vier Winde”
(“Pegasus – Melodies of the Four Winds”)

GRÃœNEWALD, Matthias: Concert of Angels (detail), c. 1515,
Oil on wood, Musée d’Unterlinden, Colmar

The Angel of Serenity

by Anselm Grün

“To have nothing, to own nothing,” is a description that fits the attitude of wise men and women of all times and religions. Only whose heart does not cling to man-made things, who can let go of what others cling to, is truly free. Serenity was an important word for the mystics of the Middle Ages. Most of all Master Ekkehart speaks again and again of serenity. A person is serene, who has let go of her ego and given herself to God, who has grown calm within her heart and has allowed herself to fall into divine ground. Serenity means the mysticism of freeing men from their ego, letting go of all worries and fears about ourselves, so that God may be born inside our hearts, so that we may come to recognize our innermost being, our true self. Serenity is an attitude of inner freedom, of inner calm, a healthy distance to everything that assails us, that threatens to “occupy” and take “possession” of us; it’s not just a question of character. It can be practised. To achieve serenity, first I have to let go of many things.

First of all, there is the world that I have to let go of. Or say the mystics tell me. Antonios, one of the first monks, first let go of all his worldly possessions so that he would be free for living. We should let go of clinging to our possessions, our success, our recognition. Because who clings to earthly goods, becomes dependant on them. And dependency is contradictory to human dignity. We are sufficiently dependent on our wealth, our habits, on other people. A proverb tells about how we can enjoy life only by letting go. A child sees a mug with many nuts. It reaches inside and wants to get out as many as possible. But the fist clutching the nuts cannot pass through the narrow opening of the mug. First you have to let go off the bounty, then you can pick up one nut after the other and enjoy it.

Letting go is not an ascetic achievement that we have to painfully wrest from ourselves. Rather, it derives from a longing for inner freedom and from the inkling that our lives will only be truly fertile, if we are independent and free. If we are no longer dependent on what others think of us and expect of us, if we are no longer dependent on the recognition and devotion of other people, then we get in touch with our own true selves.

But serenity also demands letting go of myself. I am not to cling to myself either, neither to my worries, nor to my fears, nor to my depressions. Many people cling to their injuries. They cannot let go of them. They use them for accusations of those who have hurt them. But in the end they deny life with that. We are also to let go of our injuries and our insults. You need the Angel of Serenity who introduces you to the art of letting go of yourself and your past, who teaches you the ability to distance yourself, to step back and look at your life from a different point of view, from a point without yourself. Someone, who has let go like that, can react serenely to excited reports in the media. She can answer calmly to criticism and rejection. She does not get into a panic at every word of criticism. She does not feel threatened. She is not afraid that the ground will be swept away from under her feet. Because she has acquired distance to all internal and external troubles. She knows that she is being held by the Angel of Serenity who is telling her: “There is more than the opinion other people have about you. There is more than success and image. Let go of yourself into God. There you will find firm ground. From there you can look serenely on everything that assails you.”

Who has let go of herself, can react serenely to bad news. Reacting serenely is not reacting with composure to the news about the death of a person. Composure is an expression of inner discipline. Although a person is distressed inside, she does not show her shock to the world. She keeps her composure, she keeps control of herself. Serenity is not composure. A serene person does not need to keep her composure, because she has a different point of view, because she cannot be touched by bad news in her innermost self. Because she has let go of herself and her opinion how life should be, there is nothing that can throw her so easily. The Angel of Serenity helps her to see everything that she hears with the angel’s distance. This gives her inner freedom and space.

Many people get caught up in heated discussions. They believe that their conscience demands to pursue the truth. The Angel of Serenity shows you in such discussions that the truth is not only to be found in the correctness of words and arguments, but also on another level. Truth means also coherence, conformity with reality. That what we see as absolute truth is often only an expression of our own projections. We create images of reality for ourselves, we create images of God. The truth itself is unfathomable. It cannot be defined. Someone who knows about the most profound truth, enters a discussion serenely, not resigned, because we cannot recognize this truth, but instead knowing that there will always be different points of view, that the truth will probably be found somewhere between the contenders.

The philosopher Martin Heidegger put serenity towards things and the openness for secrets in contrast to calculating and usurping-dogmatic ways of thinking: “Both flourish only in unceasing, lively contemplation.”

I wish that the Angel of Serenity may help you not to get too “top heavy” in your way of thinking so that you may still be able to hear the voice of your heart.

© by Anselm Grün, 50 Engel für das Jahr, 1997;
translation by JunoMagic.

Song for December 15:

(Click pic!)

Das Rondo der Throne (“Rondo of Thrones”)
by Hans-Jürgen Hufeisen,
album “Das Engelskonzert”, (“Concert of Angels”)

GOZZOLI, Benozzo: Raphael and Tobias (on the pillar), 1464-65;
Fresco, Apsidal chapel, Sant’Agostino, San Gimignano.

The Angel of Comfort

by Anselm Grün

Comfort is always asked for when we have experienced a loss, if a friendship has shattered, when another person has hurt us deeply, if a loved one has passed away. How different the experience of comfort can be, shows a look at language. The German word for “comfort” is “Trost” and it derives from the same roots as the German expression for faithfulness “Treue” (and they are related to the archaic English expression “troth”, which in turn derives from the Middle English word “trost”). Therefore the German word for comfort has something to do with strength and stability (T/N: for the English word “comfort” this is even more clearly visible: as the etymology goes back to Late Latin confortare “to strengthen greatly”, from Latin com- + fortis strong). Someone who has suffered a loss, loses her balance. She needs someone to give her stability and strength again. The Greek Bible uses parakalein for the word comfort. This means: to call for, comfort, to have kind words for someone. Someone who lacks something needs an angel at her side, who picks her up if necessary, and who comforts her. In Greek giving comfort is mainly done with talking, with words that give meaning back to the meaninglessness which results from every loss at first. But those words must not be false comfort of hushing someone up. Because hushing up is nor really something I do for the other person. If I hush someone up, I don’t really talk with someone, but rather talk against her. I say something that I don’t really believe myself. I use words that don’t give strength or meaning. But comforting someone means that I talk to someone, that I use words that reach the other person, that are meant only for this person, words, that reach her heart. Comforting means to find words from heart to heart: that I find words in my heart, that I don’t fall back on empty phrases, but that I find words which touch the other’s heart, which open up a new horizon for her and make it possible for her to find new stability.

In Latin another word for comfort is consolari (the root of consolation). This means to be with someone who is alone (T/N: solus, -a, -um is the Latin adjective for “alone, single”), who has been left alone with her pain, with her bereavement, with her misery. Consolation means that you go someone, who is locked up inside herself, whose mouth and heart have been closed by her distress. Not everyone is capable to do that. Not everyone has the courage to try and find someone who is hiding behind her pain. Not everyone has the courage to enter a house of mourning, where abyssal suffering and loneliness of another person are waiting for you. Being there for someone means to share her pain and to stay with her within her pain. I can’t console someone from the outside, by falling back on pious words I read somewhere. I have to endure in her house of darkness, of brokenness, of sorrow. If you are capable of entering the house of mourning, then the mourning person will experience you as an Angel of Comfort. She will experience that with you an Angel of God has visited her like “whereby the dayspring from on high hath visited us” (Lk 1, 78).

At all times men have called upon the Angel of Comfort in their pain, asking him to come to them and stay with them. Johannes Sebastian Bach has sung about in an impressive way in his tenor aria in the Michaelis Cantata: “Stay, ye angels, stay by me! Lead me so and stay beside me that my foot may never stumble!”  This is a very emotional song of faith – faith, that we are not being left alone in our suffering, but that the Angels of God will accompany us and stay us and persevere until our pain transforms into a song of gratitude. I wish that an an angel may comfort you in your grief, that he may give you stableness when you have become unbalanced, that he will have kind words for you if you have become speechless with your pain, that he will visit you in your loneliness and make you feel that you are no longer alone, but that there is an angel at your side who is with you on all your ways. If you know about the Angel of Comfort, then you can confront your grief without fear, then you don’t have to skip it. Grief that has been comforted will not paralyse you, but will lead you deep into the secrets of your own being and the secret of Jesus Christ, who came to us in our grief as comfort for all of the world.

© by Anselm Grün, 50 Engel für das Jahr, 1997;
translation by JunoMagic.

Song for December 14:

(Click pic!)

Die Rose des Gabriel (“The Rose of Gabriel”)
by Hans-Jürgen Hufeisen,
album “Das Engelskonzert” (“Concert of Angels”)

Bouguereau, William: Le Printemps, 1886;
Oil on canvas, 84 5/8 x 46 inches (215 x 117 cm),
Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, Nebraska, USA.

The Angel of Lightness

by Anselm Grün

Pope John XXIII once wrote in his diary, “Giovanni, don’t take yourself so seriously!” He had something of the lightness that the Angel of Lightness wants to teach you. Perhaps this angel is easier for Italians to get than for the lugubrious Germans who take everything so seriously, who approach everything thoroughly and forcefully. There is a time for everything. Certainly it is good if we really tackle difficult problems. But especially with personal problems the forceful approach is not always the solution. The more we fight against our faults up front, the more counterpoise they develop. And then we have to worry about them all the time. The lightness of Pope John XXIII would be good for us then. He of all Popes who took his office not as seriously as some of his predecessors who broke down under the weight of their office, had the courage to call for a Council and setting the course for the future.

We would need the lightness especially for how we deal with ourselves. Many people don’t make any progress, because they take themselves so very seriously. They cannot forgive themselves for having faults they should not have any more at their age. So they consistently attempt to extinguish these faults. But the more they fight their faults, the more visible they become. And soon such austere fighters lose their patience with themselves. Either they will be even stricter with themselves, or they will give up the fight. The Angel of Lightness wants to teach us a different way. We don’t settle for simply having our faults. But we fight with a sense of humour. It’s not a tragedy for us, if we have failed once again. We take our being human easy, because we don’t have to take on everything on our own, because we know that we are carried in God’s hand. Who thinks that she has to solve all problems on her own, will carry her responsibility like a heavy burden, will find being human a difficult task. The lightness does not imply carelessness or negligence, instead it is embedded in the profound trust that we are in God’s good hand and that He takes care of us. And it contains the knowledge that we don’t have to prove anything to Him. Therefore it is not that bad if we fail now and again. Because we cannot make Him sad with that. It is only us who are angry about it, if we don’t live up to our own expectations.

The Angel of Lightness wants to lead us to a new freedom in how we deal with each other as well. Who lives, for example, as I do, in the community of a monastery, knows that you mustn’t take everything so seriously. Even in the monastery we are, and remain, human beings. The same is true for every kind of community, of course. Every mother, who brings up children, knows that it won’t help to be angry about the faults of her children all the time. There, too, the lightness is needed that is derived from the expectation that the children will grow out of it and will grow up one day. They are children, after all. They may make mistakes. They have to learn from their own mistakes.

Children who experience this lightness in their parents will have more faith in life than others, whose parents took everything so very seriously, whose parents interpreted the education of their children as a thesis that has to be as perfect as possible. Those who want to give their children a perfect education achieve the exact opposite as a rule.

Here, the lightness stems also from the trust that the children are not only our children, that their development is not entirely dependent on the “perfect” education we give them, but that they are also in God’s hand, that God sends His angel to every child to take care of them.

If we look at the angels jubilating around every manger at Christmas time, or the cherubs placed all over the churches during the Baroque era, we feel a touch of the lightness they radiate. They don’t take life as seriously as we do. They float and fly over some obstacles that we cling to, that we want to overcome by any means. The artists have understood some of the lightness of the angels by painting them young or even childlike, playful, full of inner freedom and gaiety. Among those many angels there is also the Angel of Lightness who has been given to us in order to light up the serious side of life and to convey the lightness of being to us.

© by Anselm Grün, 50 Engel für das Jahr, 1997;
translation by JunoMagic.

Song for December 13:

(Click pic!)

Tanz der Delphine (“Dance of Dolphins”)
by Hans-Jürgen Hufeisen,
album “Pegasus – Melodien der vier Winde” (“Pegasus – Melodies of the Four Winds”)

The picture at the center is a photograph taken by lovetheson at stock.XCHANG

The Angel of Mourning

by Anselm Grün

“Mourning” makes us think at once of “mourning about someone who has passed away”. This is surely the worst case of mourning, and the most important. Who misses out on mourning for a loved one, a departed father or mother, blocks her or his life force. They don’t know why they cannot really be glad about anything, what it is that weighs down their souls, that keeps them from living. Often it is unexpressed grief. Mourning, we consciously come to terms with the bereavement the death of this person has left in our lives. And we take a look at our relationship with that person again. We remember what we have experienced with them, what they have meant to us. But we also don’t close our eyes for the problems we have had with them, the pain they may have caused us, things unsettled and left unspoken. Some people are surprised that with their grief anger comes back to them. But this anger is also admissible. Mourning clarifies a relationship and places it on a new foundation. Once we have lived through our grief we can build a new relationship with the departed, and they will become inner companions. They are not simply gone. Sometimes we meet them in dreams. Then they can offer us words of guidance. Or they simply remind us that we need an element of what they signified for us in life. By mourning we discover who the other person really was. During their lives we have only ever seen a part of them. The other part was hidden behind a mask. Now we know what they really wanted to express with their lives, what the deepest desire of their hearts was, which message they wanted to convey with their lives.

But the Angel of Mourning does not only want to teach you how to cope with grieving about the departed. There are many occasions in which he wants to introduce you to the art of coming to terms with the past or things unsettled and to leave all that behind you. I meet many people who suddenly experience the feeling that they have been cheated out of their lives. They were never really allowed to live the way they wanted to. They were pushed into directions that were not good for them by parents and teachers. Or they had to come to the painful realization of how their childhood really was, that they never really experienced a feeling of belonging. Such realizations are very painful. They have to be mourned. Or they will keep controlling us and sneaking secretly into everything we think or do. We don’t notice in that case why we react so touchily in certain situations or simply freeze up. It is unexpressed grief about disappointments of life.

But it’s not only the disappointments of childhood. Again and again we experience how a relationship shatters, how we have to sit down faced with the wreckage of our lives. We have failed. All the ideals we wanted to live have turned out to be illusions. Now we are sitting there, disappointed, disillusioned, powerless. A man once said after another failed relationship that he felt as if someone had cut off his wings. The Angel of Mourning wants to keep you from having to walk through life without wings. He wants to give you new wings so you can rise up to the sky and look upon all those failures from high above. He wants to give you new power to face the challenges you have to meet. But the Angel of Mourning cannot keep you from the pain that grieving is for every one of us. You have to face that pain. But you may trust that you are not alone in your pain and that the Angel of Mourning will be with you in this pain and that he will transform this pain into new vitality. Maybe the Angel of Mourning will also send you persons to support you in your grief, who understand you, who feel with you and who open your eyes for the new possibilities that open up within you now.

© by Anselm Grün, 50 Engel für das Jahr, 1997;
 translation by JunoMagic.

GRÃœNEWALD, Matthias: Concert of Angels and Nativity (detail), c. 1515.
Oil on wood, Musée d’Unterlinden, Colmar

The Angel of Quiet

by Anselm Grün

Angels are delicate creatures. You can’t contain them. Angels appear unlooked for. You have to be approachable to be able to meet them. Angels walk on tiptoes. You need a lot of quiet in order to sense them. And there is one angel who wants to introduce you to the art of being silent, in the healing atmosphere of quiet. Especially in our world of turmoil we need a lot of quiet to heal inside. There is the famous saying by Kierkegaard that – if he was a physician – he would advise people: “to create silence”. And Rabindranath Tagore invites us “ to bathe your soul in silence”. Quiet is medicine for our souls, which often have been so polluted by the noise of the world that they cannot breathe any more, because they noisy thoughts and images have penetrated them from all directions.

Greatness needs quiet in order to be born in human beings. “Only in silence true awareness can be reached,” is Romano Guardini‘s opinion. And Johannes Climacus, (Kierkegaard’s pseudonym for) a monk of the early Church, says: “Silence is the fruit of wisdom and encompasses knowledge of all things.” Silence prepares us for really listening, listening to the nuances when a person is talking to us. And quiet is the prerequisite for perceiving God’s voice in our hearts. Many lament nowadays that they do not experience God, that God has become alien to them. But they are so full of turmoil that they miss the quiet impulses of God’s voice in their hearts. We are always busy. As soon as such a delicate impulse appears within us, we drive it away and turn to something tangible. That way we will never perceive God’s voice.

A German word for “silence/quiet”, “Stille” derives from “stillen, beruhigen” “to slake, to quiet” (T/N: “stillen” also means “breast-feeding” in German). The mother offers her breast to the hungry child to quiet its crying. The Angel of Quiet wants to quiet our noisy thoughts, our clamorous desires and needs so that we may discover a space of silence within us. The mystics are convinced that in everyone of us there is a space of silence that cannot be entered by thoughts and emotions, desires and needs. It is a space within me in which I am wholly myself. And it is the space of silence with which God Himself is within me. There I am truly free. There, no one has power over me. There, no one can hurt me. There, I am hale and whole. For me it is a daily necessity to sit down and meditate. During meditation I imagine how my breath and the word that I connect with breath, leads me into this inner space of silence. There, people who will come to my office today cannot enter. There, no one can reach me with their demands and with their judgements and their condemnations. There I can breathe freely. There I am along with my God. This endows my life with dignity. In this inner space of silence I get in touch with my true innermost self. The quiet transforms me as it transformed the cantankerous wife of Rabbi Sussja. It is said that “from this moment on she grew quiet. And when she had become quiet, she became glad. And when she had become glad, she became good.”

Especially if you have to deal with many people, if many make demands on you, if you get involved in intense conversations, you need the Angel of Quiet who will quiet down the many words you listen to on a daily basis. In that quiet you can breathe again. There, you can shake off what others have entrusted you with. The Angel of Quiet wants to lead you to that inner space where not even the people you are there for may enter. Only if you are in touch with your inner space of silence you can reach for people without fear. You don’t have to be afraid that the problems of others will control you or overwhelm you that the ugliness you touch during those conversations will soil you inside.

There is a space where you remain untouched by emotional debris that others want to leave with you. In this inner space of silence you remain hale and whole. The Angel of Quiet may attend you and may remind you again and again that there is already this space of silence within you. You do not have to create it. You only have to touch this silence that is within you and that has the power to heal you. There you are hale and whole. There is something pure and immaculate within you that has not been dulled by the turmoil of the world.

© by Anselm Grün, 50 Engel für das Jahr;
 translation by JunoMagic.