Angels are here and around us; perhaps all around us. But we have to have an ear for them and an eye for them, and that only comes when we have the courage and faith to open ourselves to a world inhabited by more than humans and animals. There are angels around us.

Some think we each have a guardian angel while others think we don't have an assigned guardian angel, while yet others think God at times - but not always and not by assignment to each of us - sends an angel on a mission of guarding. The Bible's evidence that each of us has a specific, assigned guardian angel is not as solid as some think, so I'm with those who think sometimes God sends guardian angels but that we don't have a specific guardian angel.

Jesus wanted far more than to be accepted into one's life. He wanted to take over, and his essential call was to trust him enough to surrender one's entire being to him.

Angels will frequently - even when they're comforting us with good news - touch the awe of God's eternal presence and drive us to our knees before our God of glory.

... the Eucharist profoundly enables the grace of God to be received with all its glories and blessings.

Many think Jesus came to earth so you and I can have a special kind of spiritual experience and then go merrily along, as long as we pray and read our Bibles and develop intimacy with the unseen God but ignore the others-oriented life of justice and love and peace that Jesus embodied.

We need to shed our unearthly and nonsocial and idealistic and romantic and uber-spiritual visions of kingdom and get back to what Jesus meant. By kingdom, Jesus means: God's Dream Society on earth, spreading out from the land of Israel to encompass the whole world.