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Reflections of you, me and yesterdays...
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Editor's reflection... I like angels. They are fascinating creatures. But of course, I know nothing about them and neither do the church really... except we do get glimsps of what they are in the Bible. I ouite like the writer, Neil Gaiman version of an angel... more of the fallen one actually. Gaiman used to write a comicbook, "The Sandman", but his work was more like a piece of literature. In one version when Morpheus (who is the dream lord or king) talks about Luciffer, the fallen one, he says,'Since the beginning, he was the Creator's finest creation: the angel Samael, called Lucifer. It means "the bringer of light." Saving only his creator, he is, perhaps, the most powerful being there is.' He goes as far to say that he was captain of the angel hosts. But think about it... for him or it to go against the creator. He must be some powerful being. As the story develops, the "first among the fallen" (Luciffer), asks the Dream King, "And the mortals! I ask you... Why? Tell me that.. Why? They use my name as if I spend my entire day sitting on their shoulders, forcing them to commit acts they would otherwise find repulsive." '"The devil made me do it."' I have never made one of them do anything. Never. They live their own tiny lives. I do not live their live for them. And then they die, And the come here(hell), having transgressed against what they believed to be right), and they expect us to fulfil their desire for pain and retribution (the demons who toture souls). I don't make them come here. They talk of me going around and buying souls, like a fishwife come market day, never stopping themselves to ask why. I need no souls. And how can anyone own a soul? No they belong to themselves... they just have to face up to it.'I have always thought that was a pretty good piece of writing. Once a friend told me, "Brother, I saw Luciffer in church." And I went, "Really, what was he doing?"She said, "It was like he was in pain and when everybody was worshipping, he was like mocking the crucfix and the priest." She added, "He couldn't stand straight, and walk like a hunchback." And I sat there, listening, and in mind my mind, I imagined the fallen one, a being whose age is as old as the beginning of creation, former captain of the angel hosts, whose was called the Morningstar, and billion of years or a millenia later... doing nothing, sitting in church, walking hunched, mocking the crucfic... Oh come on! I thought... Still, I don't remember ever laughing louder."
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