My middle son was playing “Hark now hear the angels sing” on the piano yesterday evening. Not surprisingly I fell asleep to a vision of a large number angels gathering in our garden for choir practice. After all he had invoked and invited them! And Christmas isn’t far off!
It brought back to me how, in the days our children were much younger, I used to say a prayer with them that invoked their Guardian Angels. Then one day they started drawing pictures of angels with green wings growing carrots and flowers in our garden. When I asked them to explain this, they said: “Oh Mum, we are drawing those GARDEN ANGELS we are always praying to!”
To me this demonstrates the Power of Words to call something into being. Maybe Garden Angels have always existed and maybe they are close cousins of Guardian Angels, I don’t know… But after a few years of praying to the Garden Angels my children developed a close relationship with the angels that live in our garden!
We often go for a walk at Nunhead Cemetery, the closest ‘wild space’ near us in South East London and there you do come across many ‘Garden Angels’ who are Guardian Angels at the same time (see the picture above!) They guard the tombs of the dead and they are closely entwined with the trees and plants.
This then makes me wonder if such ‘fortunate mistakes’ act as portals where something new can be called into being, or something unacknowledged acquires a name and existence.
When our middle son Elliott first stared writing his name (at around age 2 1/2) he would consistently put one of the T’s in the wrong place (wrong place in our eyes!) : ELLITOT. As he is very bright boy (who started teaching himself Spanish at age 3) I once asked him to draw an ELLITOT for me. He did and it looked like a mythical animal that bore no resemblance to any animal on earth. It also had a close friend: an EMU! The name of the picture (I still have it!) was THE ELLITOT AND THE EMU.
In the beginning there was the word…. There are many accounts of a Divine Being creating the world by using sound:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
So what if we are literally creating worlds by using words? What if Elliott, in that moment, created a parallel universe where magical Ellitots roam in the company of mystical Emus?!
I often have the same sensation when I am dreaming. In keeping a dream journal I often observe that some dreams are like ‘rooms in the same house’, they map certain territories with connecting doors or portals. I have even had experiences of falling asleep and dreaming a dream contained within a dream!
So maybe many worlds and dreams are nested and enfolded within words and worlds?!
And the Garden Angels take those words to their potting shed where they plant them as small seeds and water them and sing to them.
From small seedlings whole universes grow…. and the word ‘universe’ literally means ‘one song’!
And if Garden Angels can grow any reality we invoke – anything is possible on earth! So what kind of world would we like call forth with our words?!
This by means of an early Yuletide blog: Merry Christmas everyone!
Imelda Almqvist
imeldaalmqvist 