Being an Angel

B

One day when I was a hospital chaplain ( at the Medway Maritime, Kent ) I was visiting a ward and an elderly lady called me over to her bedside. “Chaplain, please, could you be an angel ?” “How can I do that ?” I replied. “Well you see it is like this. I have been transferred up here this morning from that ward below, but I left me dentures behind ! And lunch is about to arrive. Please could you go down and bring them up for me ?” So I went and got them, brought them up the stairs to the ward, and she was grateful to be equipped for lunch. Then I thought, “that is a nice image of an angel” and I am still waiting for that icon to be painted of me climbing the stairs, carrying the dentures on a plate, and no doubt with silver wings attached to my shoulders.

As it happens, there is really an overlap between the services of angels and of human beings : the traditional collect for Michaelmas in the BCP prayer book puts it like this “ O everlasting God, who hast ordained and constituted the services of Angels and men in a wonderful order …”
You never know quite who you may come across, or where.

A Fall in the Shower

At a Gibraltar spa, 5th March 2025

Suddenly, with an unwelcome rush and a bump.
I found myself stranded like a beached whale
weighed down by my own fat !
Flat on my back !
And there I would surely have stayed,
incompetent of movement just
like one of those enormous hulks.

Yet un-whale like, my plight was not so desperate:
three angels quickly made their way across to help
and so a kind of raising up took place
thanks to angels’ grace.

And I say to myself : you accomplished something
in Gibraltar then ! You brought three angels
into being.

Not bad work, lying flat on your back.

About the author

A.J. Amos
A.J. Amos

50 Comments

A.J. Amos By A.J. Amos

A.J. Amos

A.J. Amos

Get in touch

I will look forward to hearing from you, I will get back to you as soon as I can.