Dear members and friends,
One of the more distinct features of Swedenborg’s teachings about life after death is that we are all born heaven-bound, and that this earthly life is meant to shape us into angels. In Swedenborg’s view, angels are not some other-worldly, winged creatures separate from humans, and somehow closer to God, but simply those good souls who have gone on before us, and now reside in heaven. Also, for Swedenborg, heaven was less thought of as some future place we travel to, but a spiritual state—a level of awareness or consciousness—that is here and now, connected in varying degrees to all of us.
What would it mean to live life fully with this as a kind of foundational belief—how might it change the ways we live with and treat others, that they, too, are also potential angels-in-the-making?
One of my favorite movies about angels is by the German director Wim Wenders, a film he made in Berlin in the 1980s, shortly before the Berlin Wall came down. In German this movie is called Himmel über Berlin (“the heaven / sky above Berlin”), but in English it’s known as Wings of Desire, starring Bruno Ganz (and with marvelous cameo appearances by the musician Nick Cave and his band, the Bad Seeds). Perhaps you’ve seen it, or remember it—shot in luminous, silvery black and white tones—and what I really like about the film, besides its aesthetics, is the way it shows angels as soft, positive presences, listening and engaging with the interior thoughts of the humans they encounter on the streets and subways of Berlin. This is quite Swedenborgian, or at least close to what Swedenborg says about how angelic good spirits directly affect the flow of thoughts and feelings we have arising in our consciousness. In the movie, we watch a depressed father slumped on a subway bench, caught up in a negative monologue about himself and the poor choices he has made in life as the subway clicks and rattles through the tunnels under Berlin. One of the (invisible) angels calmly presses their hands to the man’s back, unbeknownst, and suddenly the man feels a warm presence of love, and begins to speak within himself differently, more positively.
May you all be open and attuned to the ways the angels are among us, and that your hands and presence might also be an unexpected blessing in the lives of others around you.
What would it mean to live life fully with this as a kind of foundational belief—how might it change the ways we live with and treat others, that they, too, are also potential angels-in-the-making?
One of my favorite movies about angels is by the German director Wim Wenders, a film he made in Berlin in the 1980s, shortly before the Berlin Wall came down. In German this movie is called Himmel über Berlin (“the heaven / sky above Berlin”), but in English it’s known as Wings of Desire, starring Bruno Ganz (and with marvelous cameo appearances by the musician Nick Cave and his band, the Bad Seeds). Perhaps you’ve seen it, or remember it—shot in luminous, silvery black and white tones—and what I really like about the film, besides its aesthetics, is the way it shows angels as soft, positive presences, listening and engaging with the interior thoughts of the humans they encounter on the streets and subways of Berlin. This is quite Swedenborgian, or at least close to what Swedenborg says about how angelic good spirits directly affect the flow of thoughts and feelings we have arising in our consciousness. In the movie, we watch a depressed father slumped on a subway bench, caught up in a negative monologue about himself and the poor choices he has made in life as the subway clicks and rattles through the tunnels under Berlin. One of the (invisible) angels calmly presses their hands to the man’s back, unbeknownst, and suddenly the man feels a warm presence of love, and begins to speak within himself differently, more positively.
Have you ever felt yourself “touched” by an angel in this way? A moment where a thought or a memory or even a direct presence of a beloved made itself inexplicably felt, even if you couldn’t see them, or rationally account for their being there? Such experiences might be much more commonplace than we think or know.
May you all be open and attuned to the ways the angels are among us, and that your hands and presence might also be an unexpected blessing in the lives of others around you.
See some of you Sunday,
Pastor Devin
Pastor Devin