"Now Paul was well aware that one section was made up of Sadducees and the other of Pharisees, so he called out to the Sanhedrin, ‘Brothers, I am a Pharisee and the son of Pharisees. It is for our hope in the resurrection of the dead that I am on trial.’ As soon as he said this a dispute broke out between the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and the assembly was split between the two parties. For the Sadducees say there is neither resurrection, nor angel, nor spirit, while the Pharisees accept all three. The shouting grew louder, and some of the scribes from the Pharisees’ party stood up and protested strongly, ‘We find nothing wrong with this man. Suppose a spirit has spoken to him, or an angel?’" Acts 23: 6 - 9.

Allow me to introduce you to my angel. Perhaps there are others but this one I know by name. This is how I came to know about her and get acquainted with her.

A few nights later I had a dream:

Upon reflection I realize that Peter Faber is an early Jesuit who is noted for his skill in directing others in the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola (or, giving a retreat). I also realize that his name means "work," like in prefabricated. I realize that I am invited by the feminine (the stately black woman) to put aside work and to play with Clarissa - she would help me. I did, and the retreat was very well received.

Some time later I was walking along Lake Pontchartrain near midnight. About 200 feet in front of me, 100 feet out over the lake, and about 50 feet high, I saw a very bright contained light about the size of a large grapefruit. It was moving very quickly toward the shore, leaving a short trail of light behind it. It appeared for about five seconds and then was gone. The next day as I was driving I was thinking that I would like to see Clarissa. What came to me was, "Who do you think you saw last night?"

After a year or so I began working on a manuscript which ultimately was submitted to my religious superiors in early September of 1994. For a number of good reasons the manuscript was rejected for publication. My angel, Clarissa, was aware that I had allowed some of my own personal negative feelings and misunderstandings to get into the manuscript. She decided to come live with me in the flesh of a little canine. She allowed me to get to know her and trust her and then she helped me to revise the manuscript. What you have now is the result of her help. Any confusion in what I have written is due to my misunderstanding of what Clarissa, in the form of a little canine, has been trying to convey to me.

Introducing Missy

On August 25, 1994 Clarissa, having decided to make herself more visible and tangible to me, enfleshed herself in a mixed breed canine body. She acted lost and homeless on the streets where Sr. Jo Ann Viviano, an incurable dog lover, would be passing by. Sure enough when Jo Ann saw this little dog, alone and homeless and seemingly in danger of being run over by cars, she opened her heart and the door to her car, whistled, and the dog who shall henceforth be called Missy jumped in.

Jo Ann and later Sr. Rosalie Ambler took Missy around the neighborhood to see if Missy would recognize any of the houses from which she might have come. They even put an ad in the paper. Of course, the results were negative. The Sisters realized they could not keep Missy in their quarters. They were looking for a home for Missy. And as Clarissa had planned, unbeknownst to any of us, I volunteered.

Missy is about seventeen pounds, stands about eighteen inches in height and is three feet long from the tip of her snout to the tip of her tail. She has brown sparkling eyes set in a pert, pretty little face. Her hair, from the top of her head down her back to the tip of her tail, is blonde. Her underhair is silky white from her chin to her fetlocks.

When she saunters out in front of me

Missy is here to care for me. She is here to help me revise the manuscript. She takes me for walks and invites me to appreciate the beauty of the Cosmos, the embodiment of Spirit.

Sometimes I ask Missy to explain this and other mysteries to me. Most frequently she responds:

Larry, when will you learn? Enjoy the beauty! Be at one with the Mystery. Then you will know. Do you know why I made myself visible and tangible to you as a female canine?

Larry: Not really. I thought that if you were to make yourself visible at all you might appear something like Gabriella in Andrew Greeley’s novel ANGEL FIRE.

Missy: Really, Larry, that isn’t my style nor is it yours. I had a choice. Quite honestly I did not have the courage to choose to be a rational animal. Rationality is indeed a blessing but it is also a curse. It is a curse because it is so intriguing that rational animals individually and collectively frequently think they can analyze, understand and then control the whole of Cosmogenesis. I chose as an intuitive angel to be an instinctive, sensate non-rational animal. What I intuit in the Universe I communicate directly to your intuition, thus by-passing as much as possible all the labyrinthine ways of the rational intellect.

Larry: Now, Missy, you know as well as I that the rational intellect of humans is what sets them above the non-rational animal kingdom.

Missy: Why, of course, that is what you humans say. Just as you humans say that you, and by implication only you, are made in the image and likeness of God.

Larry: That is what we have been taught.

Missy: Don’t you think the whole of Cosmogenesis images God Who is the Source of Cosmogenesis?

Larry: Whew! I guess so.

Missy: That is why I am here. I want to free you from your anthropocentric teachings. I want to invite you to experience the wonder of yourself as an eternal spirit courageously bringing light, compassion and love into the darkness of the evolutionary process of the rational animal. It is important for you and all humans to know that the rational animal simply does not realize that it is only one of thousands of species on Planet Earth. Not realizing this human has become so arrogant as to think it has dominion over the Earth and even that it is the center of the Universe. Furthermore human is so irrationally rational about survival that human is destroying Planet Earth, the very source of human’s survival.

Larry: You know all that?

Missy: It is so absolutely clear to all the angels, to all in the Cosmos, that the rational human is destroying itself by its irrational placing of itself at the apex and center of Planet Earth and, indeed, of the Universe. And, Larry, please hear me.....We angels and all cosmic energies stand in awe as we witness you eternal spirits, the most courageous in the Universe, choosing to participate in the redemptive process of the human species by bringing light, compassion and love into such darkness and greed rooted in the fallacious need to survive.

Larry: Thank you, Missy, that is very encouraging for me and I am sure for all humans who may be able to hear that deeply within themselves. It reminds me of the saying of Jesus, "Let him who has ears to hear, hear." By the way, Missy, why do you choose to share all of this with me?

Missy: Well, Larry, it’s like this. You are one of the least academically trained old priests we could find. And you know that you slept throughout the course on Logic. So you are not too concerned about analyzing or proving my existence or anything I share with you. Speaking of Jesus... Larry, do you understand the story of Jesus the Christ and the purpose of it?

Larry: The story of Jesus the Christ?

Missy: Yes.

Larry: (I did not want to get into this. It seemed to be too much. So I responded.) No. I consider that a mystery.

Missy: (Missy would not accept this.) My good man.........You are in your seventy-fifth year and in your forty-fifth year as a priest and that is all you can say?

Larry: Okay, the way that I understand Jesus the Christ is that His purpose is to free each one of us to become who we are.

Missy: That is exactly right...to find the Christness in your being - to understand that all humans must get to a place in which they celebrate the wonder of themselves. Christ gave to human the image of what human must become. And that was the purpose of His life. His purpose is not to be worshipped, but to teach human that within human there is the temporal persona or ego and there is divinity, or the eternal spirit, that is one in the One. Each individual is invited during the course of his/her life to bring the persona into harmony with her/his eternal spirit.

Larry: What I am beginning to pick up is something I have thought; namely, that what is important is being present to mystery, and letting go of the concepts.

Missy: That is truth!

Larry: So that knowledge is not conceptualized, but is union with mystery. Is that it?

Missy: Absolutely! It is the same.

Larry: So the concepts get in the way of the mystery. Is that it?

Missy: You lose perspective of what you’re seeking to find. (I’m laughing.) Human must keep it simple. When human starts confusing the issues then human has lost human’s place.

Larry: How does human confuse the issues?

Missy: By trying to understand everything with the implication that once the mystery is understood then it can be lived. Human is invited to trust that the teachings which are needed for the present moment are within. Indeed they are within the cellular wisdom developed over the millenia. But when human forgets that humans are part of the One in the Cosmic Dance and live out of their own separatenesses, then humans begin to fear and worry, lose trust in themselves and in the Universe and live life, as Merton says, "as beasts of burden."

Larry: Thank you, Missy.

Missy: I have something to add. In this life simplicity is the key that allows all to feel Oneness. It is surrender to mystery which is acceptance, which is love.

And here our dialogue ended.

Being a good Pharisee I firmly believe that there are the angels and other cosmic consciousnesses, energies, all about us, and for that matter in us, and neither in us nor outside us. In fact, we humans may be only a small physical expression of consciousnesses in the Cosmos. I also believe, but cannot prove to any doubter’s satisfaction, that communication takes place intuitively between we incarnated cosmic consciousnesses and those that are not incarnated or maybe incarnated in non-rational animals. All of this is expressed imaginatively and in the expression realized more fully. Garrett Green in his work Imagining God proposes the imagination as the primary arena in which God works and plays to reveal God’s self. Perhaps that is why St. Ignatius, in his Spiritual Exercises, always invited the exercitant to use the imagination.