Calling All Angels
On a classically gorgeous autumn afternoon last October, I tapped on the roof of my car and released my guardian angel while passing through the gates of the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. I was on my way to spend a few days of silence and solitude tucked away in the Woodland Hermitage at St. Mary’s Retreat Center—exactly twelve years from the first of many visits that would change the trajectory of my life in ways I could not have imagined.
What is this business of a guardian angel riding on the roof of my car you might ask? Legend has it that when Sewanee was created, the angels found it to be so exquisitely beautiful that they decided to claim it as their home. It is said that everyone who visits is assigned an angel to protect them until they return. All one must do to pick up their angel is tap on the roof of their car as they leave, and one will hitch a ride home with you. When you return, repeating the tap will release your angel back to the Domain, as it is called.
I’m not sure when I first learned of this legend, but in twelve years’ time I’ve picked up and released quite a few of Sewanee’s resident angels. Retreats into silence and solitude became a regular and essential part of my personal spiritual practice, and I returned to the hermitage at least annually (sometimes more if needed) since my first visit. After my October 2020 reservation was canceled due to the pandemic, my angel ended up stuck with me for three whole years! I chuckled to myself as I imagined my bedraggled and beleaguered angel, once released, greeting the others whilst shaking her head and exclaiming, “you aren’t going to believe this!”
Indeed, a lot of life has happened in both my personal life and in the collective sphere in the span of three years. The 2020 visit would have been the 10th anniversary of my first mystical mountaintop experience. I imagined this milestone to be the natural completion of a cycle, and considered it might be time to close this chapter and begin a new one. So, I’d planned for it to be a time of celebration, gratitude and perhaps letting go. After all, so many of the seeds that were collected, planted, and nurtured in the hours I spent on the mountain had begun maturing and bearing fruit. The time seemed ripe for harvest.
Passing the anniversary cloistered at home, I felt less like a hermit and more like a medieval anchoress walled in my home office cell, but still in the middle of community life as seekers, friends, teachers, and colleagues all came to my window (otherwise known as my computer monitor) via the magic of Zoom. Less like the life of an anchoress, I had little time for contemplation I’d hoped that freedom from the corporate world might afford.
In fact, the pace of life had only escalated since I “retired.” I found myself with plenty of work (a good thing) while my spiritual practices fell by the wayside and personal projects were deferred again and again (not such a good thing). The urgent had overtaken the important, and the remaining two and a half months of 2022 were a complete blur of activity mixed with overwhelm and a heaping helping of anxiety.
To be fair, much of what was hijacking my agenda at the time was out of my control. In November, the platform that hosts World of SoulCollage®, the online community that I manage, announced a December 8th release of a major platform update that required a substantial reworking of the design. To get a head start, I volunteered to participate in the alpha test group contributing feedback to the developers, finding bugs, and testing fixes. Suddenly, I was back in the world of software development that I had consciously decided to leave in 2020. Even while working 12–16-hour days, I found myself still falling hopelessly behind. Thanksgiving was resentfully cancelled in my household, and a keto meal delivery service was all that was keeping me alive.
The timing of the upgrade could not have been worse. With Christmas coming, I was desperately trying to wrap up outstanding items on my to-do list so I could enjoy the holiday with family. My son and his family live in the United Kingdom, and I was so grateful to share my grandson’s first Christmas here with them in the United States. This would also be the first time we would all be together as a family for the holidays in five years, and the first time my father would meet his great-grandson. Naturally, I wanted it to be special for everyone.
My toxic trait is being “extra” – especially when it comes to the holidays. This tendency to go overboard was on full display through Christmas. We literally had three major dinners just to fit in all the “must have” traditional dishes along with a few new ones. The time together with the family was all I hoped it would be, but the moment I had chance to sit down and breathe it all caught up with me. It is little wonder that I developed a persistent respiratory infection (thankfully not COVID) that has been with me since Christmas and is still lingering as I write.
If I am to be completely honest, it wasn’t just the strain of a busy holiday season that put me down. Life had been delivering relentless waves of change, traumas, and readjustments starting well before the pandemic. There has been a nagging awareness that it was all just too much and an inner knowing that something had to give, and it might just be me. I might have blamed not feeling well for the tears that seemed to erupt unbidden and with increasing frequency, except that I knew better. There is always a limit, and it was clear I was perilously close to hitting it.
Certainly, help would have to come from something bigger, more archetypal, more divine than my best thinking could hope to resolve. Since 2012, I’ve had the SoulCollage® method as a gentle but reliable source of support and inner guidance. It seemed like a good idea to add a new “protector” card to my deck and I decided to create a “Guardian of Time” Council card. After all, time or a perceived lack of it, seemed to be at the root of what was causing many of my present difficulties.
While searching for images, I decided to include an angel in the composition to represent protection energy, and immediately my mind returned to the legend of the Sewanee Angels. I imagined that my Guardian of Time was the angel who I’d picked up on my way back last October.
However, as soon as I created the card, and opened my heart to what she had to say, other Guardians began to make themselves known in surprising and synchronistic ways. In the span of a month, I’d created seven Guardian cards and I suspect more are waiting in the wings (no pun intended). I have to wonder if the Sewanee Angels may have decided back in October that I needed a small army to accompany me home!
Guardian of Time
Council Suit
I Am One Who relentlessly and unapologetically protects the precious gift of time.
I Am One Who gives you permission to prioritize the important over the urgent.
I Am One Who bends time effortlessly—accomplishing more by slowing down.
I Am One Who stands between you and thieves of time who come in clever disguises.
I Am One Who clears space for time outside of time, to connect with the infinite and eternal.
I Am One Who is aware of and submits to the discipline of time while releasing the anxiety around the illusion of controlling it.
My Guardian of Time has already helped me protect time for writing, which is an important aspect of my work in the world, and one that is easily given up in the interest of the urgent. This blog post and those that will follow in this series would not have been possible without a radical shift in the way I was living in relationship to time. I look forward to sharing more about how this angel Neter* has helped me, and what the others are revealing as we go. It would appear that there is a full carload, and I think it’s going to be quite a ride!
* Neters were, in ancient Egyptian lore, the gods and goddesses that came forth from the One Neter, or Source, to help or challenge humans. In SoulCollage® we use this term to represent the guides, allies and challengers that reside in our SoulCollage® deck.
SoulCollage® is an expressive arts practice developed by Seena B. Frost M. Div., M.A.. For more information visit World of SoulCollage®