Calling All Angels

Photo image above courtesy of my friend, Kate Haen.

I spent the afternoons this week in my art studio with k.d. lang. Her voice so soothing and deep and her tempo smooth – just right for my creative mood. I had nearly exhausted her Spotify playlist when I stumbled upon this one – Calling All Angels – a duet she did with Jane Siberry.

I stopped what I was doing and just stopped. It was written five years ago, but it feels like it is for right now. For today and tomorrow. This moment and the next.

I have listened to it so many times now. Each time I felt my collective of angels expand. The first few times I opened to the sacred images of the Virgin de Guadalupe, Mary Magdalene, Eve – anchored in me early and thus surface often.

Then I felt my ancestral angels – those that have experienced the “sweetness of the leaving” yet walk with me now and again.

I heard Mother Earth ask to join in with her story, much larger than this blip in time. Reminding me of her ability to heal with her resilience and beauty and asking for my conscious healing for her in return.

Who else? There are more. Deeper still, the angels that call to me from their own past-trodden, powerful paths of honest living – the leaders of movements, the pioneers of justice – encouraging me to be a warrior, to “step out onto the road of hope”, gently and with purpose.

And then the angels I walk with right now in “the beauty of the light upon this earth.” Real live angels. Badass angels. Humans reaching out to each other with their visionary voices to protect and remind. And alive but so-worn angels who have been bravely traveling along this road of pain and suffering and uncertainty for so long and who now allow me to join them with a new openness.

The more I listened, the more they came. In droves. Seen and unseen. Named and unknown.

I’m calling on all of them. Envelope me. Embody and embolden me. “Walk me through this one. Don’t leave me alone.”

Lyrics: 

Santa Maria, Santa Teresa, Santa Anna, Santa Susannah
Santa Cecilia, Santa Copelia, Santa Domenica, Mary Angelica
Frater Achad, Frater Pietro, Julianus, Petronilla
Santa, Santos, Miroslaw, Vladimir
and all the rest

Oh, a man is placed upon the steps, a baby cries
and high above you can hear
the church bells start to ring
and as the heaviness, oh the heaviness, the body settles in
somewhere you can hear a mother sing

then it’s one foot then the other
as you step out onto the road of hope
step out on the road
how much weight? how much?
then it’s how long? and how far?
and how many times oh, before it’s too late?

calling all angels calling all angels
walk me through this one
don’t leave me alone
calling all angels calling all angels
we’re tryin’ and we’re hopin’
but we’re not sure how…

ah, and every day you gaze upon the sunset
with such love and intensity
why it’s ah, it’s almost as
if you could only crack the code
then you’d finally understand what this all means

ah, but if you could…do you think you would
trade in all, all the pain and suffering?
ah, but then you’d miss
the beauty of the light upon this earth
and the sweetness of the leaving

calling all angels calling all angels
walk me through this one
don’t leave me alone
calling all angels calling all angels
we’re tryin’ and we’re hopin’
but we’re not sure…

calling all angels calling all angels
walk me through this one
don’t leave me alone
calling all angels calling all angels
we’re tryin’ we’re hopin’
we’re hurtin’ we’re lovin’
we’re cryin’ we’re callin’
cause we’re not sure how this goes