This afternoon (Friday, 4.17) I was listening on the radio to Metro Connection as I drove back into town, when a story was told of an artist who one day was looking for floor tiles to repair his house. He asked. “God, show me where to go,” then felt impelled to get in his car and drive left and right and left and right and right and left, having no idea where he was going in Baltimore, but feeling guided, when he found himself at a dead end, face to face with a sign: FREE GLASS TILES. Metro Connection reported the story without comment, and I am thrilled.

When I wrote A Book of Angels (published 1990) NO ONE talked about these little guides, these “miracles,” and if you did, you weren’t sure you were judged quite sane. I remember having it come into my head one day that I really wanted a slab of onyx, that beautiful green and brown marble, to put on top of a shoe-shelf in my front hall. How the thought came to me, I have no idea. I could see it in my mind’s eye. I started phoning marble and stone companies, and no one had onyx. Moreover were I to find a piece, it would have to come in a slightly odd shape to fit. I’d given up hope, when suddenly I came across one last marble company out in Virginia. “Do you have any onyx?” I asked on the phone. “Only one small piece. Let me see,” said the man on the other end of the phone. He came back moments later with measurements—“It’s the only piece we have.”

It fit perfectly! Perfectly! It didn’t even need to be cut, and I gave thanks to God, or angels or my spirit guides first for giving me the idea and then for finding the only piece of onyx in Washington. Golly, it was beautiful!

(Giving thanks is necessary, by the way; recognizing guidance when it comes increases the chance of having more. Also, it’s only courteous.)

Two other editions of A Book of Angels have come out since 1990, and it is no longer the massive best seller of yesteryear, but that’s because we live in different times—times when an artist can speak openly on the radio of being guided by God, and no one questions or laughs or even comments anymore.

Let me quote one important passage from A Book of Angels (and there are lots of good parts, if I do say so myself)! But this one paragraph sums up one important Rule of the Universe, the Path to Happiness.

I was writing about the 17^th century mystic, Emmanuel Swedenborg, an inventor and scientist, who spent the last twenty years of his life writing down his clairvoyant communications from angels.

“Swedenborg’s angels stayed with him always, whispering and singing to him. He writes of their communicating spiritually—by thoughts flashing into his mind, and in one of these instructions he learned that angels look on all events as proceeding from God—not as men or evil spirits do, who want everything to come out their way and, when it doesn’t, give way to doubt or even deny the existence of God, but rather in an outpouring of faith. His angels repeated again and again that we poor beings should not worry about the future but only trust to Providence. For Providence will bring all things that we desire—not necessarily while we desire them, but yet if it be for their good, they obtain them afterward, when not thinking of them.“

            Have you had that experience? Have you suddenly received an unexpected gift and marveled to yourself: ‘I remember wanting that! I’d forgot!’ It’s all about Letting Go. About trusting the Universe or Providence or God or whatever we want to call it. About keeping a light heart.  It’s hard when you’re feeling “down” and fearful, but these are just the times when you have to practice Letting Go. Give yourself a break. Dare to be weak. To fail. And then most likely you’ll feel a gentle Guiding Presence walking by you, whispering words of hope? Angels, everywhere.