war on heaven

There are angels in muddy trenches on edge of the fourth sphere--angels pulling their wings tighter around themselves in order to ward off the cold; angels balancing rifle butts against the shoulder of their plate armor. Michael squints at a map; trying to read the spidery writing of dispatches by only the light of a gaslamp and his halo.

(Michael tired, Michael bone-wearied and his courage flagging but still walking among his brothers; clasping them on the shoulder and saying "look there, look--you can see the dawn coming" and then--Michael drawing his sword; leading them over the top with glorias on his lips, searching out Lucifer in the chaos of the field; pulled toward him like a compass to north.

Lucifer laughing when their swords ring out against one another's (the sound is a sound like thunder) and Michael--Michael wants to drop his sword and gather Lucifer into his arms, steal him away and back to that place where they were brothers; where they were one and whole and holy. But Michael has the corpses of his little brothers emblazoned on the backs of his eyes--their broken wings and bodies weight him down, the crown of heaven sitting heavy at his temples, so he only tightens his hand around his sword.

(The lie is that they are so evenly matched in battle that neither of them can gain enough upperhand to deliver the mortal blow. The truth is something closer to how Lucifer leaned in and snarled "did you miss me brother?" instead of reaching for his dagger, or the time Michael had his foot on Lucifer's throat and a sword poised to strike--and he froze there; shaking. How he turned away and launched himself at another rebel angel; leaving Lucifer to suck in a ragged breath and pick himself up out of the mud. In the chaos of battle who would notice if Lucifer attacked with less ferocity than he was known for; if unflinching Michael flinched?)

The battle ends with too many angels dead; their wings sullied and spread in the mud; Michael adds their bodies to the weight he carries.

(Michael is always tired now; Lucifer always calls him 'brother')

(the war drags on)

on the disciples

ANDREW
Peter’s younger brother, the sort of vague embarrassment of the family because what sort of son abandons an honest future in fishing to follow around a dirty hermit in a loincloth? (he eats locusts, Andreia. I don’t care if this Baptist claims to be a prophet, he can still eat food like a normal person.) Kind of a space cadet, loves religion more than is probably healthy. If his family had been wealthier, he probably would have been sent to rabbinical school, but instead he follows around every Joshua, Joachim, and Jephthah who claims to speak on God’s behalf.

I think the first to recognize Jesus as Messiah would have to be a little credulous, with Heaven on his mind.

What do you think of Mary Magdalene?

I think that—underneath centuries of Da Vinci Code style-conspiracy theories, being labeled a prostitute or a mystic, exalted above the disciples or placed beneath them, conflated with the other Marys or vilified in comparison with them or ignored entirely or reduced to an archetype, a symbol, something gold-leafed and enshrined or rebellion given flesh—underneath all that—

I think she was just a Jewish woman.

the early days

I have this crystal clear image in my head, of he week after Jesus' ascension--most of the lesser followers leaving, in ones or in pairs, making their goodbyes fondly and saying in an apologetic tone, my family, my fields, my household, I'm needed elsewhere--

(not one of them says, Jesus is gone, there is nothing more here. It is time to wake, and rise, and return to the lives we were living before this dream, this insanity seized us. It was always going to end. None of them say it, but it is implied, it is in their voices, unspoken.)

I’ve just got this image of an angel tugging exasperatedly at their hair and wailing “WHY?!”

humanity is confusing, though

like, they make all this art and music that doesn't seem to serve any purpose? not all of it praises god and a lot of the semantic content could be expressed in more effective and less labor-intensive ways?? even their unadorned communication is inexact and dependent on things like body language, tone of voice, context--what's even the point of having a language if the words won't stay where you put them???

and like, bodies??? bodies are weird, and humanity's relationship to their bodies is super weird--it's integral to your understanding of yourself but also not you in the truest sense; it's your point of access to the world but also part of the world and unreliable, really unreliable. angels don't really get that, they're all pure understanding and platonic knowledge, the idea that your mind could play tricks on you and that's normal, to not see everything or hear everything, to be constantly and consistently ignorant and have to learn things--

learning freaks them out. angels don't learn things. angels are.

(well--they aren't. that's part of the problem.)

but probably the most confusing thing about humanity is that humanity is charming. humanity crowds its way into the angels' non-space and humanity makes them be, makes them piecewise functions of beast and bird, writes entropy into an otherwise perfect system. And the angels are frustrated (emotions, those are new) and the angels muse wistfully about if humanity had never come (the subjunctive, that's new too) but humanity moves through a world of half-certain shadows singing, wearing divinity in its skin.

and angels ask why

(that's new too)

Who is your favorite angel?

GABRIEL always Gabriel because of all the narratives about angels, Gabriel’s leans closest to humanity. Gabriel who translates between the Word and the messy inexactitudes of human language—we are creatures of connotation and context; our vocabulary is slantwise, all ill-defined shapes and inexact transliterations. We barely understand one another, and yet angels are messengers, bending right angles into fractals just to try and express a fingernail of what the Lord said.

But Gabriel speaks; Gabriel bends low and whispers; Gabriel tries harder than any other to understand. And as a consequence I think Gabriel loves a little differently than the other angels, because human love is like human language—messy and inexact and shifting; powerful when wielded by one who knows its power.

Gabriel who is sent to deliver the good news to the Mother of God without sin; Theotokos and the Queen of Heaven—and gets Miriam of Nazareth instead.

(She’s slender and sun-browned and faithful, but not a queen—just a girl like any other from a backwater Judean town. And Gabriel basically follows her around for nine months trying to figure out how this human becomes the mystical figure the angels were told she was, where she’s keeping her grace and power and wisdom hidden.

It’s Gabriel’s hand she holds while giving birth—her nails would have drawn blood, if he had any—it’s Gabriel who laughs when she tells him the story of her friend’s wedding, the water into wine and her impertinent son—it’s Gabriel who holds her when the news of Yeshua’s arrest reaches Nazareth and it’s Gabriel who walks beside her on the long road to Jerusalem, to watch her son crucified.

She is still sun-browned and faithful, and Gabriel thinks maybe that is the point.)

on guardian angels

guardian angels who are young and green and uncertain, in over their head from the moment of their charge is born (all that screaming and blood and yet the mother smiles through her tears, kisses the forehead of the small, squalling thing and they don't understand but they feel the flaring of a new-born soul, and there is something there, something sensed slantwise and true)

guardian angels whose hearts leap into their throats when this infant falls asleep against the curve of their palm, when it grabs at their fingers and burbles happy noises that mean foodlovehomesafe. (it will never occur to these angels, so green and new, that they are partly responsible for the love-longing that humanity chases all its life) Guardian angels who rock their infant humans in their arms, whispering stories of earth's early seas and distant supernovas and the antics of their brothers, letting the child gum at the sleeve of their robe.

the city is full of wings

Every order of angels stakes out a hallowed ground, nesting in some exposed crevice of the city like their Columbidae cousins. The Ophanim like subway tunnels, the thrumming of them, the rush of air. The Cherubim prefer something a little more stately, expensive dining rooms where their oxen faces lip at the china plates, and their wings brushing back and forth lazily.

(Seraphs try not to fit more than two of them on the same plane of physical existence at once. It crowds out the quarks.)

The Dominions gather on the steps of the capitol building. One of them picked up a smoking habit from an alderman, and now they all carry those cardboard cases tucked in the folds of their palliums. You can see them there sometimes, lighting cigarettes with the fire of their swords.

The Powers like shipping yards, loading docks, late at night. They wrestle one another in the gravel, all six arms flailing, monstrous mouths laughing through bared teeth. The strength of the Lord likes a headlock, though it’s difficult when there are three heads. Principalities tend to congregate in the Art Institute—they trail through exhibits in twos or threes, brushing against people’s coat sleeves, speaking to one another in dead men’s poetry.

The low-level angels—the unaffiliated stragglers, loners, and miscellaneous celestial riffraff—find places wherever they can. Last month it was a hole in the wall Thai place where one of them was a server; the month before, it was the public library. They play card games in Starbucks and bless the baristas under their breath—sometimes when they’re gathered at the lakeshore, they like flashing their halos, distracting bikers and joggers.

Act your rank, the Virtues admonish them, when they see the mere angels giggling into their feathers.

Make us, the angels jeer, and race away laughing, their wings catching the wind like sails.

angels, unawares

some have entertained angels unawares, but others get this--seraphim crashing on your couch
(metaphorically of course; they wouldn't fit on a sofa) with their hundred hundred wings beating the air lazily; their beryllium eyes shut. "You should get a place," you may tell them over breakfast. "Not that you aren't always welcome; but don't you want somewhere to call your own?" But the seraphim merely blinks; eyes sparking; and goes back to coaxing the coffee maker not to burn your morning caffiene high

(they don't understand property you see; don't understand the concept of owning a piece of the dust--earth is humanity's birthright, and all else is god's)

(...yes even them; their wings, their eyes, the half-burnt coffee on their 7-dimensional tongue. You do not need to have a place of your own when you yourself are not your own, silly human)

(so the seraphim keep dragging themselves in at 2am, starlight caught in their feathers and whiskey on their breath--whispering ''are you up? are you up? the kingdom of god is at hand--come and kiss me,'' before collapsing back onto the sofa; wings fluttering in the angelic approximation of helpless giggles)

(...it turns out seraphim do indeed fit on the couch; with just enough room for one sleep-deprived human, waiting for the kingdom of god to arrive)

New Testament genderswap

New Testament genderswap—Saint Peter Petra

Petra, he calls you, the rock on which he will build his church. You are the daughter of fishermen and the wife of a shipwright, a mender of nets and a gutter of silver-scaled fish—yet the Son of HaShem presses the keys of Heaven into your pitch-rough hands. He promises you a priesthood and a temple; he promises you a crown and a city. He looks to you with eyes full with stars, and says such infinities will be yours to command.

You are not sure what he means you to do with them.)

I am not worthy, you finally say to him one night, when the heavens are bright and the fire is burning down to embers. Choose Johanna, she has a scholar’s mind—or Andreia, who is my blood, and first knew you for what you were. Even James has a courage and a fire that I do not. You are a poor builder, Rabboni, if you would use such shifting sand as your foundation.

fake novel meme

ON THE HEAD OF A PIN

Sister Althea Parker is your average caseworker--assessing individual need, facilitating celestial placement, and providing both guardian angel and the blessed assistance through the transition period. (Her office is full of bright, cheery brochures with titles like "Body Language for the Newly Corporeal" and "Being Named A Prophet of the Lord: What Can I Expect?")

Yet when one of her clients is discovered stuffed in a dumpster, his wings torn off and blessed protectee missing, Sister Althea is not content to simply turn the matter over to the Principalities. Instead, she finds herself traveling deep into the seedy underbelly of celestial hierarchy, determined to discover the truth about her client, and find the missing saint.

Along the way, she finds a grudging ally in the unaffiliated Ramiel, an angel whose casual blasphemy and rumored Nephilim past make her dangerous company. (Her habit of blood-red lipstick and flirting with Ophanim doesn't help.) Yet together, they are intent on uncovering the ugly truth--even if it damns them.

zophiel

zophiel does not believe the war will end.

she has no frame of reference for it, can’t remember a heaven not scored by shelling and smelling of the pyre. “before the war” is nothing but a story her brothers tell each other with their bellies deep in mud, a sweet lie to warm their wings—this thing that began must have an ending, we need only live to see it.

(her wings smelled of iron before she knew what they were for; the harps were long ago unstrung, sword-calloused hands not knowing how to hold them. there is no before, not for her, and not after)

heaven is battlelines and mud, and hell is fire; all else is vacuum, and darkness, but zophiel survives, and she is glad, glad, glad.

For centuries after the Fall, Gabriel believes that Lucifer—Lucifer will come back. He could. He might. One day he will simply walk back through the gates, laughter on his lips, as though nothing has transpired. The Father will forgive him—the Father always forgives, and Lucifer was loved so well. It is only a matter of time.

(It isn’t until the first of their brothers falls to Lucifer’s war, until Gabriel sees the bloody feathers, the ribcage opened up and the organs spilling out like magician’s scarves, that Gabriel realizes there can be no homecoming for their prodigal brother.)

Raphael is more realistic. Raphael only believes that Lucifer will return for a few decades, a quiet hope that mostly takes the form of letters written and left unsent, letters that say come home the flowers are in bloom ramiel is learning to fly michael is miserable and taking it out on the fledglings he misses you gabriel keeps asking when you’re coming back I miss you I miss you come back come back.

(Then, Azazel falls. His is not a flood of quintessence and fury—Azazel is only a cherubim, not the Morningstar—but a quieter leaving, a sudden absence and a hastily scrawled note: He promised me more than Heaven. Then, Raphael knows. All that is good in Heaven could not bring Lucifer back to them.)

Michael never believed. From the moment Lucifer laughed that cold, mirthless laugh, from the moment he refused to kneel—Michael knew.

(Michael still never got to say goodbye.)

raphael and uriel

Oh, raphael is there, but raphael is god-who-heals, gentlest of the cardinal four, and the war appalls him—michael had to beg him to captain the field hospital, had to go to him on his knees, and michael does not beg. It is a sign of how badly the war is going that he dared approach raphael at all.

but raphael is skilled in healing, second only to the father himself in the laying of hands, and so raphael does his duty, washes the blood from his brothers’ bodies and amputates broken wings and prays over the dying and slowly a cavern opens up inside him, filled with blood and things that cannot be mended.

(he flinches at the sound of distant shelling now, growing thin beneath his robes, dull-eyed and desperate to be anything but this—

so he runs to earth, runs to gabriel, who lets him mope around for a century or two before saying, if you’re staying, at least make yourself useful—there’s a kid called tobiah who needs help catching a fish.)

(humanity is a species made of porcelain and spun sugar, surviving on scar tissue and stubbornness. raphael loves them for it, learns again how to heal.)

heaven

so I know I've been talking about Heaven as like, trenches and astronomical bodies and physical space, but that's just because I haven't figured out a good way to write about a heaven so removed from humanity's experience of the world that language fails.

because my favorite thing is a heaven that isn't a physical space, isn't a thing the way the world is a thing, populated with beings that are also not things, so nothing occupies space and nothing occupies time they're just math and vacuum except not because those are things and you see why I'm having problems with this.

but then you get this great idea of humanity showing up for that eternal life they were promised, and humanity is just so fucking used to three-dimensional space and experiences of time that they warp the non-universe around them and it's all a great experiment in subjective idealism

because an angel isn't a thing but when humanity is faced with an angel, it expects a thing and so angels are suddenly things and heaven is suddenly a place, and it's all very confusing if you're accustomed to existing simultaneously in twenty-six dimensions and none at all.

(humanity gives heaven weather.)

(weather. in heaven.)

(why???)

so humanity goes around retooling heaven in their image of earth's image, making things from not-things and calling it good, leaving the angels to scramble helplessly after them. (heaven was operating off newtonian mechanics for centuries, it was a nightmare. every time the angels wanted to go faster than the speed of light they had to deliberately avoid thinking about maxwell's equations or end up slamming into a paradox.)

and anytime an angel tries to complain, god laughs.

fucking creators, man.

Gabriel (Come the War)

when gabriel receives his first orders, he storms into michael's makeshift headquarters. (it's carved from a large quasar group, held up with old bits of armor, a broken spear or two, chewing gum and hope.)

earth? gabriel snarls, thrusting the dispatch in michael's direction. you're sending me to earth? are you trying to insult me, I'm a prince of heaven and you're sending me so far rearward that I might as well let my sword rust! I won't see any battle, michael!

earth needs defending as much as heaven, brother, michael replies gently, but gabriel will not be turned aside.

I have been staring at this ask for a week now, anon, trying to figure out if I actually had an answer that wasn’t a keysmash and a gif of an explosion.

For all the time I spend trying to articulate the ineffable about my faith, Jesus is the one topic I’m wary of. My idea of him is so wrapped up in what I am and what I love and what I long to become, that it makes it difficult to speak on the subject without actually inviting you inside my head. But I’ve never actually tried to articulate any my feelings, so maybe it’s about time I did.

urban angels

there’s a seraph who sleeps in the pews of the city’s churches because it’s the only place she feels comfortable stretching out her wings, feathers nearly blocking out the stained glass windows. At night, the prayers embedded in the stonework whisper to her, a litany of please and help and need, as inexorable and unceasing as the rattle of the subway beneath her.
and there’s an angel of the third sphere who plays pickup basketball with a young prophet—a young man who walks through metal detectors each morning to get to a high school where only fifty percent will graduate, but loves calculus and singing in church every Sunday. “Your jump shot’s insane, man,” the saint-to-be laughs, clapping the angel on the back, right between the wings. And the angel, who can see how the light catches on the young man’s halo, laughs too.
and there are ophanim sitting on the girders of half-built skyscrapers, unafraid of falling; passing sandwiches and thermoses of campbell’s soup between them, speaking in tongues about the traffic on I-90 and last night’s Bears game.
and Israfel sneaks away from celestial choir practice to attend concerts in the park, but he usually ends up absently sketching equations modeling the wavelengths into the grass. There’s an adjunct mathematics professor who sometimes attends, and afterwards they discuss hyperharmonic series in the gathering dusk.
angels in the public libraries, reading children’s books and touching the illustrations with just their fingertips, like beholding a sacred text.
angels moving along the cracks in the pavement and between the alleyways; going without fear into the worst neighborhoods, because they have walked in the valley of death and fear no evil—not even the mastery of it that humanity demonstrates through abject poverty, ignorance, social immobility.
angels glaring at potholes  and rolling their eyes at delays (the work of the Deceiver, no doubt) and running to catch a subway that goes not even a hairsbreadth of the speed their wings could carry them.
angels looking up at the statues made in their image, grey forms on grey pedestals with granite wings, and snickering to themselves. (The artist missed a few hundred eyes, they think; mouths and limbs and grace and song and fire and flight—)
but then they gaze up at the brutalist skyscrapers with windows reflecting the flame-colored sunset and low-hanging exhaust, spindly radio towers forming a winking blue halo if you crane your neck just so. And the angels think maybe the humans caught a glimpse of the divine after all.

spark-spattered wheels of god

Ophanim
(Hebrew, אוֹפַנִּים ’ōfannīm)

This was the appearance and structure of the wheels: They sparkled like beryl, and all four looked alike. Each appeared to be made like a wheel intersecting a wheel.Their rings were so high that they were dreadful, and all four rings were full of eyes all around. (Ezekial 1:15-18)

i. there are angels in the subway.
(and on the bus; and the interlocking highways, beat down beneath endless tire treads; and on the bikes darting through intersections like silverfish through shoals; and growling in time with the engine, their wings tucked away behind the staring-bright headlights of cabs; and racing alongside, their bare feet on blacktop, spinning, skimming, urging homeward, homeward)
but mostly, there are angels in the subway.
ii. ophanim cannot keep still--they are not grigori, they are not made to merely watch. the angel called raziel finds herself breaking the minor rules of physics behind the wheel of an ambulance; writes friction off as unnecessary when a child's pulse is fluttering. the angel jophiel has no patience for such metal casing, prefers the marriage of physics and humanity that is a messenger bicycle; the art of keeping your balance by moving forward.
sometimes, when the road is slick with rain and streetlights are burning white and hazy, it is almost like flying.
iii. (there is a moment before the subway train appears, when the earth shudders under approaching thunder, and the stale air of the station rouses, churns, whipping itself against the walls, and indeed the very world heralds the coming of the prime mover.)
iv. once a month they gather on the girders of a half-built skyscraper--there is always one, the city does not keep still any more than they do. they speak in tongues about the traffic on I-90, exchange recipes, stretch out their wings after long days of hiding feathers beneath false skins. they are always shifting, sparking; a hundred thousand eyes and all saccadic.
the next day, the girders are scored with tire tracks no workman can explain and raziel and jophiel run, laughing, to the subway, leaving skid marks where their feet don't touch the ground.
v. in chicago, the subway is called the El.
(angels do not believe in coincidence.)

leviathan

God made them with their mouths open,
no milk teeth; loosed them on the teeming world
and said Do not eat to the wrong children,
the one whose bones snapped like dry grass,
whose blood tasted of the sea. So they ate
of the flesh, drank the blood, and had eternal life.
And when they turned back to their Father and smiled,
with all those teeth he gave
to fill their open mouths—

God cursed them for being hungry.