As some of you may have noticed, it’s not often that I share personal information on the board.
(Perhaps we can address my introverted hang-ups some other time. Ha!) Yet since this story thread was started, off and on I’ve been reliving memories of two positive experiences from my early childhood and 20s, so I've decided to go ahead and share them.
So, when I was quite young, whenever I was falling asleep and in the midst of that borderland of consciousness and unconsciousness, I would hear the most beautiful choral music that was unfamiliar to me. At the time I believed that I was hearing a choir of guardian angels singing me to sleep, and I found it very comforting, of course. Some might say that this recurring auditory experience was cryptomnesia since from a young age, I’ve been drawn to choral and symphonic music. But who cares! I needed those angels, and most nights for several years they were there for me and kept me safe.
Since that time I’ve accumulated artwork of various types that are representations of angels and a few other mythological winged beings.
None of that, though, compares to the sunny day in my 20s when I visited St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, and had the opportunity to sit before the stunning, stained glass depiction of the Dove of Peace surrounded by Bernini's bronze angels. And while I don’t identify myself as Christian, there’s no denying that my experience in St. Peter’s was awesome in the archetypal sense of “experiencing the numinous.” Though attenuated these days, the feeling is still with me whenever I relive the memory of that experience.
The End