Those unexpected angel stories

Shedding a strange light on a disenchanted world.

Graham Tomlin

Graham is the Director of the Centre for Cultural Witness and a former Bishop of Kensington.

An almost abstract image with overlays of colour over a group of people standing.

Jr Korpa on Unsplash.

Unlike Robbie Williams, who sings about them, sometimes I preach about angels. When I do something always happens – people start telling me their own angel stories.

There was the one a soldier friend told me. During an army climbing expedition to Mount Kenya, one of his team had fallen to his death from a sheer rock face. Caught up in the drama of the moment, my friend found himself stuck on a ledge, unable to move up or down, paralyzed by fear and frustration. Suddenly, in an inaccessible part of the world, where they had seen no-one for days, on a mountain where they were the only registered group present, a climber appeared out of nowhere, moved onto the ledge where he was standing, tied a rope into his harness, lowered him down the rockface to safety before disappearing up the face never to be seen again.

Or the story of a pastor who got into trouble in an airport. A stranger walked by and asked if he could help, and remarkably fixed a seemingly intractable problem. The grateful passenger took a selfie of himself and the stranger, but when he looked at the phone later on, there was a picture of himself, grinning into the camera, with his arms around… nothing.

Why do so many stubbornly believe in angelic beings, when a materialist view of the world laughs scornfully at the idea as a bit of pre-modern superstition?

These are not just modern stories. In the second century, a young man called Justin from Asia Minor was working his way through the various schools of Greek philosophy. One day, he was walking along the beach at Ephesus, wondering, as young people have always done, about the meaning of life in general and his own life in particular, when a mysterious old man came alongside and joined him in conversation. As they walked together, the old man spoke about the philosophers and how none of them were quite able to answer the deepest mysteries of life. He advised Justin to read the Old Testament prophets, before disappearing into the distance. Justin did so, became a Christian and went on to become one of the greatest early theologians of the Church and one of its early martyrs for the faith – hence the name he is remembered by today - Justin Martyr.

Was it an angel? Or a real, yet mysterious old man? Are angels real? And if so, what is the point of them? Surveys tell us that 30 per cent of British people believe in angels. In the USA that figure rises to 70 per cent. Why do so many stubbornly believe in angelic beings, when a materialist view of the world laughs scornfully at the idea as a bit of pre-modern superstition? After all, the cynic might say all these stories can be explained - these were just ordinary people who turned up unexpectedly.

The encounter opened the eyes of the person in the story to another realm, a world unseen yet just as real as the seen.

The word angelos in Greek simply means messenger – and it can mean either a human or an angelic one. In the Bible, angels don’t usually appear with glowing white clothing and wings sprouting from their shoulder blades. When they come to people with a message, they often appear in the guise of ordinary people. In fact, it’s often hard to tell whether you have been visited by an angel or just another human.

The point, therefore, is not so much about the angels, but about the message that they bring. They tend to turn up when there is something particularly important to announce, something like the birth of Jesus, when an angel appears to the young Mary to tell her the news that she will give birth to the Son of God, her, and then quite a few of them turn up to sing to the shepherds, an indication that something big was happening.

In each of the stories above, the encounter opened the eyes of the person in the story to another realm, a world unseen yet just as real as the seen. An inexplicable encounter with what just might have been an angel has the capacity to open our eyes to the fact that the world is bigger than we often assume – that as Hamlet says to his dull, practically minded friend: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

The Nicene Creed, the classic summary of Christian faith, speaks of God as the ‘Creator of all things seen and unseen’. We are all used to what we can see, yet some of us only have space in our world for things that can be seen, touched or measured. Yet there are surely those unseen realities – things we cannot see or measure, like love, compassion, holiness, miracles, God and - yes – angels.

A random sermon on angels elicits hushed stories that people feel almost embarrassed to speak. Such mysterious experiences are far more common than we realise, as Dan Kim points out elsewhere on this site. Yet these experiences are not an end in themselves but are perhaps a way of God getting our attention when we refuse to listen to more ordinary approaches. These experiences open our eyes to a dimension of reality that is as real, if not as visible as the one we deal with every day – and become a gateway to a journey of discovery of an unseen world alongside the seen, that sheds a strange but welcoming new light onto a disenchanted world.

Explainer

Care

Creed

30 June 2023

6 min read

Bed rotting and an old art of rest

In a culture where “exhaustion is seen as a status symbol,” bed-rotting is an emerging trend. Lianne Howard-Dace reflects on self-care and how to rest and refresh.

Lianne Howard-Dace

Lianne Howard-Dace is a writer and trainer, with a background in church and community fundraising.

a sleeper pulls a blanket up over their head.

There’s a trend doing the rounds on TikTok which is attracting a fair amount of comment; the practice of taking (at least) a day in bed to recuperate when you’re running low on energy. Gen Z are - with characteristic directness - calling it ‘bed rotting’.

At first, this sounds like nothing new. People have been taking to their bed for centuries. Gen X might’ve called it vegging out, millennials would call it a duvet day.

From the discourse that’s sprung up about bed rotting though, it seems like some bigger questions are being explored around this trend. Firstly, Gen Z are reclaiming the need to stay in bed by branding it as a form of self-care. This picks up on some broader wellbeing trends online, where people are trying to decouple their sense of worth from their productivity. This train of thought picked up steam during the Covid-19 pandemic, and seems to continue to be something people are wrestling with.

As others are pointing out... is getting to the point of needing a day to rot in bed is really a good approach to self-care?

I rather like the visceral nature of the phrase ‘bed rotting’ and I’m sure that, whichever generational cohort we fall into, we can all relate to the occasional need to totally switch off to refresh and recalibrate. However, as others are pointing out, a second consideration is whether getting to the point of needing a day, to rot in bed, is really a good approach to self-care. Or would more preventative measures be the better way to care for yourself? Some commentators on TikTok have suggested that a combination of other gentle activities would actually be better at delivering the desired results than lounging in bed alone.

Dr Saundra Dalton Smith suggests in her book Sacred Rest that there are seven types of rest: physical, mental, spiritual, emotional, sensory, social and creative. Whilst bed rotting provides perhaps three or four of these types of rest, it may not provide the long-term refreshment sought if it doesn’t nurture the other parts of us as well.

Should we all just be expected to mindfulness our way out of a mental health crisis or yoga our way out of chronic pain?

While framing this extreme need for rest as self-care may give people permission to stop and reduce the stigma of doing nothing, it also puts the onus on the individual. I think the risk of self-care narratives in general is precisely in the focus they put on the self. While it can be healthy and empowering to take action to improve your wellbeing, it also draws attention away from the societal systems and structures that are contributing to everyone feeling so exhausted all the time. Should we all just be expected to mindfulness our way out of a mental health crisis or yoga our way out of chronic pain? Or should we be looking more widely at what is going on in the world?

This tension between taking responsibility for my own wellbeing but also reflecting on how I relate to the wider concepts of work, productivity and success is a very live, everyday issue for me. I have fibromyalgia, a chronic health condition characterised by fatigue and widespread muscular pain. Whilst conventional medicine gives some relief, I have to manage my energy levels very closely and intentionally pace myself to avoid my symptoms flaring up, though sometimes it is out of my control.

Unfortunately, if I were to let myself get to the point of desperately needing to bed rot it might take me a week or two to fully recover. I have to resist the urge to say yes to every invite and make sure I have a balance of work, rest and play in each week. This is helped by the privilege of being able to schedule my work around my own needs, it would certainly be much harder if I was tied to a very strict working pattern. In a way, it's like I have an early warning system for burnout, and I’ve become very attuned to fluctuations in my mood, energy or pain levels that might indicate the equilibrium is off.

As part of my energy management strategies, I have also found that the ancient practice of sabbath from the Judeo-Christian tradition has helped me to both take regular time to rest and to remind myself that I am a human being, not a human doing.

In Genesis, the opening poem of the Hebrew scriptures, we hear that after six days of hard work creating the universe, God rested on the seventh day. For thousands of years, Jews and Christians have attempted to learn from this and incorporate a day of rest into each week. The practice also exists in Islam.

Each Sunday I try to do as little as possible and particularly to disconnect from digital channels, because I know they often take more energy than they give me.

The way that this plays out in people’s lives ranges from very strict observance to more loosely held rules and rituals. However, you approach it, there is much to be learned from this ageless wisdom. I initially began practicing sabbath myself when I went freelance and realised how easily I could end up working seven days a week if I didn’t pay attention. This was six months or so before the first Covid-19 lockdown in the UK and I was extremely grateful to have established this habit in my life when that occurred.

For me, sabbath isn’t just ensuring I’m squeezing rest into each week but also creating rhythm. It punctuates my week and gives everything else breathing space. Each Sunday I try to do as little as possible and particularly to disconnect from digital channels, because I know they often take more energy than they give me.

In The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, John Mark Comer helpfully suggests two simple criteria to decide whether something is permissible on the sabbath. Is it rest or worship? If it’s not one of those two things then it can wait. For me, worship usually means going to church, but for you that could be something else that helps you connect to something bigger than yourself and experience a sense of wonder. Perhaps immersing yourself in nature, or engaging with an awe-inspiring work of art.

Another helpful piece of advice about sabbath I heard from Annie F. Downs on Instagram:

“If you work with your hands, sabbath with your mind. If you work with your mind, sabbath with your hands.”

As someone who spends most of my working week creating content on a computer, this is a useful reminder not just to read and journal on my sabbath but to swim, crochet or cook as well.

Lastly, Jesus said “The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath”. This reminds me to do sabbath in a way that is life-giving for me, even if that looks different to what works for others. These guidelines have helped me establish a practice of sabbath which provides clarity and routine, whilst being expansive enough to allow me to give myself whichever type of rest I need at a given time. Occasionally I do just bed rot, but usually I do things that restore me and bring me joy, whether that’s taking a walk or cycle if I have the energy or simply taking my lunch to the beach.

Of course, I’m not always perfect in the way I sabbath. That’s why it’s called a practice. But I do notice I flag later in the week if I’ve skip it. So, even if I occasionally switch the day or bend one of my rules for a practical reason, I keep coming back to it.

If you don’t already, I really encourage you to try the routine of sabbath for yourself. Pick a day of the week that works for you, put some boundaries in place, try it for a few weeks and adjust accordingly. Treat it as an experiment, a gift to yourself and perhaps as a little way to opt out of the madness of modern life for a beat. And by all means, bed rot if you need to. As Brené Brown says: