Introduction:                                    Updated 7/23/2004

There is a lot of interest in angels these days. We have movies and television programs featuring angels. Bronze baby angel wind vanes atop houses are popular. I see cars with bumper sticker wisdom “don’t drive faster than your angels can fly.” The angels of popular culture commonly appear as fully celestial beings.  The angels of popular culture  who interest me the most are the celestial beings who long to be human.  I can generally ignore America’s passing mainstream interests.  I was thinking that I would avoid the popular interest in angels, but the topic has staying power.  I have grown increasingly sympathetic and interested in the angelic plight of being not fully human and the human plight of being less than angelic.   It must be a tough gig to live with one foot in heaven and the other foot on this banana peel world.  I surrender. I am thinking about angels.   

I have a strong practical side that no amount of formal education has managed to fully extinguish, so as I think about angels and where they might fit into our mysterious quantum universe, I also wonder why we long for angels?  I think a good part of the explanation for our longing is the simple desire for a safer, kinder world.  A world with millions of deployed land mines needs angels.   A world where ethnic cleansing keeps reappearing as public policy needs angels.  A world where groups will kill each other enthusiastically over an argument about the true path to heaven cries for angels.  

So, where were our angels when Jews, Gypsies, Communists, and Bolsheviks were being rounded up and killed in Europe in the 1930’s and 1940’s?    Where were the angels when Africans were being captured and held for generations in slavery?   Where were the angels when the Khmer Rouge opened the killing fields in Cambodia? What if the angels were present and working, but failed?   Can angels fail? 

I think before we can work on the question of failing angels, we would have to reach an agreement on the nature of the angels under discussion.  One of my basic assumptions is that you and I can choose to be angels.  Challenges arise and we may realize we are faced with terrible choices.   The work of angels is often dangerous.  The price of angelic work is often high.   When a person recognizes a dilemma that requires the work of angels and they step up to the work, the price may be everything that person has lived for up to that moment:  possessions, family, friends, and life itself.   I believe that people who see a required action at a particular moment and choose to throw themselves into the breach are angels.   I have come to think of them as conscious angels because these human beings choose the work and I believe they are generally conscious of the potential price.  So with the utopian idea of assisting creation of more angels on the planet, and specifically: more effective angels, I come to this work.     

History, memory, and consciousness are remarkable for their apparently intractable one-way direction.  We remember how things were, and we can guess at how things might have developed with a few significant, historical changes, but we don’t get to “remember” the future.  That’s just an experiential condition of human existence in Einstein’s web of time/space.  Fish don’t think water is wet, if you follow me.  We get to guess at how events will develop and many of us expend a significant amount of energy trying to load the dice, so the future will unfold along lines we choose.   Barring memory impairment, we get to look backward in time and speculate on how things might have turned out different given some relatively small change in conditions at just the right moment.   I don’t recommend that look-back practice generally, but it might prove helpful to this enterprise.  I think it should be possible to look back at certain catastrophic times and identify times when angels should, or could have intervened and created less tragic outcomes.  I think we can look back at certain historic periods and identify angels who worked to create stability and progress, but failed. I think we can identify the work of successful angels in relatively stable, progressive historic periods.  I think we review and critique angelic successes and failures with an eye to applying “total quality management” to the work of angels. I think it is not enough to be surrounded by angels.  I think we need to be surrounded by effective angels.  

My process is to identify conscious angels in several different times and places and to examine their work.  This is a subjective process and I recognize another person might choose other humans as conscious angels.   Success and failure are subjective evaluations. The impact of the individuals I identify as successful conscious angels can be argued.   If you want to expend a lot of effort on those matters, write your own book.   I encourage you.   I want to study why conscious angels succeed when they succeed, and why they fail when they fail.   Then I want to identify trends and common circumstances in the successes and failures.  I want to distill the identified trends into practical vocational considerations that conscious angels might want to review and keep in mind with the goal of increasing effectiveness and longevity.  Effective angels.  That’s my interest and purpose at this moment.  

So a quick lineup of angels: It’s hard to pass up Jesus, so I probably won’t.   Theologians, bishops, deacons who object to my identification of Jesus as human and conscious angel are welcome to write their own book.   I am not interested in an extended argument about the nature of Jesus. If I include Jesus I only intend to cover some aspects of his life and how his choices fit my model of the conscious angel.   I think it is very difficult to hear the story of his life and not be amazed at his dedication to his principles and chosen tasks, whether you think of Jesus as Christ, or Jesus as rabbi and radical Jew, or Jesus as conscious angel.   I think Jesus made one of the classic blunders of failed conscious angels by being killed relatively early in his work, but for one reason or another, I think the argument can be made that his work succeeded despite his early death.   I am not interested theological disputes, miscommunications, or excommunications with regard to Jesus as conscious angel, so if conjecture about Jesus will cause you great suffering, you may want to skip that Chapter.    

I plan to look at the United States Civil War period as a time when I think conscious angels may have failed.   Abraham Lincoln, the Supreme Court who ruled on the Dred Scott case, Harriet Tubman, John Brown and others from this period are likely to get attention. The incredible death and destruction of the Civil War suggest failure to me, even though the war did finally guarantee nominal freedom of slaves by solidly the idea of human beings as property.   I believe the reality of human beings as property continues to this day.  I think there are conscious angels afoot on the planet today working hard in this area.  Thank you.   Don’t stop.  May all beings be free.   

I have a strong impulse to write about Mohandas K. Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  I believe King and Gandhi were magnificently successful conscious angels. Gandhi’s unflinching, nonviolent battle to persuade the British to abandon their Indian empire is an amazing story.  What is there to say about Martin Luther King, Jr.?   His contribution to civil and human rights in the United States cannot be overstated.  This is not to say Gandhi or King was without fault.   I don’t believe conscious angels are without fault.  My premise is that conscious angels are humans who rise to take on the work of angels.      

I believe Nelson Mandela and Bishop Desmond Tutu have done angelic work in South Africa by dismantling Apartheid without touching off a civil war or a war of revenge. I don’t think Mandela and Tutu were the only conscious angels working in South Africe in recent times, but they held center stage and held their own moral centers in a manner we may all recognize and strive to emulate.    

I am intrigued by several people who opposed the Third Reich during the 1930’s and 1940’s.  I expect to include Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Corrie Ten Boom and others from this era.   Helmuth Hubener is on my mind as I start on this project.  

I will include Rachel Corrie, a present day conscious angel, if her parents are agreeable.  Rachel died at Rafah, Palestine in 2003 while working to reduce levels of violence between Israelis and Palestinians.  I hope Rachel’s work for peace between Israel and Palestine will bear fruit.  Namaste, Rachel, I am overwhelmed by your courage and heart.  

Enough background information, let the work of angels speak for itself. 

On to Helmuth Hubener's story!