Angels: spirit-beings, meta-persons, resurrected entities, signs, messengers, benefactors, cherubs.

Angels: lambs, virgins, harbingers, innocent couriers, prefigurements.

According to Saint Augustine: “Every visible thing in this world is put under the charge of an angel.”

Some say:  “Because they inhabit unknowable, invisible worlds — taken on faith — angels are beyond proof, mere fantasies.”

Others have said: “There’s not a stalk on earth that has not its protecting guardian, an angel in heaven.”   (From Genesis Rabba 10, an ancient Rabbinic text.)

Definitions and descriptions are wide-ranging and slippery; humans believing in angels are equally diverse and hard to fashion into a useful taxonomy.

I am unable to produce a sturdy theological or philosophical argument for the existence of the Almighty. But I can offer my photograph of a vibrant woman dressed in gauzy finery; a lovely gift sent to us — materializing the Pristine and the Virtuous.

The woman makes my argument for me, establishes my theodicy, my proof that God dispatches messengers in human form (angels) to testify about the True and the Good and the Beautiful.