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.

When someone questions the existence of angels (or a Supreme Creator) inevitably widespread evils in the world will be cited in their argument against. There cannot be an all-good, perfectly-loving Deity because bad things happen in the world. The need for a Theodicy presents itself — an argument against the naysayers, concluding that the New Testament God of mercy and forgiveness exists regardless.

I am unable to produce a sturdy theological (or philosophical) theodicy. 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.