Angels Unaware

“Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.” Hebrews 13:1-3 King James Version

Sometimes it happens like this: you are doing something you’ve done a thousand times before. Something mundane– and let me digress here, because mundane traces its roots to mundus, Latin for world. The mundane being that which relates to this earthly world, as opposed to a heavenly one. And what I want to say is this — sometimes it is easy to tell the difference, and sometimes it isn’t. 

Sometimes it happens like this: you are doing something you’ve done a thousand times before, something mundane, with your mind on something, and somewhere, else. Then someone you’ve never met before, and will likely never meet again, steps into your life. And something happens during that serendipitous encounter that spins your world around, causing its varied and colorful parts to fall into place with such perfect and kaleidoscopic beauty that days later you are still thinking of it, and her, and thrumming with laughter and grateful wonder.

In my case it began like this: I was shopping at Trader Joe’s, thinking of what to make for lunch, and how late it was getting, when a black woman wearing a blue mask, a white baseball cap and a white button up coat stopped me and said with the air of someone delivering a critical piece of information, “That there makes the best hot chocolate in the world!” She pointed helpfully to the cocoa in question.  I smiled, “It’s the season for hot chocolate!” I said. “Oh, I have myself a cup of hot chocolate at every single night of the year,” she said, “I’m 79 years old and a chef. I’m on my feet so much it just about kills me, so at the end of the day, I fix myself a bubble bath and a cup of hot chocolate and it sets me right again.” 

I had been in a hurry, but suddenly I am not any more. Something about this woman, (who is now pointing to the all purpose baking flour and saying, “That’s the best baking flour,” and then at the powdered sugar, “That’s the best sugar!,) has slowed my steps. I can feel something underneath and beyond her words reaching out to me. And something inside me wants to receive the sweet strangeness of what she is offering. And if you think you know where this story is headed, let me assure you – you do not. Stay with it, and it will surprise you like it surprised me.

“What kind of bubble bath?” I ask her. “Ohhh Lavender,” she says, “From that place you know, that has the buy-three-get-three-for-free deal. It’s the best, and I tell you, those bubbles they go up the yin yang! Now, what are you cooking for Christmas?” I laugh at the non-sequitur and confess I haven’t thought that far ahead. “I’ve got twelve grandkids and twenty-four great grandkids,” she says, “I’m always planning ahead! I don’t ever shop right before Christmas– no sir! Too many people– you set foot in the store and I don’t care who you are, it sets your heart racing and just about sends you into a panic attack. Not for me! I shop ahead.” She stops and looks me up and down, “Are you in the medical field?” “No,” I say, and then, rather impulsively, “I’m just finishing treatment” Her eyes sharpen, “What for?” So I tell her. She takes a deep breath and looks directly at me, “I’ve had 10 surgeries for cancer, starting from when I was 9 years old.  My neck and face, then my colon twice, then breast cancer after. I’m not supposed to be here, they told me I was done. But here I am. Ohhh I knew I was supposed to be here today!” and as she says this she shuffles her feet around, shaking them out, doing a little dance as she speaks.

“I’ve got all this energy running through me right now!” she says, “Got to get it out. God works in mysterious ways. Now listen, you’ve got to eat fresh vegetables and fruits. Squeeze some lemon onto your greens. No meat. I used to eat fried chicken and ribs every day, that’s what I grew up on. We’re not meant to eat like that. The people around me, they put on a hundred pounds a year, and then they got strokes and died. I got up and changed my life at 29. Juiced and fasted — do you know Gandhi?” I said, yes, we knew Gandhi. “Well I did 40 day fasts like that. Just water. And I could feel myself outside my body, I could feel my spirit. And, well it took a few years but I got all cleaned up inside. What do you eat? Let me see your cart. Whoa — that looks real good! You’re vegetarian? Hmm. Why did you get cancer?” “I don’t know,” I tell her.  “But it certainly didn’t feel like an accident — my husband had a bone marrow transplant and multiple brain infections the same year. He’s still recovering from the short term memory loss. Feels like there’s something we are both meant to learn through all this.” She is shuffling around again, snapping her fingers as she does so. Viral is standing a little ways from us watching quietly. Somehow I don’t feel any of the self-consciousness or hesitation I might usually have in the face of such an unusual interaction. I have no concern, or even any thoughts about what people around us might be thinking. 

“What is your name,” I ask. “They call me Nanny Granny,” she says, (oh, perfect name!)”And to think, I was so upset about needing to come here today! I came for a dentist appointment across the way. I had to fix a broken tooth yesterday and when I went in they said, ‘Nanny Granny we need to fix up and clean your dentures, and it’s going to take awhile. Come back tomorrow.’ Well I just about threw a fit.” Her eyes are twinkling over her mask at me, “I don’t have an anger management problem, no sir– I have a rage problem, and I said, ‘Look here y’all I ain’t going around without my teeth!’ and they said to me, ‘Nanny Granny just throw a mask on!’ and they gave me a mask. So here I am with my mask, and you’ve got a mask and your husband too! Look at us! I don’t even need to shop here today, but when I get the message I don’t play, so I came in grumbling. And when I saw you, I felt your spirit just caught hold of me, and I knew I was supposed to be here. Tell me your names now.” She pulls out a binder, and writes both of our names down. “Can I pray for you both right now?” I want to hug her. This energetic, and unexpected grandmotherly figure who has burst into my consciousness like a quirky character in a gentle dream. “Yes,” I say. “Well I just hope they don’t go and call the po-lice now,” she says, “I can get real excited when I pray. I’m just saying, my energy goes waay up!” 

It strikes me that I should maybe be a bit alarmed at this point, but I’m too charmed by my new friend. She speaks a short and lovely prayer, calling for blessings, from the crown of the head to the tip of the toes. “You’ve both got work to do,” she says emphatically, “You’ve got a lot to give, I’m not playing around here. Move aside now and let that lady get her chocolate.” We are still standing by the hot chocolate shelves as other shoppers stream by us. Viral is now standing by my side.  She looks at him, “You’re healing,” she tells him, “You’ve just got to laugh more. Perk up! I laugh for hours every day– it’s good for the body and the soul. Put your hands like this now, both of you.” She cups her hands over her lower belly, “Now laugh– ha ha ha ha!” We oblige, and it’s hard not to crack up at the utter unexpectedness and corniness of it all. “Do that every day. I’m telling you, it’s medicine. Ohh a prayer for that man’s leg now, a prayer for his leg.” A man is walking by us, his left leg in a cast. And it strikes me that Nanny Granny is tracking so much more than it might seem on the surface. Viral’s eyes are smiling and Nanny Granny is dancing and snapping her fingers again, “Okay, okay, calm down Nanny Granny, calm down,” she says, “Okay, now is it alright if I give you a blessing?” “Of course,” I say, because far be it from me to refuse blessings. “Okay, now they tell me not to carry this around, but I’m going to do what I’m going to do. No playing around, put out your hand now, ” she says to Viral. And I find myself thinking suddenly of the little heart pins that we have given to so many different people on the journey of this year, I wonder if Nanny Granny carries similar tokens of love to share as blessings. Viral extends his hand. We watch as Nanny Granny pulls a crisp one hundred dollar bill out of her pocket, and places it into his palm. 

My jaw drops and my eyes fill with tears. I am shaking my head no. This is too much. The grace of it, the grace of her strikes like a blow, shattering — what? My doubt, my fears, my sense of loss…In those moments I feel the world within this apparent world  asserting itself, speaking my name, melting me inside. “Oh — don’t you give me that look now. No, no, no. Put out your hand. You have to listen to Nanny Granny. This isn’t from me.” She is looking at me sternly, what is there to do but put out my hand? We’re still in Trader Joe’s but why do I suddenly feel like I’m back in one of the lamplit shrines of my childhood, putting my hand out for the spoon of holy water, the shred of tulsi. In my palm too is pressed a one hundred dollar bill.

“Now listen, you think this is from me? It’s not from me,” she says emphatically, “I was sitting in front of the library and praying and this man comes up to me, and says he was walking around the corner when he got a message to pull ten one hundred dollar bills from the ATM, and go give it to the woman sitting outside the library right now. So he did. I can’t make this stuff up. That’s how things go down when you’re listening. And when you get those kinds of messages you’ve got to follow through. When you need money, what do you give? Money. When you need prayers, what do you give? Prayers. When you need health, what do you give? You give health. Don’t play around. All you need to do every day is wake up and ask, ‘Where can I be a blessing?’ And you get shown. You always get shown.”

“Nanny Granny, what can we do for you?” I need to know what we can offer this stranger who is dancing through the world with such empty fullness. “What can you do for me?” Her eyes sparkle at me, “I tell you what you can do, every day you can pray to Jesus, and all you need to say is this: ‘Dear Jesus, today please, please just make sure Nanny Granny acts right.'” I give a surprised laugh, deeply touched and simultaneously deeply tickled by her response. “I’m not playing!” says Nanny Granny, “I need that prayer! You got me?” I nod my head, dumbstruck by really, all of it. And with that Nanny Granny does a final little dance, and takes off around the corner to inspect the frozen ice cream aisle. And I have to shake myself a little, as though rousing myself from a dream. Trying to fathom what just happened, and finding myself more than a little out of my depth. When I try to find her a few minutes later, to give her a bouquet of flowers — she’s gone.

The compass needle is spinning and I’ve deliciously lost my sense of direction. I’m left with the dizzying sense of having been brushed by the wings of an angel. It occurs to me that I’ve spontaneously given away several hundred dollar bills in my life. But, I’m realizing now, it’s always been to someone whom it could be assumed, ‘needed’ the money. In that sense it has never been truly spontaneous. What Nanny Granny did was done with all the effortlessness of a ripe fig splitting open as it falls from its tree branch. With all the unpremeditated naturalness of a wave washing up on shore then returning to its depths, withholding nothing.  

What I’m left with is a fistful of pearls. 

***

In this time of holy days, to wake up each day and ask where I can be a blessing. To ask too for the blessing– to act right. To wish all manner of goodness on the angels who tread amongst us. May their tribe increase. Their spirits so rambunctious, their prayers ever un-reined, and so raucous that unwitting neighbors consider calling the cops.