This is a piece that I started before pandemic world. The creative process is interesting now, it feels hard to “have the heart” to create. I very much want to, but I am struggling to focus and to stay with the process, I feel like my heart is empty. This piece is odd with the broken wing and floating faces, and I won’t make anything up about it in terms of meaning. Pieces often show a meaning after the fact, and the viewer, of course, brings their own meaning. Meanwhile, I pray for the motivation to keep at it.

Written by Lee Parham on April 23, 2020;

The angel with the broken wing

An Angel sat silently in her quiet little garden staring sadly into the glimmering pond beside her. The wonders of Heaven, the majesty of her place in the universe, and the reassuring grace of her God, none of these could sway her sadness. For you see, she was the Angel with the broken wing.

It happened long ago, not long ago, the heroic moment of choice and reason, when an unselfish act cost her the use of her wing. Her angelic brothers and sisters descended to the Earth, retrieved her broken body, returned her to Heaven where she quickly healed. But as to an Angel’s wing, that takes time as only Heaven may measure.

And so too the nights, in her celestial rest, she dreamed of moments in flight, of soaring from Heaven in exalted grace and lighting so softly on Terran soil, commended to serve as a loving guardian to a helpless chosen mortal. And there in her slumber’s escape, the Angel laughed oh so happily.

But upon each time, she would invariably wake, seeing her reality as being trapped by her situation, bound by her circumstance, powerless to control the simplest of her daily objectives. And upon each time, alone in her garden, the Angel did so weep.

Then simply expected, yet at that moment unexpected, a hint of a breeze rustled gently through her garden and a whisper of a strong loving voice tickled softly on her angelic ears.

“You have forgotten yourself my angelic child, you have lost what I gave to you all from the start. In your desire for purpose, in your haste for achievement, in your longing to be needed, there my daughter, you have forgotten my loving arms and in that, you have lost your faith.”

The Angel stood before his presence, humbled in her stance of propriety, lovingly submissive to the words of her Lord, her anger and sadness quickly subsiding to questions of worth and purpose.

“Your dreams, they mislead you my perfect creation. In the faith of my spirit, in the faith of my love, you are so much more than what you think yourself to be. You cannot be trapped by any situation when all possible moments are those of my will. You can never be bound by the circumstances thrust upon you for the circumstances themselves collect each second and are always a bidding of my loving will. And indeed, you are not powerless to control your objectives when control is simply an illusion, you have power completely in trusting and believing that it is all of my will.”

The Angel reached for the light, embracing the spirit of all that was said, all that was shared, all that was given..

“Of this I know. You will fly when it is time for the moment as certain then as it is written for tomorrow’s today. Keep your heart full in all that is loving, worry about nothing if your actions are true, and simply believe in your knowing Father and his unconditional love for you.”

And there in her garden, as the breeze carried the whisper aloft, and without ever leaving the ground, the Angel with the broken wing, she flew high on the wings of glory and faith...