Monday, April 30, 2018

The blue angel story continues...

   After long time away, I hope to revive the blog again. So hear goes my first attempt at its resuscitation.  

   A year ago, our spiritual lives were turned upside down when the congregation we have attended for most of the past 26 years imploded.  I cannot go into detail about what exactly happened without talking negatively about people that I love, so we'll just skip over that part.  But as a result of said implosion, we have ended up at a new church, in a new county, with all new people, and under a new denominational flag.  When we decided for a fresh start, we apparently decided to fully embrace the "go big or go home" phrase.  Some people have accused us over leaving "the church."  Instead we left "a church" and decided to spend some time at "another church."

   Yesterday we had a picnic with our new church family.  Monte Santo park was alive with the beauties of spring- clear blue skies and cool breezes with the sunshine full of the promise of coming warmth.  While enjoying the day I talked with a gentleman who had a few questions about our travels to Western Europe and also my writing.  Since these are two of my favorite subjects, I was thrilled to talk!

   During our discussion we made our way round to how John and I ended up at St. Andrew's church. I told him about my broken heart after Angie passed away.  I explained that I was so lost and needed something, but I didn't know exactly what it was.  When John would go out of town I would venture around to visit other church families.  One Sunday I ended up at St. Andrew's.  I knew I would like the place when I saw they were named after the patron Saint of Scotland and had a Scottish flag on the sign.  When I walked inside the first thing I noticed was the large Celtic Cross at the front of the building and then a blue angel stained glass window.  If you aren't familiar with the story of my connection with the blue angel, just scroll down through my previous posts.

   As I told him about my love of the blue angel stained glass, he told me that he himself had commissioned the window in memory of his beloved wife.  As he researched an angel image to be made into a stained glass window, he found a lovely image he connected with, but the angel's dress was red.  When he went to the artist studio to pick out the colors he wanted for the piece, the artist didn't have any reds.  So he had to pick out a different color.  He chose blue.

   We both decided after our discussion that the stained glass angel was always meant to be blue. I love connections like this!