Who’s A Good Angel

Who tells you what to look at? And who tells you how to feel about it? I’ll show you a dove and tell you it means peace. I’ll show you a crow and tell you it means death. And nothing is more political than peace and death. Through this chapter, we’ll take a look at the images we’ve been shown, and force ourselves to examine how we feel and if they  are truly our own feelings at all. We’ll sit with the discomfort of picking the two apart, and then sit with it some more. We’ll see many birds in this chapter, and many angels. Continuing on our journey of exploration: what makes angels sacred, and what makes birds anything but? In a strange way, it’s true that though forever out of reach, untouchable by the problems of humanity, angels have generally been more political than birds. Because angels are intrinsically linked with religion, a concept inseparable from politics, they always have and will be political. Though their little wings have aided in our battles, soldiers if you will, no war has ever been started over the conflict of the existence, the importance, the narrative of birds. Angels, and all they represent, could not have the same said about them. 

But don’t be fooled, birds, though not as obviously correlated, are themselves political. From the very physical sense of existence from nature and land that we humans are constantly battling for, to the more symbolic sense of what they become when we put them on a flag; and finally, to what it is that they must carry for us to choose their attributes  to represent our most sacred of figures: an angel.