Raphael made it look like child’s play for St Michael the archangel. Would it be more comforting to know that such heavenly bodies have at least some empathy of our struggle down here in this place? Maybe not. Maybe they need only to stay elevated, away from the noise and insanity invoked by this burden we harbor called free will.
It is, after all, the trail of our choices that brings grief or joy. In this, Kobayashi Issa’s “This world of dew is a world of dew,” and eventually we do learn from the error of our ways (or not) and find redemption (or not).
And yet, and yet…
Death undoes us less, sometimes, than the hope it will never come.
