Can Angels Ring Doorbells?

Have you ever seen an angel...? Shepherds have. Saints have. Even my Aunt Rose claimed she had after every novena. My first and so far only encounter was last Saturday at my front door.

I had just finished another breakfast of rotten news headlines when this fluff of fragrance rang the bell. Presumably the petite brunette from our local high school was here selling tickets to their spring musical. What she couldn't have known was that instead she was here selling hope.

Back on my kitchen table was your newspaper. Turbo-charged with reports of the day's calamities, none of which I could or should ignore. However, here in front of me was this small hint of angel dust whose eager eyes were turbo-charged with enthusiasm. That indefinably infectious energy that has no room for calamity. Tag this either innocence or ignorance, right now I needed both. Happily, I bought a pair of tickets I wouldn't use.

Later I changed my mind The play was "Thoroughly Modern Millie," another fluff of fragrance. The story is set during the zest of the 1920s. Remember, just before the Great Depression of the 1930s? Another time when America was giddy and exuberant. Is that because your newspaper was reporting better news...? Or was it because the news was really better....?

We shall leave that to the historians to sort out. As for giddy, exuberant Rita, she played Millie for a giggly three hours of angelic escapism. The audience loved it. This old manic-depressive adored it, because no one can capture and project hope like youth can!

Which brings us back to your admirably serious newspaper. Some of us are still young enough to admire the instant universality of your news gathering. We're also old enough to abhor the intolerable drumbeat of calamity. You see, unlike some of us, Rita and her heavenly cast of high-stepping thespians have never known a time when time didn't -- at least for a precious little while -- stand still. So still, in fact, that what you knew from your local newspaper was mostly the local events and laws and parades and occasional misdoings.

Today -- thank or blame mass communications -- we know instantly which gypsy band in Romania blew up which convent...which fire in Uzbekistan burned down the German embassy....which gang of survivalists in the Montana mountains raped a girl scout.....which prime minister from a country we can't find on the map killed his entire office staff with a Uzi.... which gang in which backalley in town gunned down which other gang....and which US Senator's un-authorised aide whispered how her boss was in back-channel discussions to filibuster the next stimulus bill.

In everyday democracy, news is necessary. At least that news we can actually use! So I'll keep buying the news you're selling me. But in everday life, Rita is also necessary. Her angel eyes of young hope is what might some distant day actually improve your news. That's why from now on I'll buy every ticket to every high school play she's selling....!