One would think that a drunken state would preclude one from recognition of the Divine, but the angel was proof that it is not so. Perhaps the spirits opened him up to The Spirit. He'd grown up fervently believing with all his heart that he would follow his brother into the Anglican Priesthood. He'd fallen passionately in love with God by the age of 5 having had a vision of sorts. It happened on a brilliantly warm summer day. The angel was not yet an angel, but just a little boy. He lived on a prairie farm in Alberta. The whistle of the gopher, the flinty-dry smell on the perpetual breeze, the song of the meadow-lark and the impossibly huge, unbelievably blue, cloudless sky were as much a part of his being as was his own skin. He lay on his back on a pile of soft soil and sank into the vastness of the sky, trying to find a place big enough to hold his heart which he could feel swelling beyond the confines of creation, with a love for God's creation, and most especially for humanity.

"God," he thought, as he nestled in the warm embrace of creation's sun and the caress of the breeze, "please let me go to my grave from this life knowing that I have done one small thing to make the world a better place than it was when I came into it. If I need to spend the rest of eternity in hell, I would do so gladly if I could know that I had done just one small thing that was acceptable to You." He experienced a moment of intense longing to be a part of the Greater Plan of God. Then a sudden knowledge gripped him with such a certainty and clarity it sent his little heart into a paroxysm of awe, and he jumped up and ran into the house and hid under his bed. What he experienced was a soul-deep recognition of the personal acknowledgement of, and acceptance by God, of his offer.

But by the age of 17, with the expansive insights that come post- puberty, he witnessed the dismal and hopeless future of the world and the seemingly silent indifference of God to the unremittingly worsening fate of, and the suffering of, and the horror that was, the human race. He watched the world victimize Ghandi and Martin Luther King; he observed the machinations of Nixon and Stalin; he witnessed the rich and powerful purveyors of hate and calumny, men like Idi Amin, as they established one greed-driven monopoly upon another with active and deliberate indifference for the rights of the gentle and innocent and well-meaning. He saw the cynical impotence of the UN and NATO and watched two-faced masters of mutilation, men such as Yasser Arafat given UN Peace Prizes and other accolades in the name of political expediency. As a child, he'd always anchored his faith on the promise that God would never burden a soul beyond its ability to bear, but this latter crystalline observation of the human state belied that promise, and it was this betrayal that engendered the angry and dangerous young fallen angel.

On another warm and flinty evening, the angel felt himself on his way to the loving embrace of Bacchus. He was with his best friend in the neighboring town of Kindersley. The angel was aimlessly witnessing the lonely streets sliding by as they cruised the town for no other reason than to avoid being home. They were drinking a half-gallon of cheap wine they'd bought from a bootlegger. The angel spotted two slim girls seemingly out for an evening stroll.

"Hey Friend," he said to the driver who owned the vintage Chrysler they were cruising in, "who are those girls?"

This was Friend's town. He glanced carelessly at the girls as they glided past and opined, "Oh, that's just Girl and her weird cousin from Saskatoon."

"Weird? What makes her weird?" asked the angel.

"She has this weird religion. Bahaí," the friend said. He said it off-headedly and seemed to have exhausted his interest in the girls.

"Hell," said the angel, "they look okay to me. Let's pick them up and give them a ride. Some perfume would make this jalopy smell better."

"Yeah, okay. Why not." Friend brought the Buick to a halt in the middle of the empty street. The view was beginning to glow with stars, moon and street-lights. The angel experienced a deja vu certainty about the fecundity of the moment. Friend backed up and the angel wound down the window on his side of the car.

"Hey Girl," Friend called from the far side; small town Saskatchewan, they knew each other from school; "Whatcha doin'? Wanna ride around with us?"

"Hi Friend," the shorter of the two called and waved in a friendly fashion. She turned to her cousin and they debated briefly, then, "Sure. You guys aren't going out of town are you?"

"Naw. We're just cruisin'," Friend said. The angel though he did a fine job of affecting a trendy indifference as he put the Buick in neutral. He also noted in the easy camaraderie between them that this was probably one of the few girls Friend went to school with that he had not bedded or tried to bed. There was an easy trust in Girl's body language that spoke of at least a passingly comfortable acquaintance.

The angel opened the front passenger door and got out, taking the wine with him. He managed to disguise the beginning of unsteadiness in his movements, and gallantly held the door for Girl, then closed it and opened the back door for her cousin. She had stood still, seeming to be waiting to see how the tableau would play out. She smiled though, and getting in she slid across to make room for the angel.

"This is the angel, ladies," Friend said with a wave once the angel was in the car and the door closed. "He's from Alsask." Friend said this last as if justifying some lack of hygiene or dress in his friend. Alsask was the armpit compared to Kindersley. The angel's father had gone bankrupt on the farm, but landed the position of Post-Master in the one-horse town of Alsask on the Saskatchewan border. It was one of those small prairie towns where you were an outsider till you'd lived there for at least 40 years. The angel preferred the loneliness of the farm to the loneliness of neighbors who made him feel invisible.

As Friend put the car in gear and started to roll down the street again, Girl turned around and flashed the angel a toothy smile that was attractively pretty in its crooked uniqueness. "Hi Angel, I'm Girl. This is my cousin, from Saskatoon." With that she turned to the friend and they immediately fell into a conversation about some incident that was current in Kindersley's gossip circuits. Friend must have met Cousin before because he thoughtlessly didn't bother to acknowledge her introduction. The angel let them fade from his consciousness before Girl was half a sentence into their conversation, and turned his attention to the cousin sitting beside him.

"Hi Cousin," he said and offered his hand. "I'm the angel." He knew it was lame; as if Friend hadn't already introduced him. He felt the usual insecurity and awkwardness stir like a waking serpent in his gut. Cousin smiled back and gave his hand a light squeeze then settled into her seat. The angel watched her watching the starry sky fade into the glow of a passing street-light. He concluded she was pretty enough to be interesting, but not so as to intimidate. Nice hair, clear complexion so far as the angel had been able to see in the car's dome-light. He recognized sublimity about her profile in the dark that touched the angel's heart in a seldom used place, one he remembered with trepidation. The insecurity ratcheted itself up a notch. He raised the half-gallon of confidence and took a couple long swallows, then offered the bottle to Cousin. "Care for a drink of wine?" he asked, and felt himself slide into his more confident roll as 'bad-boy', a roll that allowed him certain laxity in other people's expectations of him.

"No, but thanks Angel" Cousin said. She gave him a quick smile that said to the angle wordlessly, "I'm okay, you're okay, we can visit; I'm not threatened by you."

"No? Why not?" the angel asked, donning his favorite truculent sneer.

"I don't drink is all, but I'm okay if you want to." Her smile didn't give the angel any opportunity for offence.

"You don't drink at all? Even wine?" he asked with emphasis on 'wine', as if it was the most innocuous of substances.

"I'm a Bahaí." The angel heard Cousin's replied resonate with a gentle dignity that precluded any outright belittlement from him.

"Oh, yeah. Your religion, right? So, tell me what that's all about." He tried to throw all the ridicule he could into the demand, but the effect fell flat. Inwardly he was praying she would be able to withstand his critique of her faith, but his cynicism sneered at this, knowing she was doomed to fail him like everyone else who espoused a religious conviction did.

Time passed. The bottle was passed up front a few times. Not often though, and it always ended up back in the angel's hand. He was conscious of comfortable conversation happening in the front seat as the lights continued to slide by, opening and closing like some lazy giant's eye. Cousin talked to him. Her words slide into him, telling him what she understood to be the truth. He was vaguely aware she talked without concern for his silence. He experienced her voice radiating a quiet confidence and detachment that spoke of an easy relationship with her subject. The angel listened and didn't speak.

When the angel woke in the morning he had no memory of saying goodbye, or of taking the girls home, or even of coming home himself. He woke in his clothes. He woke knowing he had something sick and wrong in his mouth, but it was only his own tongue. He woke, and then he opened his eyes. When he opened his eyes the pain hit. It hit with a vengeance that drove his eyes closed again, but not before he'd seen as clearly as any sight he'd ever seen before. He saw standing before him as brilliantly obvious as a shining knight in chromed armor under the noon sun; he saw the knowledge that whatever it was Cousin had said to him; whatever words it was she'd uttered; and the angel could not for life or soul recall one single word she'd uttered; he saw with perfect clarity that whatever it was she had said to him was so compellingly right-on that it was unquestionably the truth and that one day, the angel himself would be a Bahaí.

Only one thing from that night ever remained clearly in his mind. It was the name 'Bahaí' blazoned in his mind indelibly. Three and a half years passed. The angel followed his rebellion and self-imposed disenfranchisement to the bottom-most rung of self-loathing, and then he stepped off the ladder. Unable to stop giving the lead to that monstrous betrayal in his heart, he drifted past suicide and mass violence by a feather's thickness. Only then did he find himself before a partially metaphorical and partially real door and presented with the opportunity to ask for entrance and a map to redemption, or to turn away and finish what he'd been moving towards. Those days, the angel awoke in the mornings in a hovel on Hastings Street in Vancouver. At that time this was where the vile and degraded breathed, ingested, excreted. It was a place and time that was the natural back-water where such as the angel washed up. A place that understood, reinforced, and justified all the disgust and revulsion that he felt for the human race. A place that embraced him like a prison.

He spent those years searching for a mission; a program; The Pathway to God; anything that would give him even a modicum of promise of success; something which would provide him any degree of hope for the human race, which he watched in dismay as it continued its moribund slide towards extinction. He ached for a cause that was worth dying for. He craved a cause that was bigger and more important than he, because he knew that if it was only of benefit to his own self then it wasn't worth dying for. He knew he wasn't that important to the universe. He sieved through the various churches of Christendom, the Jewish synagogues and the temples of Islam, Sikhism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and even a Wiccan group and an actual Witch's coven. In each place he heard a name of God spoken with conviction and zeal. Invariably, later when he would introspection on his experience, he would dispiritedly acknowledge, 'God has been here. I can see His footsteps in the dust, but what Man has done with what He left has rendered it impotent. This is not the salvation of the Human race. This is not worth dying for.'

In every one of the places of worship and every belief he visited, he was eventually given this bottom line, "If you do this; if you accept this pathway to God, here's what's in it for you."

Always in the back of his mind glowed the name 'Bahaí' but he would shy away from pursuing it in favor of seeing if perhaps he was mistaken and The Pathway was actually to be found elsewhere. The angel was oblivious to an addiction most subtle; he was addicted to The Search. Deep in some cavern of his soul, the angel knew that once he reached out and took hold of what he was searching for, he would be obliged to give up The Search. Therefore he tenaciously avoided seeking out the Baha'is, until one day he ran out of any other place to look.

That day came and he realized that he had searched enough and there was no Pathway. A quiet voice in the back of his mind whispered, "Ahh, but you haven't finished The Search yet have you. You haven't gone to the Baha'is, have you?" The angel resolutely stood his ground and replied, "Who are you kidding? I've searched everywhere. I've sifted the dust of the desert and there is nothing righteous left for Mankind to cling to. So I haven't gone to the Baha'is yet; so what? Are you telling me that I should believe that out of the whole world, only there in the last and only place I haven't looked will I find The Pathway? What are the chances of that? No," he petulantly concluded, "there is no God who cares. There is no Pathway. There is nothing worth dying for, and therefore there is nothing worth living for."

And so he spoke to God. He shook his fist, ranting, giving vent to all the resentment and bile and feelings of impotency that had built up in his heart. "Hey, God! Yeah, You Who sits there and passes judgement, as if You could care less what any of us do anyway, You sanctimonious, self-satisfied, arrogant by-blow of Your own creation;…" and he followed this with a litany of foul and acrimonious name-calling and spitting and challenging. He worked himself into lather, trying to one-up each insult and vile insinuation, deliberately stomping and pounding on sacred ground that angels in good standing would fear to tip-toe upon. He vilified God with all his might, daring God to reach down and smite him for his fractious audacity. The angel spared God no contumely his imagination could fabricate, and then he strove to find a worse one. He vented his spleen such as would cause the hearts of the hellacious to quake, knowing to Whom the words were directed. His heart ached with the need to invoke a reaction, any reaction, from his tacit God.

"I have called on You without letup, vacuous God of silence!" spat the angel with vitriolic spite, "I have begged. I have crawled on my belly and begged You to show me only how to pray; nothing more, just that! That alone and I would have spent the rest of my days in unremitting worship and prayer for the sake of Your creation! And what have I heard from You? NOTHING! NOTHING YOU DEAF, DUMB AND BLIND, VILE, CHURLISH GOD!" With that, the tantrum finally dissipated and the angel felt his soul drain out of his feet into a hole in the floor, and disappear irredeemably.

The angel made his decision; he would hate God. If God so chose to reject him, he would hate God. Perhaps then God would show some interest. And so, the angel sat down in a comfortable chair and strove to root out every last trace of love in his being. Here he willfully tore out gentleness; there he strangled forgiveness, and then he angrily trampled temperance and tolerance into foam and grit beneath his feet. Far he strove in his inner landscapes until there was nothing there that wasn't red with the blood of righteousness and the sky itself seemed to wail with terror and grief. Deep he dug into the soil of his heart until there was but one small speck of light left in the farthest corner; smaller than a mustard seed. Just one small glimmer left and his hatred would be complete. To this sparkle he reached, loathing himself for doing so, but he found he couldn't touch it. The angel stretched and scraped and dug at the soil of his heart but the spark was always unreachable by him. Finally, depleted, he accepted that he could not hate God; that he loved God and that the death of that love was not given him to achieve. The fallen angel knew that alone, that single spark would reignite all his soul as soon as he turned his malice from it for a moment. He experienced this as a humiliating defeat.

In abject surrender, the angel knelt and acquiesced to the will of God. "Okay, You tyrant," he whispered, "You win. I can't hate you and I can't root You out of my heart. Okay. I love You and I can't do anything about that. But I don't have to live for You. You have 15 minutes to find me a reason to live. 15 minutes, and I have the money and I know who to see downtown and how much to buy to be quit of this dung-pile You call a life. You claim to have a heaven, well, I don't want it. Keep it to Your silent, nebulous Self. You have a hell? I can't do anything about that; You hold all the cards, so if that's my destiny, BRING IT ON! It's Your call anyway isn't it. What guidance have You ever given me or anyone to actually affect that outcome anyway. To Your own hell with You." The angel noted the second-hand on his watch. "15 minutes. Starting now; as if You give a damn anyway." With that, the angel sprawled himself onto the couch to wait out his promised quarter-hour.

There is a physiological toll to be paid for such intense spiritual striving, and it left the angel weak; his mind and heart were like empty egg shells. What to do to pass 15 minutes? The angel reached to the side-table and picked up the local newspaper. He looked at it and knew that he didn't have any heart left to read it with, so he threw it at the coffee-table in front of him. That newspaper flipped and landed. The back of the paper was face-up and covered from top to bottom with the smallest font possible to still be legible; personal ads. Wall to wall, meaningless, pitiful personal ads; "Married white male, looking for Asian woman for extramarital affair; will pay rent and small stipend."

Except! Right in the middle of that sea of spidery drivel were two words and a phone number in large, bold, unavoidable type;

"BAHA'I FAITH 333-3333".

The angel looked at it and felt surprise and amazement for a moment, then his cynicism picked up on the ridiculousness of the situation and he simply muttered, "Bullshit," and turned away. But when he looked back, it was still there. "Bullshit!" he said again, louder this time. But the name and that phone number just couldn't be unseen, and he couldn't pretend that it wasn't staring at him expectantly. "Okay," he allowed petulantly, "I did give you 15 minutes and a deal's a deal, so I'll call the damned number but I'm calling bullshit right now." He got up and took the paper to the phone in the kitchen.

The angel dialed the number. A sour faith filled him. He knew it was a meaningless exercise, but did it anyway. The phone rang and rang. He let it ring 25 times then realized, 'Oh, yeah, it's Sunday.' "To hell with it," he said aloud to the universe at large, "I gave it its chance for credibility and it's a bust, so to hell it and to hell with You. I'm outa here." He tensed his muscles to hang up the phone, but was stopped by a voice which said, "Hello?"

The angel pause for a heartbeat, thinking he would just finish his intent and hang up, but then common courtesy took control and he answered, "Hi. Is this the Bahaí Faith?"

"No," said the voice, "... well, I mean, this is the Bahaí office, but I'm just the janitor here. I'm sorry but there's no one here. It's Sunday, see."

"Oh, yeah, okay. Thanks anyway then. Bye. Sorry to bother you man." He tensed his muscles to hang up.

But the voice asked, "Would you like me to leave a note here for you or something?"

"Oh, no, it's okay, thanks anyway." The angel again tensed to hang up.

Again the voice interrupted his intent. "Is there something... I mean... is there something I can do for you ...or anything? What was it you were calling for...? I mean, if you don't mind my asking... you know...?" The angel heard the voice resonant with sincere good will, and it was this that stopped the angel's intent once again.

"Ah, well, no, thanks anyway man, I'll just call again on Monday." He knew it was a lie, but an inherent kindness within the angel wanting to alley any concerns on the part of the voice. "It's okay, thanks," he reiterated and again tensed to hang up.

"Actually, why don't you just give me a minute here and let me see if I can get you a number of someone, okay?" said the voice of sincerity. The angel was helplessly bound by a natural courtesy to pause once more.

"Oh, okay," was all he said this time, knowing that even if he was given a number he wouldn't call it because, well, his 15 minutes were almost up anyway, weren't they, but hey, no need to be rude to such a well-meaning janitor, right? 'Let him give me the number and go to sleep tonight knowing he did a kind deed,' he thought.

The angel waited. He could hear the bustling and rattling of papers and what sounded like a phone-card wheel being turned. He waited 20 seconds and began to tap his toe. He waited 40 seconds and impatience physically stirred in his breast. The angel waited 60 seconds and was tensing to hang up and get his coat to go downtown when the voice once again interrupted his muscles with, "Yeah, here's a number of a lady who works here. Got a pen ready?"

"Yeah, go ahead," lied the angel.

"Okay, it's 444-4444," the voice read, "...and her name's Lady. Got that man?"

"Yeah. Hey, thanks man. 'Preciate it. Bye," the angel said and this time the voice only replied, "No problem man, bye," and hung up.

The angel hung up and turned to grab his coat, then "Yeah, yeah, yeah," he said out loud, "... a deal's a deal. Guess I have to at least see this to its inevitable end before I go," and he turned back to the phone and dialed the number by memory, not certain if he even remembered it correctly.

Again the phone rang; it rang 15 times and that was all the angel had patience for. He tensed his muscles to hang up but a pleasant female voice said in his ear, "Hello?"

The angel felt a very real pang of irritation that God kept playing this silly head-game with him, but it wasn't the woman's fault, so he answered pointedly but without rancor, "Hi, are you a Bahaí?"

"Uhh, yes, I am. Can I help you?"

"I'd like you to tell me about it," was all the angel could think to say. 'Inadequate, but to the point,' he thought.

"…Okay… All right…" the lady said. Uncertainty modulated her voice in the angel's ear. "What would you like to know?"

This question stymied the angel. He realized with amazement he had no idea what he wanted to know. He only knew he needed to know what a Bahaí had to say. "Why don't you just talk, and I'll listen," he answered. He knew this was unfair and unkind, but didn't know what else to say.

There was a long pause as the lady considered the situation, then she made a very brave and daring suggestion. "Well, let's see, if I give you my address, can you come to my house?" The angel could hear doubt in her voice.

"Sure. What's your address?"

"Okay. Well,.. let's see,.. actually, where are you?" For what purpose she asked this the angel couldn't guess.

He answered her anyway, "I'm at 123, Hastings, here in Vancouver."

"Oh." She sounded thoughtful. "... well, I'm way out on Mowbray Road in Richmond. Can you get here okay from there?"

"Yeah, I'll just take a bus."

"Gosh, that could take you a couple of hours," the lady opined. The angel though he heard just a touch of hope in her voice.

"That's okay, I don't have anything else to do right now, I don't mind if you don't."

"Well ...okay ...my address is 567, Mowbray Road. Okay? Oh, what's your name sir?"

"I'm the angel. Okay, I'll be there in a couple hours," he said, and finally hung up. Nearly five years passed from that moment before he again thought of the expiration of the 15 minute time limit he'd given God.

He mindlessly endured two and a half hours in the hot afternoon, riding city busses, and then walked the last two blocks to the door of a refurbished, turn-of-the-century house in the middle of Richmond. He experienced a kind of waking as he stopped in front of the door, as though his numb mind had been turned off from the moment he'd hung up the phone. He reached up to knock on the door and experienced another of those deja vu moments. He knew this door. He knocked on the door and listened. He heard movement inside. The door opened and the scent of patchouli wafted over him. As it always did, the scent threw him into a slightly surrealistic mood. In the doorway stood a quintessential hippy woman who looked perhaps 30 years old, or possibly a bit younger. "Hi," she said without waiting for him to speak, "are you the angel?" She looked a bit mousey, but the angel thought that this was the expected look for a hippy woman. Shapely, pleasant face, long, light brown hair done up in a braid with glass-beads and a feather, no makeup, clothed in scarves and shawls and a floor-sweeping patterned skirt of course.

"Yes," was all he was able to offer in response. He felt suddenly tongue-tied.

She paused a moment just looking at him and he thought he saw fear flicker across her face. "Come in," she said and stepped aside. The angel stepped in and breathed in the ambiance. Bead curtains, psychedelic, black-light posters all over the walls, a four-foot by four-foot map of Middle-Earth dominating one wall completely, incense holders spilling over with ash, musk scenting the house and patchouli scenting the hostess; tarot cards spread out on the coffee-table, the whole place cluttered with tacky bric-a-brac and an open window casing through which a cool breeze billowed lace curtains like thought-balloons. He felt the homeliness of it begin to wash away the heat and the mind-numbing drone of the bus and the city. Silence, unqualified welcome, and peace seeped into his pores like water into a desiccated sponge. "Have a seat." Lady indicated a comfortable chair hidden under a cloud of pillows. "Would you like a cup of tea?" she offered. The angel suddenly realized she looked like a mouse locked in a cat's cruel gaze.

"No, I'm good thanks," the angel responded. He knew he sounded brusque. His sympathetic heart squirmed knowing she must be seeing a burley biker such as systematically beat up on hippies; hard of mien, uncompromising of social etiquette and unyielding in the face of gentleness, but the angel experienced himself wavering on the brink of dissolution, his self-image as fragile and evanescent as a cloud of mist in danger of blowing away and ceasing to have ever existed.

Lady looked down at her hands. The angel thought they seemed to be clasped protectively before her. "Okay," she breathed, "I'll just get my own cup and I'll be right back." She moved into the kitchen carefully; like she was trying not to awaken the threatening air she moved through; and disappeared from sight. Perhaps she said some prayers for protection and confidence; perhaps she called a friend and asked him to be on hand if need arose; perhaps she only boiled herself a cup of tea, but about 5 minutes passed before she returned and sat herself with apparent resolve on the other side of the coffee table from the angel. He sat quietly the whole time, soaking up the peaceful ambiance, disturbed only by an awareness of the dismay he caused his hostess, but knowing anything he did or said would only worsen her anxiety. Setting down her cup, but not yet raising her gaze to his face, she asked for the second time that day, "So, what would you like to know?"

The angel answered tersely, as he had before; bewildered, "I have no idea. You just talk and I'll listen."

As had happened before in his life; someone talked to him about the Bahaí Faith, and a couple hours passed with the angel uttering not a sound, but only listening. Again, when he said "Thank-you," and "Good-bye" at the door he couldn't have articulated a single word she'd told him, but he knew he had found The Pathway, because a single concept rang loud and clear in his mind; "There's nothing in this for you. If you do this thing you do it purely for the love of God and His creation, because He promises you nothing that He doesn't promise the whole world, whether they are Baha'is or not. The only way you will personally benefit from this is that if you do this thing, you will make the world a better place, and therefore you will have a better world to live in."

As he turned to walk away, a realization opened in his mind like a curtain suddenly pulled away to let in brilliant sunshine, and it stunned his motionless; earthquakes, floods, hurricanes and tornadoes; these were sent by god and the human race was well equipped to endure such tragedies. Rape, war, mutilation and psychological torture; these were not sent by God, these were what Man did to Man. God did not burden souls beyond their ability to endure, Man did.

"This," he thought as he walked away, "is worth dying for. And if it's worth dying for, it must be worth living for."

Your narrator thinks that here would be a natural end for this tale and he welcomes you to sit back now and smile at the poignancy and hope he has tried to create for you, but the truth is the angel still had some cleaning-up to do, and you may care to hear of it.

As had happened with Girl, the angel never saw Lady again. Years later he would be told by a friend of hers that after he'd spoken to her on the phone, she'd called this friend and said, "I've just had a call from some guy who wants to know about the Bahaí Faith, and I just know if he doesn't hear what he needs to hear, he's just going to POP!"

The fallen angel endured another six months trying to detoxify his soul sufficiently to be able to join the community of the Bahaí Faith. One brilliantly clear winter day, walking down a street in Calgary, the angel was dreamily watching the spidery tops of trees flow over him as he floated down the sidewalk. His mind was filled with a peace and wonder at the simple wonder of tree tops against the breath-taking beauty of the blue sky. Something intangible in him turned to smile companionably at the Esoteric All-Entity Who seemed always nearby lately, and in that moment he realized that what he'd been consistently asking God to show him from the time he was 5 years old had been proffered to him. He suddenly realized he was at a metaphoric crossroads where he was free to either say, "Well, that's that then. Thanks God, that's what I wanted to know," and walk away, doing nothing about it, but satisfied that he knew it existed, or he could own up to what he now knew was the truth, and take responsibility for what he knew.

On that day, the fallen angel shed his tattered wings and began to strive to become a Bahaí.

The beginning.