Marcia Brennan - The Angels in Between: The Book of Muse

Have you ever had the experience of hearing someone say something, or of coming across a seemingly random item that just happens to catch your interest, and thinking to yourself: Oh, yes, I already knew that? It feels like, somehow, youre familiar with a subject even before youve come across it consciously. The ideas can be a helpful reminder of something you need to remember, or they can present intriguing knowledge and even great wisdom on a subject you already knew something about. Just as a part of you immediately picks up on the ideas and embraces them as novel, another, deeper part absorbs this information in a kind of double take because you sense the traces of familiarity. This doubling of knowledge is like looking at an image and at its afterimage. It feels like seeing twice, because youre simultaneously sensing novelty and familiarity. Out of your two eyes you are looking at the twin poles of creation and recognition, and the view is quite inspiring.

The two responses follow so closely on the heels of one another that it almost feels as if they are happing simultaneously, but not quite. There is a split second between the two reactions, and in the split of that second, in that crack of consciousness, there is an opening into the metaphorical and the metaphysical realms. This in between space is the composite consciousness of mysticism. Reading The Angels In Betweenand taking its messages to heartcan help to inspire such consciousness in you. This book is filled with stories drawn from my own experiences, all of which provide vivid examples of how to engage with the metaphorical, metaphysical, and angelic realms. Angels are intermediaries who inhabit the subtle space in between familiar reality and the truth of love, assistance, healing, and grace. In turn, metaphorical language and metaphysical vision grow in and out of the cracks in the familiar surfaces of everyday existence, much like moss grows in the cracks of stones and sidewalks. Cool and green, all it needs is a little shade, and it gives so much hope.

This is why I was inspired to write this bookto give hope and to encourage new growth. Above all, I wanted to tell a story that I couldnt tell elsewhere. I am a tenured Associate Professor of Art History and Religious Studies at Rice University in Houston, Texas, where my scholarship and teaching engage the fields of modern and contemporary art history and museum studies, the medical humanities, and the study of religions and comparative mysticism. I am the author of several books in these areas and the lead author of two museum exhibition catalogues. Since early 2009, I have also served as an Artist In Residence in the Department of Palliative Care and Rehabilitation Medicine at the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. In that capacity, I work as a creative writer with individuals at the very end of life, and with their caregivers. Through both my scholarly research and my personal and professional experiences, I have come to know the various ways in which a mystic is a person who is able to be in multiple places simultaneously, and who is able to express transformational and transcendent visions. It is my privilege to live and work in many worlds at once. Perhaps this is a familiar story, one that you already know, even as the narrative is expressed in a different form. As you read, perhaps you are seeing some things twice and encountering ideas that are already your familiars.