Carol P. Vaccariello D.Min. LPC - The Lion of God Archangel Ariel: ...Personal Encounters

T HE LION OF GO D
Archangel AriEl

PERSONAL ENCOUNTERS

Carol P. Vaccariello, D.Min., LPC

Copyright 2017 Carol P. Vaccariello, D.Min., LPC.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN: 978-1-5043-7519-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5043-7521-4 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5043-7520-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017902446

Balboa Press rev. date: 02/18/2017

CONTENTS

First, I am grateful to Grandfather and Great Mother, for inviting me into this sacred, abundant journey.

I am grateful to:

My faithful, eternal companion and guide in this adventure, Archangel AriEl, for protecting me, loving me, guiding me, and impressing upon me the importance of publishing these stories.

Those who have gone before me, the Ancestors, on whose shoulders I stand: Mom, Dad, Frank, Richard and many more who join with me daily in prayer.

Visionary mentor, colleague and friend, the Reverend Doctor Matthew Fox, for challenging me, modeling the critical importance of engaging my inner guides, creativity and mysticism.

Nephew and confidant, F. Christopher Reynolds, for showing up, daily kitchen table conversations, creating the kitchen wall storyboard, deep knowing and confidence, seeing in me more than I do.

Niece and daughter-in-spirit, Jessie Pritchard, for being the first to read the chapters allowing me to see the wonder in her eyes and hear her words of excitement, for helping me believe these stories are compelling and need to be shared by someone like me.

Friend and secretary, Vicki Grace, for a warm and cheery disposition that I can count on, for technical skill creating this books cover and making me look good.

Adopted son, Michael Olin-Hitt, for sharing your writing skills and constructive criticism. You have infused light and clarity to these chapters.

Professor, Dean and mentor, the Reverend Doctor John Biersdorf, who challenged me to open my heart and soul to new ways of knowing through dreams and visions.

Reading this surprising book with its surprising ending reminds me of two encounters in my life. The first was with the widow of David Paladin, the Navajo painter who was initiated as a shaman through a particularly painful episode as a young soldier. Lying about his age at sixteen to get into the army in the Second World War, he was sent to Europe to fight and was almost immediately captured. He was imprisoned not in a GI camp but in a concentration camp where he was the only Native American among the other inmates and was tortured periodically. For example, one Christmas one foot was nailed to the floor and he was ordered to twirl on that foot for twenty-four hours. When after four years the Americans liberated that camp they found Davids comatose bodywhich weighed all of 65 poundsat the bottom of a pile of dead bodies. He was returned to his reservation in Arizona and after two years, on coming out of his coma, his elders said to him: You have a choice. You are a paraplegic so you can go into a veterans hospital where you will live in a wheelchair the rest of your life. Or: We can try to heal you in the ancient way.

He chose to be healed in the ancient way so they took him to an ice-cold river and threw him in over his head. He said when he hit the water he was more angry at his elders than at the Nazis who tortured him. But it worked. He got his legs back and made two pilgrimages to Mexico and back on foot. Being an artist, he also met Marc Chagall and Picasso as a young man and Chagall said to him: Dont paint the stories of your people; paint your dreams of the stories of your people. This, he testified, gave him his freedom to be his own kind of artist.

I learned about David through his wife who invited me to contribute to an exhibit of his work after he died since, as it turned out, he had read my books such as Original Blessing and appreciated how my theology helped reconcile his Native American and Christian spiritual traditions. Later I visited his widow Lynda Paladin in the home where they had lived and he had painted over the years and she told me this story. Often, she said, dead painters would come and visit my husband during the night and ask him to paint a picture which he did and it was their picture, not his. Then she left the room and came back with a picture and as soon as I saw it I said, Thats by Paul Klee. And sure enough it was signed Paul Klee at the bottom. I remember the night that Paul Klee came to visit him and dictated this picture, she said.

I share this story to remind the reader that life is more interesting and boasts far more dimensions than our culture dares to tell us. We live in many worlds at once. David Paladins elders told him late in his life that the reason he suffered so much as a young man was to initiate him as a shaman. Shamans are often people who went through deep struggle in their youtha shattering experience that often has the effect of shattering the psyche with the result that they live in more than one world at once.

The stories that Carol Vaccariello shares in this moving book are of this kind as well. Her visitations with angels are special but also very real and they bear close attention. By their fruits you will know them, says Jesus. Carol, whom I have known for over twenty years, is very real, very grounded, very hard working; she is a keen, serious listener and teacher, a seasoned student and administrator. She is committed to service and lives a simple life style of service to others. She has lived and worked as a Catholic sister for five years; as a wife and supporter of a union organizer in Ohio for thirty years; as a Protestant pastor for thirty-one years; and as co-director of the Doctor of Ministry program at my school the University of Creation Spirituality for nine years; and later at Wisdom University; she has served as an interim pastor at a number of UCC churches, often called in to resolve conflicts or to help heal wounded congregations. Her feet are very much on the ground. The fruits of her healthy and giving life are there for anyone to see. The stories in this book reveal another and more hidden side to Carol yet they are stories we can all heed and learn from. It is courageous of her to share them.