Leo Booth - The Angel and the Frog: Becoming Your Own Angel

Rev. Leo Booth is a fabulous fabulist. In this spiritual tale, he gives us keys to the Kingdom and wings to soar beyond our lesser selves.

Jean Houston, PhD

Author of A Mythic Life

Every bully in every high school needs to read The Angel and the Frog. It is essentially about developing respect, personal dignity, and healthy relationships.

John Bradshaw

Author of Healing the Shame that Binds You

The Angel and the Frog is a fable, which in the venerable tradition of Tolkien is charming, powerful, and thought provoking. In a culture starved for stories of spiritual guidance, this delightful tale could well become a bestseller. I loved it!

Joan Borysenko, PhD

Author of Minding the Body, Mending the Spirit

Not since Jonathan Livingston Seagull has there been a fable so profound in its ability to awaken the soul to true wonder, power, and majesty. The Angel and the Frog is timeless in its message and timely in our need to know this truth now.

Mary Manin Morrissey

Author of Building Your Field of Dreams

The Angel and the Frog is a book that I look forward to rereading many times.

Gary Zukav

Author of Seat of the Soul

Health Communications, Inc.

Deerfield Beach, Florida

www.hcibooks.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Booth, Leo, 1946

The angel and the frog : becoming your own angel / Leo Booth.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-0-7573-1704-0 (trade paper)

ISBN 0-7573-1704-9 (trade paper)

ISBN 978-0-7573-1705-7 (ebook)

ISBN 0-7573-1705-7 (ebook)

1. Spiritual formationFiction. I. Title.

PS3602.O674A96 2012

813.6dc23

2012016366

2012 Leo Booth

All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.

HCI, its logos, and marks are trademarks of Health Communications, Inc.

Publisher:

Health Communications, Inc.

3201 S.W. 15th Street

Deerfield Beach, FL 334428190

Cover image Fotolia.com

Cover and interior designs by Lawna Patterson Oldfield

To Kien Lam

A Vietnamese Angel who touched my soul

Contents

Foreword

S piritual growth does not begin until you have the courage to enter into relationships. It requires more than meditations, prayers, and good wishes. Relationships are the proving grounds where the effects of intentions, conscious and unconscious, become known. Lack of relationship equals stagnation from the spiritual perspective.

The Angel and the Frog is about relationshipswith fellow students in the Earth school and with nonphysical Friends. These are my terms. The characters in this book confront the same challenges that we face, with the same issues that we have: how to live lives of integrity while honoring the paths of others; how to see the roles that we play in the genesis of our own experiences; and how to recognize, incorporate, and utilize our highest understandings.

These issues are not the substance of fable. They are becoming the core issues of every human as human evolution through the alignment of the personality with the soul replaces human evolution through the exploration of the physical world. The appearance of angels in this book reflects the appearance of angels in the lives of millions of humans. Angels are not new. The emerging ability of the entire human species to interact with them consciously is.

Every human endeavor is a collaboration. Five-sensory humansthose who are limited to the perceptions of the five sensescannot see this. Multisensory humansthose whose perception is expanding beyond the perceptual system of the five sensescan. We are all becoming multisensory.

In this book, Cedric, a frog, collaborates with an angel, and this deeply affects his life and the lives of those around him. One by one, each of us is becoming conscious of collaboration with nonphysical teachers, and this is changing our lives as radically as it changes Cedrics. These changes are not identical. Some individuals open to new and previously unconsidered positive potential. Others close more tightly into old patterns of fear. The same thing is happening to us.

A great change is upon us, or more accurately, within us. This change is beyond our ability to control, just as the sudden and unanticipated appearance of an angel in Cedrics life is beyond Cedrics ability to control. Our only optionlike Cedricsis how to respond. The Angel and the Frog is about different responses. Cedric accepts and befriends the angel. Are we doing the same? Cedric finds his angel in a pond. In folklore, myth, and dreams from antiquity to the present, water is the element of emotions. Our angels often speak to us in the same waythrough our emotions. Are we listening?

Angelsnonphysical teacherssee us more clearly than we see ourselves, concern themselves only with our spiritual development, and speak only the truth in ways that we can understand it. These are their values to us. They are spiritual friends. They model the love that we are becoming. They partner with us in the ways that we are learning to partner with one anotheras equals for the purpose of spiritual growth.

The Angel and the Frog is about collaboration with an angel and the spiritual partnerships that develop as a result. It is about the deep emotional currents that move each of us, and the transformations that they offer. It is about becoming loving and grateful. It is also about the work that is necessary to do that.

I am grateful to Leo Booth for this beautiful collaboration. It is a book that I look forward to rereading many times.

Gary Zukav

Author of Seat of the Soul

Introduction

I had written the story of The Angel and the Frog some years ago and simply couldnt get anyone to publish it. Most editors said that they didnt know if it was written for children or adults. Actually, it was written more for teenagers and adults. The Angel and the Frog suggests that the discovery of yourself involves becoming your own angel .

A dear friend, Leila, who has a son, six at the time of our conversation, suggested that the problem concerning the readership of The Angel and the Frog might be solved by making the language more grown-up, for teenagers and adults: Maybe its not for a six-year-old, but it speaks to a fourteen-year-old. Thank you, Leila; Ive sought to follow your advice.

Since I first read Animal Farm by George Orwell, I knew the power of telling a story by using animals as a flashlight on the human condition. This story is about Cedric the frog, who is battling mild bouts of depression that leave him feeling hop-less ; Muriel, the caretaking hedgehog; Chandu and Chico, the Burmese cats that encounter prejudice because of their gayness; Betsy, an overweight pig who is the object of fat jokes; Alice, Betty, and Irma, the gossiping, homophobic chickens; and Mrs. Ramsbottom, the wise owl who the creatures go to for advice. The other important character in the book is Roger the fox, who because of his sexual abuse as a pup has grown insecure, flirtatious, and a protector of his secrets, which he senses Christine the angel knows. All these characters and their relationships with one another begin to change when the angel Christine, the messenger, appears in their midst.

But it is the human condition that Im writing about. I had anticipated a theme that is expressed in other works, such as The Four Agreements by Miguel Ruiz and A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle: often we do not know who we really are.