Frank & Ralph: The guardian angels of Jesus
They don’t fit into the angelic host network like everyday angels
Frank and Ralph are the most fascinating angels in all of creation. They have no shame, which you would expect, but since they’re bumping up against the rest of the angels, you’d think they would crumble from the disdain. I suspect that when you meet them, you’ll want to write a story about them, too.
Excerpt from Chapter One of Frank & Ralph: The retired Guardian Angels of Jesus
I was not short when I lived on earth in my Olmec tribe 500 years before Christ. At 5’2”, however, much of Heaven towers over me—especially the angels. They stand not as tall as they are and stare for long periods at invisible spiritual landscapes. I still have little idea what they are pondering.
Frank and Ralph, as angels do, pick a physical size for their human form but adjust their bodily presentation every few hundred years. Today, Ralph stands 6’3” and bends his back and shoulders forward, with his knees slightly bent and his left foot forward. No other angel that I know of does this. Akin to a boxer’s pre-fight stance, he carries his two overly hairy appendages at the ready, which he necessarily covers in long-sleeve shirts.
Since he began wearing cuffed, creased slacks in the 19th Century, Ralph has favored mahogany colors to match untucked red plaid shirts. He is not a trendsetter, but he likes it. He often grips his left pant’s pocket with his thumb, a stylistic bad-boy stance not far off the mark.
Ralph recently added staccato movements with his right hand as he talks. He emphasizes words with a tap of his right thumb, pinched with the pointer finger, making hard thrusts in midair. He has difficulty mastering affectations like this, annoying Frank in his persistent attempts to match human quirks with his cranky, angelic demeanor.
He believes his look is timeless, but said the same about the rough woolen red scarf he wore in the 15th Century, which clashed with his 5th Century sage gray robe and linen white outfit, both of which angels wore in the days after the Ascension. Timeless means anywhere from 500 to 1000 years.
“I blend well.”
“Of course you do,” said Frank. “Blending is your moniker.”
“That’s an intent, not a moniker,” I correct Frank. I am a linguist of average ability, and I often remark on their word choices. To humans, I am annoying. To Ralph and Frank, I’m helpful.
In truth, blending in is more of a hope than a reality for Ralph.
“Yes, of course, dear Ipomoea,” Frank told me. “Thank you for the clarification. Ralph intends, indubitably, to blend and wants dearly to do it well.”
“Oh, cut it out,” Ralph said, chopping his pinched fingers too late. I don’t think he’ll ever get the hang of it.
Frank’s clothing contrasts with Ralph’s, but not by much. Fashion sense escapes them both. Frank’s tastes accent a stretched height of 6’5”—sleek, regal, and distinguished. Just accents, to be precise. They’re not accomplishments.
Frank wears grays and beige common-man suits, nothing too posh, vaguely appropriate to every era’s standards. He prefers to fold his arms when he stands and sits, slowly crossing his legs one way and then the other. He favors a cupped pipe, a cigarette, a cigar … anything that produces long wisps of soft white smoke. He never inhales, which anyone can tell. He twirls his fingers when he’s not toying with some tobacco implement.
Their movements are wooden, self-conscious, stiff parodies of human sways and turns. However, in the extremes—delicate or brutal engagements—they’re remarkably adept.
Both have sported facial hair from their days with Jesus—Fu Manchu for Ralph and a European professor’s full beard for Frank. Depending on the company they keep or the country they inhabit, they can look like any race. I’ve advised them to be more consistent in their choice of nationality following a roiled exchange four hundred years ago. They entered a 17th-century German coffee shop dressed as Asians. A confusing outcry charged with curses of bigotry rushed them into the only empty seats smack dab in the middle of the establishment. Amid the noise, they decided to morph into something they thought would fit better, confusing everyone. Two rather tall, Mongolian-accented Asians in button-down shirts instantly became long-robed Nigerians. The crowd was silenced, frozen in shock. My dark-skinned bush-dressed friends stood up, dropped some coins on their chairs, and loped out of the shop muttering wasted apologies in the long-lost staccato of the African tongue (literally clicking of tongues) called Centúúm.
“I think the barman fainted,” Ralph told me. We’ve never been back there, for obvious reasons.
Ralph talks in common pithy phrases and loves the dialectical addle of the day. He held on to “Gimme a break” for over 70 years. Today, he says, “Oh, cut it out.” His timing is always clumsy.
Frank uses long words like “penultimate,” “absolutely,” and “exasperated.” “Indubitably” is new. Since they don’t fit into the angelic host network like everyday angels, my dear pals lack much of the smoothness of Spirit-filled beings. Their communication with other angels crackles, like that of humans when first facing God (except for St. Jerome, who exudes unrivaled confidence). Their memory banks are rather unorganized. Again, like us. It’s probably why the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit spend so much time with them—redirecting, prodding, and keeping them busy with duties the angelic hierarchy either ignores or purposely wants to avoid.
When walking in plazas, malls, or on any street, the three of us look like weirdly dressed actors taking an intermission break from a questionable Broadway play to catch a smoke and a coffee.
Frank and Ralph’s deployment as retired angels—an unprecedented full-time angelic assignment on earth—placed me with them. Since their deployment to earth soon after Jesus’ Ascension, and my subsequent recruitment of their help, I’ve spent as much time with them on earth as I do in the realm of Heaven.
More bulbous physically than they are, I habitually walk to their right holding a satchel of scribblings. Baseball caps, tennis shoes, and jeans have only recently replaced my preference for robes. Robes of all sorts have been found fashionable as masquerades for centuries. Because of our Spirit natures, if we’re too much of a distraction, we go invisible. We lose the smells, the beating of rain and sun, and the sharper colors, of course. So we don’t do that unless we simply must.
If you didn’t know, saints and angels share a similar state of invisibility on earth. We humans, when allowed through Heaven’s portal to the confines of creation, are what we are, but angels can portray any visage that suits their fancy.
Frank and Ralph are the most fascinating angels in all of creation. They have no shame, which you would expect, but since they’re bumping up against the rest of the angels, you’d think they would crumble from the disdain. I suspect that when you meet them, you’ll want to write a story about them, too.