How do I know angels are real? Part One.

How do I know angels are real? 
Well I'm not really sure how I know, but in my experience, they are.
Perhaps it goes back to the small settlement of half a dozen houses perched on a ravine overlooking the Barron Falls in North Queensland. I was three. Dense virgin rainforest pressed against the back fence. A rutted gravel road trundled off on a long trek into the town of Kuranda. It was raw living. It was the late 1950s.
My mother was brilliant, when she was well. However, when the demon of mental illness surfaced, my tiny brother and I roamed about unfettered by pesky adult supervision and adequate clothing. We climbed on the water tank stand and shouted 'Boo!' to all the snakes sunning themselves below, then squealed in delight as they quickly slithered back underneath. Probably a few taipans, a couple of browns...who would know! My brother decided he could fly and launched himself from the top of the high set Queenslander stairs. Oops... Wild brumbys would rumble in on the whiff of the veggie garden. Horses terrified me for years later. 
Behind the daily waking up and going to sleep was a constant, deep, green, powerful presence. Always there. Always solid. Always safe. I thought later that it might have been the rainforest. It might have been, yet there was something else.
Cyclones came and went. Dad went off to work in the hydro electric turbines, and came home at odd hours. Mum would disappear to 'hostable' and return a little too enthusiastic. Yet  the 'presence' remained. It never came or went.

We moved to Boorowa in midwest New South Wales when I was five. There was a church across the road. A tiny country Church of England. We went a few times. The rector patted my head during communion, but wouldn't give me a biscuit. 
I heard the congregation recite 'The Lord's Prayer', and somehow I just 'knew' it. It made me feel good to say it. My child's mind figured that if I say this prayer three times before falling asleep, everything will be okay. The 'Presence' seemed to increase with each word.
This time Mum's suicide attempt included setting fire to the bedroom and filling the small rented house with the smell of burnt kapok. The 'Presence' was like an anchor. No matter how intense the outer drama was, I knew I was safe. There was no thought of 'angels' or 'Divinity'. I still had no idea what the words of the prayer I repeated meant.

Every couple of years Mum would try to leave life again, sometimes quietly, sometimes dramatically. Off she would go for treatment, back she would come to start over. Those times and treatments were not so enlightened as now and she felt she failed all the tests. She died by her own hand when I was thirteen. The family imploded and by fourteen I was living in a boarding school.
The 'Presence' was still there. In spite of my damage, grief and loneliness I felt a constant Love. Now, for the first time, I began to wonder what it was!

(to be continued in my next blog)