Discretion

by Geoffrey Hart

Previously published as: Hart, G. 2021. Discretion. Flash in a Flash episode 206, 16 November 2021.

Looking down at the pavement, 19 stories below the balcony, I couldn’t help but notice that even in the gathering dusk, it seemed like an awfully long way down. Long enough to have plenty of time to change my mind.

“Many do, and that is perhaps the greatest tragedy.” Startled, I almost lost my balance. A strong hand, hairless and ivory-pale, caught me by the shoulder. The angel’s wings, gleaming white and upswept in the twilight, were far too wide for the balcony, but somehow they fit anyway—something weird about the perspective. I started breathing again.

“You are asking yourself whether this is just some delusion. It is not.”

“Angels don’t exist.”

“Eppur se muove.” He raised a single brown eyebrow almost as high as the lustrous brown locks that fell across his forehead in a graceful sweep.

“If you were a delusion, you’d probably say that. It’s how my mind works.”

“That is a tautology. Try again.”

“All right... Say for the sake of argument, you really are an angel. By all the evidence, angels are bastards who don’t have much interest in making anyone’s life better. Why would I trust you to intervene in mine?”

He frowned. “A little fantasy is healthy, but you’ve been watching way too much Supernatural. It’s an eternal mystery why women have pushed that institutionalized misogyny into a 12th season.”

“Don’t patronize. It’s beneath you.”

“Point taken.”

“Anyway, I was thinking of the source material. What was up with Jacob and the angel? Seems entirely arbitrary.”

“There’s a saying among the Talmudic scholars that Hashem loves it when his children argue with him. Some need a little more encouragement than others.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

The angel sighed. “Are you aware of the etymology of the word Israel?”

“Not in the slightest. No, wait: isn’t it the name of someone from the Old Testament?”

“It’s a later name for Jacob, one of your patriarchs. One interpretation of the name is ‘he who struggles with God’—and triumphs. A parent’s greatest pride is when his children surprise him.”

“So the all-knowing is capable of surprise?” I raised my own eyebrow.

“Having the ability to know everything does not presuppose the desire to know everything. Even Hashem enjoys an occasional surprise.”

“So the answer to the eternal question of whether God could create an object so heavy he couldn’t lift it is...”

“That he could choose whichever outcome would please him most at the time, or that would prove most instructive. The question’s a sophomoric exercise in logic.”

I licked dry lips. “And the existence of evil is a pleasing choice?”

“It’s not the choice of He Who Created Us All.”

“Yet still he permits evil to happen, Lucifer to defy him, and reactionary conservatives to own Parliament.”

The angel frowned a moment. “Consider the metaphor of the divine father.” The scare quotes were audible, but the angel didn’t deign to raise its fingers, which was fortunate, since one set was the only thing interposed between me and said Creator. “Does a good father dictate the actions of all his children?” The look on his face said it was a rhetorical question, so I let him continue. “Yes, while they are children and lack the wisdom to make informed choices. But for every child there comes a day of rebellion, when they feel it necessary to make their own choices. On that day, the father—or mother—makes a terrible choice: whether to try retaining their authority, or to allow the child to step from the nest and fly under their own power.” I resisted the urge to look down again; no way I was flying under my own power. “Some will rise to great heights; others will fall from them. Some will do good deeds; some will do evil.”

“And the evil is allowed? Sometimes it even seems to be encouraged.”

“Free will comes with no guarantees. A child cannot simultaneously demand a parent’s intervention and insist on complete freedom from that intervention.”

“That seems far too binary for someone who’s supposed to be omniscient and omnipotent.”

“And yet it’s so.”

“Then why are you here.”

“There are no divine interventions anymore, but sometimes a little nudge is permitted. Sometimes a child needs a little push from the nest.” I abruptly felt the hundreds of feet of void gaping beneath my feet and felt a wave of dizziness before the grip tightened. “Or a push back into the nest, as the case may be. We angels are allowed some discretion in these matters.” He took his hand from my shoulder, and I stepped back from the railing.

“Why me?”

“That’s for you to discover. It may take you years, and you may never learn the answer. But if you do...” He smiled, and a tightness in my chest I’d not noticed before eased. “That is why we have discretion. It is also why you have discretion.” The angel faded into the darkness, leaving me clutching the railing, looking down into a drop whose bottom I could no longer see.

I stepped back onto the balcony. There’d be time on the way down to regret my choice, but if I stayed, a potentially much longer time stretching ahead to reconsider the option of living and taking responsibility for that life’s decisions. All I needed was a little more time to think it through.

And perhaps a little discretion.

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