Abba music, Michaelmas and how to join the guardian angels

Today, October 2, the traditional Christian churches observe a memorial of the Guardian Angels.

The recognition of these presences is based, among other sources, on the biblical text that warns us against mistreating children, because “their angels look upon the face of God,” as the Master put it. The believers also honour God’s super-powerful messengers, called “archangels”, who carry out his special missions.

The best-known of the archangels is Michael, the warrior messenger, who defends God’s people against the machinations of the evil one, Satan. Michael and his fellow archangels also have a memorial, on September 29. The memorial, called Michaelmas in English, is so important that it gives its name to the whole of the final quarter of the year. The autumn academic term at universities like Oxford, for example, is called Michaelmas.

“I believe in angels, something good in everything I see.” So sang the Swedish two-girl-two-boy mega pop group, ABBA, back in the 1970s. Their name is an acronym from the first letters of each of their first names, namely, Agnetha, Bjorn, Benny and Anni-Frid, thus “ABBA”. Bible readers, however, will not fail to recognise the scriptural allusion to “Abba, Father”.

Do you, like ABBA, believe in angels? What does the word “angel” suggest to you? Maybe you can turn the question back on to me and ask me what angels mean to me, and why I am talking about them today. I will tell you in a moment.

Swedish singing group

First, however, let me share with you a few personal trifles about the Swedish singing group, whose music I genuinely like. ABBA were hugely successful and their impact has lasted several decades. They are currently staging and recording re-union and comeback performances for their fans. A ticket to one of their concerts in London costs £21 Sterling (Sh4,164)!

That says something for artists who emerged and flourished in the 1970s. Speaking of the 1970s, the group’s re-emergence stirred up nostalgic memories of my first visit to Nyeri in 1979. My bosses at Kenyatta University College, as it was then, had sent me to supervise our students’ teaching practice in the area and I duly drove up towards the Mountain. In Nyeri Town, I checked into what was then a brand new establishment, coquettishly nestled among the town’s dazzling green hills that gave the hotel its name.

Everything there was state of the art, including radio and music systems piped into our rooms. I particularly remember that the music channel featured several of ABBA’s hits, like “Chiquitita”, “Mama Mia” and “I Have a Dream”, from which I quoted the lines at the beginning of this chat. It was blissfully soothing to lie back at the end of a long day and soak in the lovely voices and moving English lyrics of those then-young Swedish crooners.

That was the beginning of my never-ending love affair with Nyeri Town and its surroundings. I was to return to it numerous times, both on business and for pleasure, accumulating a treasure trove of adventures and memories, some of them romantic and others spiritual. Each time I go up, I make it a point to stop at the hotel among the green hills, for old time’s sake, even if I am not going to stay. I still look forward to my next visit to Nyeri.

Back to the angels, I do believe in them. My angels, however, are not those anthropomorphic (human form) figures with flapping wings and clasped hands, created by the fertile imaginations of various artists. Rather, the angels that I have experienced are those inexplicable forces and presences that dispose of happenings and events around me of which I had neither knowledge nor control. They are, in other words, manifestations of supernatural providence and power in my life. Gabriel, the name of one of the archangels, means “power of God”.

Two brief narratives may illustrate the experience of angels in my life. On June 1 this year, I was driven to a suburb of Kampala for my second Covid-19 vaccine jab. To get to our destination, we had to drive through a rather narrow and crowded little street called Kisota Road. Ten minutes after we had cleared Kisota, there was an assassination attempt on that very road against a prominent General and government minister. His driver and daughter were killed in the attack and the General was seriously though not fatally wounded. I still cannot explain how or why we were not on that road during or after the attack.

Wear mauve pullovers

Back in 2006, I was returning to Nairobi from a conference in Dar es Salaam. We landed at JKIA on a particularly hot and hazy late morning. We had to walk quite some distance on the tarmac and up an open staircase into the arrival lounge. Just at the entrance into arrivals, I abruptly blacked out. The last thing I remember of that moment was one of those airport attendants, the ones who wear mauve pullovers, holding me in his arms and seating me into an armchair.

I came round a few minutes later and the young man asked me if I was all right. I answered yes but I kept wondering what would have happened if I had collapsed out on the tarmac, or if that man had not been there just at the time I conked out. I have since then regarded those attendants in the mauve pullovers as “guardian angels”.

That obviously qualifies what I said earlier, that we should not think of angels as beings of human form. Maybe there is, or can be, an angelic power in us. The word “angel” means messenger or agent. Every time we act positively, we carry and convey a good message (evangel) to God’s people. Whether it is steadying a tottering old man or soothing a crying baby, a kind act turns you into a power or presence of your Maker, in other words, an angel.

I wish you a blessed Michaelmas, before we get to Christmas.

Prof Bukenya is a leading East African scholar of English and literature. [email protected]