the Archangels
I recall the exact moment that this idea occurred to me. I was driving through Wichita, KS, on I-35. Unlike others, I can travel for hours without a radio on, and it’s when I do some of my best pondering, on the road, turning over ideas until they come to some fruition. The use of birds as spiritual or heavenly beings met with my interest in the archangels, and in a flash there was the thought of depicting the archangels as birds.The three archangels are Gabriel, Michael, and Raphael. Gabriel serves as a messenger. He is the one who announces the divine conception of Christ to Mary and Joseph. I have made him a song bird, or herald. Michael is a warrior angel, who defeats the dragon in the Book of Revelations, and so he is the crow with a sword here defeating a snake. Those two are known to Jewish, Protestant, and Catholic Bibles, but Raphael is known only to the Catholic. He appears in the Book of Tobit, where he gives directions to make medicines from fish. Therefore, he is the heron with the fish in his mouth.