A widely reported study released last September showed that 55 percent of Americans believe in angels. I took that as another sign of our country’s slide toward anti-intellectual lunacy. Even as a churchgoer, I believe in angels as allegory, not as actual messengers of the divine.  But I’ve spent the last couple of days thinking more about angels, as might be expected in this season of Advent, and have become more open minded about the possible existence of angels, loosely defined. It was the December 20 Rodeo Beach 50K more than the holiday season that sparked these thoughts. (more…)