17 April

Michel Serres talks about legend, as having two related meanings. One as a type of story, and the other as the legend on a map, which tells you how to read the map. Serres says the two meanings are connected. The legends (stories) that have come down to us are also the legend that allows us to understand our world and lives. One of these is the legend of angels, which seems like silly mythology to atheists, but which Serres says is, like all religious stories, a very precise way to understand something profound about our lives. Angels are messengers, they pass on important news about God and the world. This makes angels a legend for our time, because for the last 100 years our technologies have been focused most heavily on communication. They tell us instantly what's happening, just about anywhere. They 'announce' the news of the world, every moment, good and bad. They make us feel directly the responsibility and glory and guilt of what happens everywhere, and we live that continuum between glory and guilt every single day.