We started life together, although she likes to think she's the elder. Well, she is, if by life you mean existence. In that sense she was created earlier, but does age alone confer special status?

Look at us. Most people would take us for twins, and we are twins, in a way. We have stayed together almost our entire lives. In today's vernacular, we have shared the same space, and for generations. The creator who made us saw no necessity to make us distinct, separate, apart. Why differentiate?

Our creator had a vision, an angelic perfection whose image we represent. We are the work of his hands. And when people look at us some see only the work of another Joseph, a humble carpenter/craftsman/carver; others glimpse the image created by the Master Carpenter Himself.

Do I date myself by using capital letters in an age of small "c" Conservatives and small "l" Liberals? Think small, write small, be small; tear down the capitals and all becomes small, ordinary, average.

I am no "ordinary" Canadian. Neither is she. We are unique, yet the same.

I haven't spoken to her once in more than a hundred years, and neither has she to me. Do I speak figuratively? No; factually. And our silence speaks louder than the loudest boom-box yet invented.

Ours is a thoughtful silence, but we love noise, noise four times a day, twice on Saturdays and six times on Sundays, when men, women, children, seniors and grandchildren, the lame, the halt, and the blind; priest and prelate, deacon and bishop, secretary and cabinet minister; saint and sinner, throng beneath our feet to worship and to pray, to seek the help of that Master Carver whose angelic host we two wooden angels represent in our silent companionship, on the railing high above the centre aisle, behind which choir and organ join in sacred music.

We began our spiritual life on the day we were blessed and installed in the Rideau Convent Chapel in Ottawa, Canada's capital. That chapel, long since displaced by commercial stores and offices, has since been recreated with loving care in the National Art Gallery of Canada, a mile away on Sussex Drive.

Go there. Take a look. On either side of the altar are two circles cut into the wood. She and I occupied those circles for eighty-four years. For eighty-four years we heard the chorused voices of nuns and students raised in daily prayer.

Then the voices fell silent and were replaced by jackhammers, saws and crowbars, hammering, whining, grinding, filling the air with hurt and dust. She and I were mantled in dust and grime.

Our mission was ended, or so it seemed.

Today, rescued from a Carleton Place antique dealer's store, sister angels we stand in St. Patrick's Basilica on Nepean Street in Ottawa, on the railing in front of the choir loft. An occasional convent alumna looks up at our lofty perch, eyes filled with recognition and joy.

Come and see us. Our two solitudes speak with one voice to old and new friends alike.

Second Angel

The whole world is becoming one great big talk show. Morning to night, and night to morning, on radio and television, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. "Ottawa, can we talk?" "Kalamazoo, can we talk?" Babble, babble, babble, babble, babble. And, as if that weren't enough, now she has to join in.

"Does age alone confer special status?" No, but a longer existence can bring greater experience, and with experience can come wisdom. Unless you're a blockhead. And she is. So am I, for that matter. We were both carved from the same block of wood.

This whole scene is anything but edifying. I mean, like, here we've been silent for more than a hundred years, doing our thing, carrying out our mandate. This is a civil service town and, like, you know, you can't help but become assimilated over time. When you're outnumbered, and surrounded on all sides by a foreign culture you tend to pick up the jargon. Before you know it, person-years replace Hail Marys, and an annual performance review becomes a laicized version of an Easter duty.

She started it. Always remember that.

Of course, being six months younger she can be forgiven. Seniority has rights, and one of them is the right to forgive, if not excuse, the impetuousness of youth. So I forgive her blabbermouth!

But I have a confession to make. I may be upset with her for breaking silence, and I am. She can lay a grievance, maintain I'm treating her disgracefully, and carry it all the way through to the seraphim. In a way I'm hoping she does because the grievance procedure will give me an opportunity to put something on the record that very few know about.

You want the facts? Here they are.

After those eighty-four years of silence, we two angels of the Rideau Convent Chapel were forcibly evicted from our home, carted off, and sold into the hands of a Carleton Place antique dealer.

It was a bad time, but at least we were together.

Then the worst happened. We were separated, two sisters rudely torn apart.

The story is simple. Peter, a pilgrim from Ottawa, spotted us in the antique dealer's store, and arranged to buy our freedom. Despite agreeing to the sale, when Peter came to collect us next day the dealer reneged and would agree to sell only one of us. The dealer was adamant.

My sister was left alone, deserted, an object of curiosity in the backroom of the store.

How come we were reunited? Was it a miracle?

You want the facts? Here they are.

Six years later the antique dealer died. Peter journeyed back to Carleton Place. The dealer's heir, his daughter, agreed to part with my sister, and Peter brought her joyfully home. Now we stand, united, overlooking the congregation, happy in our contemplative silence.

Those six years apart were the unhappiest years of my existence. That is my confession to my sister angel.

Now let us resume our silence, and meditate.

Footnote: The pilgrim in this tale was Peter Gravelle, former organist at St. Patrick's Basilica, now deceased.