Be Not Afraid

Be not afraid. How many times has my kind uttered these words? Our visitations to this realm have always been tempered by the understanding that our luminous majesty can overwhelm those who experience it. See us. Hear us. Touch us. Love us. Hate us. Challenge us. Disbelieve us. Worship us. Do what you will. But. Be not afraid. When my time came, I was prepared to soothe the hearts and settle the minds of those who would otherwise be overcome with having to deal with the divine. Yet, here I am, wondering if we have misunderstood what it means to have radiance.

The people who have welcomed me into their abode live in what they call a commune. It would appear that humanity has learned to have many different forms of habitation, and I am yet to fully understand the intricacies and nuances that distinguish one from another. However, I have come to recognise that a commune has a sense of companionship and belonging that sets it apart from other types of living. There are complex rules and dynamics, as ritualistic and meaningful as any my kind have seen in houses of worship. Sometimes, the people living together bring others in. Sometimes, they do not get along with each other. But, no matter what happens, there is always, always a sense of safety. Safety, in a world which is becoming more and more unsafe as time goes by. Be not afraid, you will find shelter here.

My humans – or, as I am regularly reminded to call them, my “housemates”, such a strange word! – seem to be in more need of this shelter than others. I have come to learn that they are seen as different than those around them. I am still learning what constitutes unacceptable difference on this plane. We angels exist with the same universal form, but we know humans are meant to be individuals. I find it baffling, then, that beings who have thrived with so many ways of speaking, of looking, of believing, can find one type of diversity to be acceptable and another to be tantamount to sin.

It is particularly troubling when I realise that this ascription of otherness that my housemates have to contend with has nothing to do with elements they can control, and everything to do with who they are intrinsically. They are made to be outsiders because of the hues of their skins and the inflections of their voices. They are treated as less than because the home they have made their own is not where they were first created. They are seen as unworthy because they love and inhabit their bodies in ways that others do not.

Perhaps that is why it was so easy for them to accept a stranger into their lives. I would not have begrudged them any caution in bringing me in. Be not afraid, I would have had to say. But I never did, and they never were. From the moment I arrived, they have embraced me and shown me their unfiltered selves. Through them and their openness, I have learned about romance and love and lust. I have understood heartache and the healing power of collective drunken revelry. I have been amazed by their tenacity to lift each other up and find beauty in imperfection, even as some of them struggle to fit in their own skin. I have observed friendship and compassion and warmth and solidarity and community.

I see their rich and empowering lives in their fullness, and I also see their pain. How they always go outside in pairs, lest one lone person is seen as an easy target. How they change their appearance beyond these walls, to be less perceptible. How they slouch and hunch and make themselves small, to pass through the world unscathed. It makes me ache. Be not afraid, I was taught to say, so that my radiance would not overpower others. But what is my radiance, but a paltry imitation of what these broken, flawed humans practice every day? Be not afraid, of a luminescence that they are forced to hide? Perhaps this world would be better off if all humans were allowed to truly shine. Perhaps, then, I could hold these humans close to me and say to them with a clarity of voice. Be free. Be yourselves. Be not afraid.

Angel’s Bone is the Pulitzer Prize-winning opera-theatre work by composer Du Yun and librettist Royce Vavrek – performed by the English National Opera at Aviva Studios from 12 to 16 May 2026. Find out more here.