Dear Juliet and Her Encounter With Michael

By Rosemary Ellen Guiley

c. Visionary Living, Inc.

A few  years ago, I lost a dear friend whose relationship with angels was an inspiration to me. Juliet Hollister was the founder of the Temple of Understanding, the second oldest interfaith organization in the world and a sort of “spiritual United Nations.” Juliet made her transition in her home in Greenwich, Connecticut. A deeply spiritual woman, she had worked for nearly four decades to bring understanding and fellowship among the world’s diverse religions. She was funny, charming and generous.

Juliet believed strongly in angels and their interactions with humanity. She was graced with angel encounters. One of them – among the most remarkable experiences I have collected – appeared in my first book about angels, “Angels of Mercy.” I would like to share it with you as a tribute to Juliet.

The experience concerned not only Juliet but the Temple of Understanding. Juliet conceived of the idea for the Temple in 1959, and launched it with the help of Eleanor Roosevelt. To build the Temple, Juliet traveled the world and had audiences with an impressive list of heads of state, spiritual leaders and other luminaries. She met three popes–Paul II, John XXIII and John Paul–as well as the Dalai Lama.

In October 1984, Juliet had an unexpected encounter with the archangel Michael as she was preparing for the sixth Spirit Summit Conference sponsored by the Temple. The conference was to take place at St. John the Divine, the largest Gothic cathedral in the world, located on the Upper West Side in Manhattan. Numerous luminaries of the ecclesiastical and political worlds were featured guests, including His Holiness the Dalai Lama of Tibet, Tenzin Gyatso, and Dr. Robert Mueller, then assistant secretary-general of the United Nations. The audience was expected to number eight to ten thousand people–a standing room only crowd inside the giant and elegant cathedral.

At the end of the day-long conference, a candlelight ceremony was scheduled to take place. Various religious leaders would carry candles to the center altar, and say prayers from their respective religions. Juliet was to be included in this ceremony, delivering a fifteen-minute talk on the Temple, its purpose and its activities. The prospect of making a speech in front of so many of the world’s religious leaders and so many people made Juliet nervous. She slaved away over her speech, and rehearsed it again and again.

The conference was on Saturday, October 7. The final rehearsal was slated for the Friday night before. Juliet traveled from Connecticut to Manhattan on Friday afternoon and settled into a room at the Cosmopolitan Club, located at 66th Street and Park Avenue on the East Side. She took a shower and lay down to rest.

As she was getting ready to rise and dress, Juliet suddenly became aware of a presence in the form of a huge column of light standing at the foot of her bed. She perceived the outline of a figure and sensed that it was an angel, though she did not see wings or a face.

Juliet was startled but not frightened. She’d believed in angels all of her life, and knew they didn’t show up without good reason — just to check out a hairdo, as she put it later. As she studied it, the presence began to communicate telepathically with her.

“You’re going to be speaking at the cathedral, and angels have a lot to do with holy, sacred places,” the angel told her. “We guard them. Millions of people don’t believe in us, but we are real entities. On behalf of the angelic kingdom, we would appreciate it if, when you make your speech, you would tell the people about us, that we are real, that we love the human race, and that we would like to work on behalf of it. But we can’t unless we’re invited to do so. We don’t enter the life of a human unless we’re asked. We are very eager to help.”

This message overwhelmed Juliet. Never had she thought of saying anything about angels in her little speech. She replied to the figure of light, “I really do believe you’re an angel. In fact, I kind of think you’re the archangel Michael, although there’s no reason why I should have one of the top ones show up. I’d love to do anything to help this planet and all the people on it, but I don’t altogether trust myself here. I tell you what, I’ll make a bargain with you. I’ll do it if you do something to confirm that I’m not hallucinating, that I’ve got this straight.”

The form of light disappeared. Juliet rose, dressed and walked down to the corner of 66th Street and Park Avenue to hail a taxi to go to the cathedral. It was a blowing, cold evening at rush hour on a Friday night. Anyone who has ever been in New York City under those conditions knows how difficult it is to find a free taxi. Dozens and dozens roar by, all occupied, no matter where you are in that huge city. And so Juliet stood on the corner waiting in vain for a cab. Fifteen, twenty minutes went by. She grew anxious about arriving on time for the rehearsal.

Then she was struck by what seemed to be a brilliant idea. (In retrospect, she believed the idea was planted by the angelic form that had visited her in the room.)

Juliet said outloud, “Okay, Michael, here’s your chance. I’m in a jam. I’ve got to get up to the cathedral and I’m running late. Surely in all of Manhattan, you can fine one cab that’s empty!”

Within minutes, a free cab pulled up and she hopped in. Now Juliet grew up in New York City and had been in hundreds of cabs. She always looked at the dashboard for the driver’s photos of his children or wife, or little images of saints, Jesus or the Virgin Mary that are commonly fastened to the dash. But in all her years, she had never seen anything like what greeted her that evening. There stuck onto the dashboard was a large and obviously cheap plastic statue of a winged form that bore the words, “The Right Archangel Michael.”

For a moment, Juliet couldn’t speak. This was too strange — even synchronicity seemed unable to explain this incredible “coincidence.”

The driver was named Tony, according to the license posted in the cab. Finding her voice, Juliet stammered, “Tony, tell me, what are you doing with the archangel Michael here in your cab?”

Tony turned to her and said, “Lady, let me tell you, he’s a special friend of mine–he’s my best friend Mike!”

“Your friend Mike?”

“You don’t know about Mike?” Tony asked. “Hey, he’s the greatest! Let me tell you, my wife, she gets mad at me, she throws the spaghetti across the kitchen or whatever, I call on Mike and ask him, how do you handle women? The kids get in trouble in school, I call on Mike. I can’t pay the rent, I call on Mike. I really recommend him to you–he can do anything! Of course I have him in my cab. Who else would I have?”

All the way from 66th and Park to 110th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, Juliet heard a lecture on the virtues of the archangel Michael, and why he was Tony’s best and greatest friend. At St. John the Divine, she got out in a daze and paid her fare. Tony drove off, his statue of Michael standing like a guiding beacon on the dash.

Juliet said to herself, “All right, Juliet, you asked for a message, and now you’ve got to keep your promise!” She was determined to keep up her end of the deal, despite some trepidation at the response of ecclesiastical authorities to a message that angels are real. She knew that many of them were openly skeptical about angels. And in 1984, the public’s interest in and acceptance of angels had yet to be reborn.

The following night at the conclusion of the conference–a huge success–Juliet said her little piece about how angels are not just pretty Renaissance paintings, but are real, and desire to help humanity. But they cannot do so unless humans ask for their help.

Nobody fainted away in horror at the idea. In fact, for weeks afterward, Juliet received an avalanche of mail, more than she had ever received in her life. The letters were testimony about people’s own beliefs and experiences with angels. “They are real!” was the overall enthusiastic response.

I asked Juliet how that experience changed her belief about angels. “I didn’t know they had such a sense of humor,” she replied. “I felt the archangel himself was getting such a kick out of what was going on in that cab.”

Juliet was also struck by the sense of sadness or loneliness about the figure of light that appeared in her room. “It seemed that the angels are hungry for communication with the human condition,” she said. “Think of all the things a lifetime can bring–tragedy, heartbreak–and they would like to bring us hope. But it’s like they’re saying, ‘Nobody’s asked us to the party.’”

Juliet said she always called on angels for help. “I feel very close to them, I talk to them,” she said. “If I didn’t believe in the angel kingdom, I’d never be doing what I’m doing now–there would be no Temple of Understanding. I’m not alone in this–there’s something far wiser helping me out.”

In the years following that experience, our openness to angels changed dramatically. More and more of us have “asked them to the party” in terms of seeking communion with them. And Juliet, who played no small role in that change of consciousness, accomplished much through the Temple. She also supported research into communication with the Other Side – known as “instrumental transcommunication.” Perhaps after she has rested up from her earthly life, “Dear Juliet,” as many of her friends knew her, will send along a greeting, not only from herself, but also from the angels whose company she has joined.

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Adapted from Angels of Mercy by Rosemary Ellen Guiley, published by Pocket Books, 1994.