Have you ever heard of In-Nomine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Nomine_(...ying_game) While games are not always good for info, they do have some very interesting ways of viewing things because games, especially semi-popular games or better, tend to put a lot of effort into the background research and the logical consistency of their way of viewing. While not neccesarilyl right or wrong (Hah, LoO and talking about "right and wrong".... I digress. Anyway. This game has an interesting take on metaphysics, i'd recommend reading some of the stories, especially of the old gods in In nomine and how they slowly fade away when no one believes in them anymore and some of their discussions about it.
http://www.sjgames.com/in-nomine/bright.html
Ahh, no spoiler tags then, wont link the whole story here then:
By Derek Pearcy
From Pyramid #21
Patricia held the angel in her arms until he died. Sad thing, that – not to say a bad stroke of luck for us.
The demon had just bitten my thumb off, and he sat there looking at me with this "I just bit your thumb off" grin on his face like I was a moron or something. But I was about three steps to the left of what you'd call a state of shock, so maybe I wasn't an unbiased witness at that point.
It was the first time I'd ever thought seriously about The Meaning of It All. I remembered what Patricia had told her angel as the life bled out of him.
"This is not really you," she'd said as she cried, more for herself than for him, "this body is just a vessel. This is just a vessel."
This is not really me, I thought to myself, trying to staunch the blood from my right hand with the grip of my left. This body is just a vessel. This body is just a vessel.
Didn't help much. Just because I'd talked to angels didn't make me feel any better about life.
There's probably a lot you don't understand. I mean about the angels and all, not stuff like quantum physics and economics. Nobody understands those yet, not even the angels. But I didn't know anything about the bright side of the celestial realm until recently, so maybe I'm a good person to explain it to you.
Of course, the easiest way for me to get you up to speed is to tell you how I found out about it. Isn't it fashionable to do a scene where the reader flashes back vicariously through the main character's perspective while he relives the really juicy pieces of exposition? Why don't we get that out of the way up front?
Let me tell you about the first time I met Nicole, my angel.
Shuffling down a lonely downtown street after an evening of weeknight drinking, I heard this strange noise coming from an alley. No particular kind of noise – it was more like I'd remembered having heard a sound where no sound had just been. Like I said, it was strange. Normally, I keep on walking when I pass an alleyway, no matter what noise echoes out of it, but this time I was curious. It was only a few hours away from the midnight of my birthday, and I'd made a promise earlier to take a few more chances this year. I remember thinking, "I want to start a new life." That, and I was pretty well plastered after ditching a pre-birthday gathering of friends at a downtown bar. So I was feeling artificially brave anyway.
Standing about halfway down the brick-lined alleyway, leaning up against a misshapen brown dumpster that didn't look like it'd been emptied this decade, was this beautiful blonde girl in a sparklingly clean overcoat. Well, she looked like a girl. Really, she was an angel whose corporeal vessel happened to look like that of a young human girl, but I'm getting ahead of myself.
While I was distracted staring at her, this guy darts out from the other side of the alley. I don't know if he'd been hiding between two sacks of garbage or what, but before I knew it he was on me.
And then, just as quickly, he was launched back across the alley by some invisible force, knives spinning out of each hand as he hit the brick wall and slid down, landing face-down on the pavement.
"Look," she said, approaching me, pausing briefly to pick up the two knives. "We don't have a lot of time here."
"Who are you?" I demanded somewhat shakily. "Did you just take that guy out?" She was a tall girl, but she looked pretty wispy to me, not at all someone who could just pick a guy up and launch him across the alley, and certainly not from 20 feet away. She continued walking toward me.
"I'm an angel," she said. "You can call me Nicole. I took him out because he was going to kill you for the eight bucks you've got in your wallet left over from the ten you stole from your boss before going out drinking." That threw me.
"What do you want?" I asked more calmly. I was a little drunk, but I wasn't going to just lose it in front of a stranger, especially if this was some elaborate con game. "How, how did you –"
"I'm an angel," she said matter of factly. "I'll prove it to you in a just a moment." By now she was very close, so close I could smell her breath. Peppermint.
"And that piece of s*** at our feet who's about to recover his consciousness," she whispered into one ear, "he would've killed you if I hadn't stopped him. I took a chance saving your life, I changed your fate. I removed you from the Symphony, at least for now."
"The what?" My world was whirling at right angles to itself.
"The Symphony," she repeated. Her voice grew musical and hypnotic. She kept leaning more closely, but without actually touching me. "It's what we angels call God's pattern of reality. The Earth, and everything on it, is part of the Symphony. You see, angels aren't supposed to be on Earth. We don't want to be here, it's just our job. But when a celestial being, like me, takes up space in the real world, I'm bumping into all sorts of atoms and spinning them all crazy from where they would have gone if I hadn't been there. Celestial intervention sets the Symphony out of balance – it makes all sorts of complicated ripples. The larger the change, the more noticeable the ripples. Other celestial beings can detect these aberrations and use them to track down their source."
...