[Berlin, November 4. Image via Getty]

A woman playing the part of an angel takes part in a dress rehearsal for a theatre piece of a rooftop in Berlin on November 4, 2009. The theatre piece will take place on November 9, 2009 during the 20th anniversary celebrations of the fall of the Wall. AFP PHOTO DDP / MICHAEL KAPPELER GERMANY OUT (Photo credit should read MICHAEL KAPPELER/AFP/Getty Images)

According to a recent Pew survey, 68% of Americans "either 'completely agree' or 'mostly agree' that angels (and demons) are active in this world." Colleen Hughes, editor of Angels on Earth told CBS News that she believes most people believe in angels "because too much stuff happens to us that we can't explain. There are coincidences that we're willing to chalk up to coincidence, and there's too much that we aren't, because we have this feeling that it was something else."

Tom Elliott believes in angels, though he's not sure that all angels are the winged, trumpeted variety. After promised tickets to a baseball game fell through, Elliot and his young son, who were attempting to carry on a family tradition shortly after the death of Elliott's father, found themselves out of luck until a stranger approached with two tickets. "He said, 'I've got 2 tickets for you here. I want your young son to see the game,' and he just handed us two tickets. And as we looked down at the tickets, he turned around and walked away. Before we could barely even say 'thank you.'"

Elliot and his son were able to see the game from the best seats in the house, and Elliot's son noted that one seat next to them was left empty; a sign, he believed, that his grandfather was with them. Was it an angel that delivered those tickets? Edward Grinnan, the editor of Guideposts, says it's all a matter of perception: "I mean, it's the interpretation of Tom and his son that really does matter. And to them, that man was an angel. He performed an angelic deed, if you will. And his actual origins I don't think are as relevant as the effect that that deed had on those two people."

As we saw in the comments of our Saturday Night Nostalgia post yesterday, several commenters were visited by "angels" who left gifts and holiday meals on their doorsteps. They didn't come from some otherworldly place, but from the same neighborhoods, same streets, same towns. Maybe it's easier to assign goodwill to "angels" when the world often makes it difficult for us to trust or see the goodness in one another, but you don't need wings and a halo to give someone a gift of kindness. You just have to have a heart.

Do Angels Exist? [CBS News]

• A recent study has found that children who have less than 3 family dinners a week are two and a half times likelier to smoke pot and tobacco than children who have family dinners 5 or more times a week. • A survey of 3,000 people in England has revealed that "phenomenon" is the most mispronounced word. • A UK study has found a small number (35 out of 769) of cerebral palsy cases in children whose mothers were given the antibiotics erthromycin and co-amoxiclav due to premature labor, but researchers maintain that the development of cerebral palsy was not directly related to the antibiotics. • A synagogue in San Francisco has created a prayer for anonymous sex (or "unexpected intimacy") which is meant to be read after the encounter. • Female conservative politicians in Spain were outraged when a male Spanish politician recounted the loss of his virginity in a brothel to a television interviewer, thereby "encouraging" young people to patronize prostitutes. • A female Saudi journalist asks the Saudi government to hire Saudi female nurses and encourage women to go into the nursing profession instead of bringing in nurses from overseas. • British and U.S. scientists report that there are nearly 7 million pregnant women in sub-Saharan Africa who are infected with hookworms (a parasitic worm that lives in the intestines) and are thus at risk of maternal anemia. •