LET THE WARM WIND GUIDE YOU

“You go out yonder in them woods, and you sit yourself down on an old hickory stump and you be real quiet and take notice of everything around you, that’s where you find God,” my daddy said.

 

He paused, took a drink of his coffee. It ran over the side of his cup and pooled in the saucer, because he’d overfilled it with milk and yet, it was just about strong enough to make a spoon stand up.

He sat the cup back onto the saucer. “My momma always told me that when you’re lost in the woods, no matter where you are, you climb up on a stump or a big rock or something that lets you feel the wind, and you let it blow on you. You feel that wind ablowin’. If it’s a cold wind, don’t follow it, but if it’s a warm wind, you follow that one and it’ll lead you home.”

The Eternal Wisdom of Simple Folk

I guess I was about ten years old when Daddy told me that. I didn’t understand it then. I didn’t understand it for many years. Now, I understand it. I’m not sure he understood it or even his mother, but somebody, somewhere down our family tree knew what it meant. Somehow that knowledge got started.

The beautiful piece of wisdom handed down through my paternal grandmother’s family was that home isn’t a place where you stay. It’s a place where you feel warm and welcome, a place where you are. The cold wind in the saying refers to following a direction that isn’t meant for you and the warm wind represents the spiritual knowing that comes when you follow it.

Spiritual Knowing is Not Simply Mental Acknowledgement

The spiritual knowing isn’t something that can be taught. It can only be experienced. It can’t be told to you, and you can’t learn about it in a book. You just have to know it personally. There is no other way.

It is the great awakening and once your eyes are open and you have seen, you can’t unsee ever again. This world takes on a different look to you. Everything around you will change, because the way you see it has changed.