Let The Warm Wind Guide

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.

Daddy loved his coffee

 

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

Innocent Days

Innocent Days

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 isn’t something that can be taught with words alone. It must be realized and allowed. 

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.

 

 

It’s in the Rain.

Photo by Nur Andi Ravsanjani Gusma on Pexels.com

Rain sings

softly in the evening

pattering shingles

pinging gutters

making puddles.

On the porch

I close my eyes

feel cool breezes

here, now

no tomorrows

no yesterdays

just now, only now

a gift unfolding.

Who can imprison the wind

even the soft, whispering wind?

Who can possess her?

She carves mountains

makes deserts

carries the rain.

I think of Bruce

“Be water, my friend.”

Yes, be water

flowing

adaptable

uncageable

powerful

washing away cities

cutting canyons

reducing rock to sand.

I am of you

Wind and Rain.

I am of you.

BE MINDFUL OF NOW.

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(taken from my hand-written journal April 16, 2000)

Today I took a walk.

I went out into the field to my “sacred place.” I call it the Valley of the Crows, because they always gather there. It’s really just a dip in a neighbor’s field with a creek nearby and trees all around.

I sat on the grass then lay back, letting the sun kiss my face. I heard a fly buzz close by me. I heard a cardinal calling, “purdy, purdy, purdy.” Other birds flew about with different calls. I could hear the rustle of small things in the bushes and trees.

There is an old tree that overlooks my “valley.” I imagined that it was a guardian, maybe Moses, with the law in his arms, maybe a mother holding her baby, but then, finally, it took shape and I saw a brave, a warrior, ageless and fearless, immortalized in that oddly shaped tree, standing guard over the one time home of his people, standing guard over me.

At that moment there was only then, no past, no future, just the moment. I lost track of time, sitting, standing, and lying there between heaven and earth, listening to the sounds of birds, feeling the sun and the breezes, imagining trees were warrior spirits and communicating with a divine being that defies all our expectations and goes beyond all our understandings.

I didn’t have to be in control and it felt good. All I had to do is trust the Creator and enjoy the moment for all its beauty without comparing it to the past or even to the future. When we compare a moment to a past moment, we rob the present and cheapen our memories. No need to worry over tomorrow, either. I may not even be here and I will have wasted today thinking about tomorrow and miss both.

Today is today. Now is the present, the gift. Right now–that is where the treasure is to be found. Now, is when I feel the joy of things hoped for as if though they were here already. Now, is when I still my soul and give thanks for all that is good and right in my life. So, I think to myself, “Learn from the past. Don’t live there. Trust for tomorrow. Don’t live there, either. This moment is its own. See the beauty in it. There has never been another like it and there never will be another like it. Be fully in it. Enjoy it. Appreciate it. Love it. Be thankful for it.”

Oh, me,

awake with the morning

rise with the dawn.

Feel its warmth on your face.

As a butterfly

let the wind lift your wings

until your spirit soars

until it sings.

Remember, myself,

this day shall never be again.

When the sun sets

it is but a long gone friend.