The Wind

India is hot. And there is no air conditioning—although I’ve almost forgotten that’s abnormal. The result is that doors and windows are left wide open. In bedrooms, the auditorium, dining hall, vehicles. Buses have no doors, only entrances and exits that never close. The small auto taxis are completely open—only a windshield and canvas roof, sometimes a back.

So we leave our homes, our lives open, and we wait. Anytime the breeze comes we can feel it. We breathe in the air, welcome it, let it kiss us in it’s passing. When we move down the highway it pours over our faces, reverberates in our ears. The wind sustains us through the heat. Brings relief.

I’ve always been able to feel God in the wind. They are both invisible aside from the evidence of their passing, both come with utter gentility and hurricane force.


So when I am hot, tired, lonely, I stand on the roof or at the window and I wait. The wind comes—whispering, moving, gusting. It is a voice reassuring my heart, “I am here. I have not left you.” I let it tickle my skin, play with my hair, watch it move in the palm trees, stand in awe as it makes me feel small.

Like the Indians, I leave my window open, so the wind is free to enter any time it pleases. I don’t want to miss anything it might have to say.