An October walk with God.

A man went for a walk with God on cold, wet day. He wore an old cloth coat and a floppy brimmed hat. The insulating loft of the coat had been mashed thin. He could feel the heat escaping from across his shoulders. A strong wind, a gale, blew freezing mist into his face. And he wondered where God was.

“Are you the water caught in the grass, that sloshes as I walk, and makes the ground soft?” he asked. But as he started up a hill water was trickling to the bottom, from there to a rivulet, to a draw, and, as he imagined it, to a creek, to a river, to an ocean. “I know it is not your nature to leave me.”

“Are you these trees that still hang onto their leaves, still expecting Fall to come more slowly than this, sheltering me a little?” But as he walked on he passed into the prairie that extended on as far has he could see and thought that if God were the trees he would have to be a small god.

The wind sliced and he shivered as he leaned into it to press forward. His face stung. He pulled his hat down as far as he could, but he needed a hand to hold in on, and his hand turned red and his fingers numb. “Are you this pelting wind in my face?” he finally asked.

Then he heard, he thought, a voice in his head. “Turn around.” He did what he thought he heard the voice say.

“I am the wind at your back.”