I (Rob) was riding my bike in the regional park that’s adjacent to the Everglades a few miles from home when I came to the end of one of the paths and saw the Wind Phone.
I knew right away it wasn’t about the wind. It appeared somewhat like little book exchanges some people create at the street-side of their property. But this wasn’t about books any more that it was about the wind.
It was about spirit contact. It’s where you can call the dead.
If you look closely into the top part of the box, you can see the spirit phone. Also in that box is a notebook where you can leave a message for a lost loved one. The phone is just over a month old and already there are about a dozen messages.
I’d never heard of wind phones but now I know a lot more about them. A wind phone is a rotary or push-button phone located in a secluded spot in nature, usually within a booth-type structure and often next to a chair or bench. But don’t expect a dial tone. The phone line is disconnected.
According to an article in Smithsonianmag: People use the wind phone to “call” and have a one-way conversation with deceased loved ones. Here they can say the things left unsaid. Wind phones offer a setting for the person to tell the story of their grief, to reminiscence and to continue to connect to the person who is gone. For many, it is a deeply moving, life-affirming experience.
The articles on wind phones say they are a way of expressing grief, coming to closure. But for me I’d rather think that wind phones are a place for two-way conversations or at least making a connection, spirit contact, maybe symbolically.
That’s what happened to me. On the bike ride into the park, a cousin of mine who had died a couple of decades ago came to mind before I’d even seen the wind phone. When I happened on the wind phone, I noticed a white feather on the ground nearby. I’ve always considered white feathers symbolic of spirit contact.
Did Cousin John have something to say to me? I felt a nudge from him as I headed home to contact a man at the house next door. He’s the father on the man who lives there and he visits from Michigan in the winter. This year I had avoided talking to him because of past political disconnects with that family. I’ll leave it at that.
But when I got home and saw him sitting on a chair in the front yard by himself reading a book, I went over and talked to him about senior aches and pains and medical stuff – not politics – and gave him a non-fiction adventure book that I co-authored last year. He was very appreciative and a bit surprised. Thank you, Cousin John, for the nudge.
There are about 200 wind phones scattered throughout the United States and they are usually found in parks, along walking trails and on church grounds. It all began in Japan in 2010 when Itaru Sasaki, a garden designer, built a phone booth in his yard so he could “talk” with a deceased relative.
Months later, the Fukushima earthquake and tsunami hit and in a matter of minutes, more than 20,000 people died. Sasaki opened the phone booth to his neighbors, who urgently needed a place to express their grief. Word spread, and soon people came on pilgrimage from around Japan to speak through the “phone of the wind” to those they loved.
Since then, wind phones have spread throughout the world. You can find the one closest to you on the link.
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