Fir trees bear green branches year-round. But take a look, and you’ll notice some dead limbs. One tree, nestled in community, is only green near the top with clusters of vibrant new growth lower down where sunlight found them.
The tree says, Here I am as I am.
I want to cut off my dead branches and move into the light, away from those who crowd my space.
But the tree can’t move. Maybe she doesn’t want to, doesn’t mind shadow and decay, never gives a thought to what a perfect tree should look like.
Here I am as I am, she says.
I think about it for days until one arm branches out Here I am and then the other as I am, welcoming the sun to find what’s greening in me.
Here I am, as I am Holy, Human In this world, as it is Sacred, Profane Ever connected, in this wondrous luminous web Ever abiding, in the Heart of God. —Heather Ruce (Body Prayer)
Credits and References: Boardwalk, Northern Section, Cathedral Grove, MacMillian Provincial Park, Vancouver Island, BC by Jim Hoffman. Used with permission The Tree Speaks, by Esther Hizsa, 2026. Dec 2011 (Trees by water) by Alex Cameron. Used with permission
Father James Martin asks, “What happens when you pray?” Cardinal Timothy Radcliffe, O.P. replies, “I wish I knew.“ —The Spiritual Life Podcast
You’re here, all the time. everywhere–
in birdsong and silence, budding leaves and dead branches, a fist pump from a random teen, the chilli that didn’t turn out, unmended hearts and Fred’s broken ribs, the Wailin’ Jennys and blue, blue skies.
I don’t know what You’re saying half the time, most of the time, actually. Perhaps it’s because I’m looking for answers when You’re looking for me. Perhaps it’s because I don’t speak the language of deer and grass. Perhaps it doesn’t matter. Maybe it’s enough to breathe You in and out, grateful to be a lily in Your field.
Consider the lilies of the field and how they grow. They do not work or weave or sew, and yet their garments are stunning. –Matthew 6:28 (Voice)
Credits and References: Beukenblad by Sylvia Sassen. Used with permission. Maybe It’s Enough by Esther Hizsa, 2026 Golden Day Lily by Sam Weng. Used with permission.
What did I hear in that note that stunned me and sent me into the sock drawer, consumed with anger and hate?
I heard: You are not enough, just as I had begun to skip along trusting that I was.
As I walked with myself, I could separate the other’s disappointment from mine. I could name what was missing and discern what I could change and what I wanted to. I could deepen my understanding of what it means to be enough.
But You didn’t explain anything.
You lifted the little girl me onto your lap and read her a story, playing the game of finding us on every page.
Of one thing I am certain: my soul has become calm, quiet, and contented in You. Like a weaned child resting upon his mother, I am quiet. My soul is like this weaned child. –Psalm 131:2 (Voice)
Credits and References: Raggylug Illustration by Doris Pailthorpe for Ernest Thompson Seton’s ‘Raggylug, the Story of a Cottontail Rabbit’ from The Westminster Readers (First Series, Book Four): Realms of Adventure (1933). Photo by Ban Galbasi. Used with permission. Finding Us by Esther Hizsa, 2026 Mother reading to Child by Jessie Willcox Smith – ABC’s 1921 Good Housekeeping cover 10-1921 by Plum leaves. Used with permission.
It’s bad enough when awareness comes in a look or a wondering with space to soften and say farewell to what I thought was real.
But when I’m up to 97, 98, 99, 100 in Double Dutch and the blunt end raps my knuckles, stuns my body, and double pink plastic snaps my cheek stings my bare ankle,
all I want to do is run away and shove myself into the back of the bottom drawer, hide myself in the company of mismatched socks and stifle the desire to shoot the messenger– shoot them, again and again
until my breathing slows down, and I picture their warm smile, their kind eyes and scold myself for being so dramatic.
Eventually, I call up the courage to uncrumple the note, coach myself to read their words in their voice from their hurt and, there it is– a wisp of armistice.
When will this violent game of in/out, pass/fail, kill or be killed ever stop? Why does one of us have to be hated?
I go for a walk and thank the dear friend out there who honoured themselves and awakened me and the dear friend within who panics and desires to be honoured and awakened.
This being human is a guest house. Every morning is a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor. Welcome and entertain them all. –-Rumi, The Guest House
Credits and References: Skipping Double Dutch by Beatrice Murch from Buenos Aires, Argentina, via Wikimedia Commons Double Dutch by Esther Hizsa, 2026 Friend.ship by Felipe Bastos. Used with permission.
After thirteen days away, (a dozen visits with friends and family, six ferries, one airport, a drive through downtown Vancouver, retreating on Galiano and leading a retreat on Bowen), I looked forward to coming home to home, to my Fred, my kitchen, my plants, the sparrows, finches, and deer on the flowering switchbacks.
They were all waiting for me, welcoming me with open arms. I was back and not back.
Between the leaving and the coming home, I carried the weight of being human, the weight of being this human, in this body, and I received joy: Being this human is needed and cherished.
Then came a noticing of responsibilities that weren’t mine, –to be neurotypical, to reconcile, to mitigate disappointment– another letting go of what I cannot change, another softening of the fear that I’m not enough.
My mind says, “Wonderful.” My feelings smile. But my body wants to rest, needs sleep to allow the bones of my soul to heal, and set this realignment of truth and light.
O my Beloved… You restore my soul. –Psalm 23:3, Psalms for Praying by Nan Merrill
Credits and References: American Golden Finch on a Sunflower by Jenny Pansing. Used with permission. Realignment by Esther Hizsa, 2026 Deer by Scot Close. Used with permission
I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint. My heart has turned to wax; it has melted within me. –Psalm 22:14 (NIV)
Jesus, on the cross, poured out like water bones out of joint heart turned to wax, feeling the agony of being misunderstood, rejected and crucified for being human and divine.
I can hardly relate and yet– the other day, when conversations revealed my lack in so many ways, all my bones felt out of joint and my heart turned to wax while I continued to listen and participate as if I wasn’t dying inside.
It happens daily, sometimes two or three times a day– another death of who I thought I was, another rising to find I haven’t been abandoned, another noticing of how I am held in the long moments in between.
Deep peace of the running wave to you Deep peace of the flowing air to you Deep peace of the quiet earth to you Amen
Deep peace of the shining stars to you Deep peace of the gentle night to you Moon and stars pour their healing light on you Amen
Credits and References: “Birds on a Rainy Day” by Macomb Paynes. Used with permission. As If I Wasn’t Dying Inside by Esther Hizsa, 2026. “Golden Moth” by Sylvia Sassen. Used with permission.
He showed me a little thing, the size of a hazelnut, in the palm of my hand, and it was as round as a ball. I looked at it with my mind’s eye and I thought, “What can this be?” And the answer came, “It is all that is made. ” I marvelled that it could last, for I thought it might have crumbled to nothing, it was so small. And the answer came into my mind, “It lasts and ever shall because God loves it.” And all things have being through the love of God. In this little thing, I saw three truths. The first is that God made it. The second is that God loves it. The third is that God looks after it. –St. Julian of Norwich, The Revelations of Julian of Norwich
God made me. God loves me. God looks after me.
The moment I think I might crumble into nothing, I am seen, held, protected.
The moment I find myself thinking I’m alone– that sacred moment when I notice that I’m forcing life into something it’s not, thinking the world’s against me– I remember You’re right here with me, always for me.
You pick me up out of my fear, carry me close to Your chest, and put me down again safe and secure in a world filled with love.
May what I do flow from me like a river, no forcing and no holding back, the way it is with children.
Then in these swelling and ebbing currents, these deepening tides moving out, returning, I will sing you as no one ever has,
streaming through widening channels into the open sea.
Credits and References: Painting of Julian by Virginia Wieringa. A World Filled with Love by Esther Hizsa, 2024. “Milky Waters”10 mile creek, Buller Gorge, New Zealand by colin hansen. Used with permission.
I wake again with the weight of my world on my shoulders. I choose to get up, to do my knee strengthening exercises, to put drops in my aging eyes, to make coffee, and sit in the quiet with You.
Ah, there it is. A constriction in my throat wants company, wants to be seen and felt, stronger, louder now until I hear You say, This is hard and feel You take my hand. I’m right here.
You don’t make it better or fix anything. You wait with me until we hear these feelings say they are protecting my essence.
Tears come and ease–
until You add: You know, your essence is Me.
My throat begins to throb: So much of me isn’t You.
Credits and References: Waking up by Monteregina (Nicole). Used with permission. Awakening by Esther Hizsa, 2026 “Water is the essence of wetness” by mohmlet. Used with permission.
For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. — Colossians 3:3
Hidden in Christ, I rise. I leave the tomb of freedom and emerge awakened to Love.
For an eternal moment, I tasted the completeness, the exquisite settledness of myself in all that is.
Now, I rise tethered to a graced discontent. That eternal moment remains in me, but I cannot consummate my intention to abide there.
So I pray, that I will not break faith with my awakened heart.
Though I lose You, You never lose me.
Though I turn away, I can turn again and find You right here.
So, in this way then, we start to see that as I start to have faith in my moments of awakening, I will not break faith with my awakened heart. In my most childlike hour, in the arms of the beloved, reading the child the good night story; in the pause between two lines of a poem, lying awake at night, listening to the rain, I was intimately accessed by a fullness without which my life will be forever incomplete. And having tasted it, I’m incomplete without it, but I, by my own finite powers, cannot find my way to abide in it. This is the graced discontent of the seeker; that one was granted something, and I will not break faith with my awakened heart . . .
And I also know, the intuition is, that in this moment, it isn’t as if something more was given to me, but a curtain opened and the infinite love that’s always been given to me, it touched me. And so, I then seek to know how can I then learn to accept in humility that actually I tend to get absorbed in my obsessions over what I think is the meaning of it all, and I catch myself imposing of it upon myself, the very dilemma I can’t bear. And here I am. Here I am.
And then Merton says that it doesn’t matter very much because no despair of ours can alter the reality of things. We’re staying in the joy of the cosmic dance, which is always there. Indeed, we are in the midst of it, and it is in the midst of us for it beats in our very blood whether we want it to or not. — James Finley, Turning to the Mystics Thomas Merton Meditation 1
Credits and References: “Wheat” by FarbenfroheWunderwelt. Used with permission. In Christ, I Rise by Esther Hizsa 2021. ‘Fresh Bread” by Bram Cymet. Used with permission.
For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. –Colossians 3:3 (NIV)
She is dead but not lost. She is hidden with Christ in God– consummated whole one decomposing and becoming soil. The grain of wheat fell to the earth and died.
In the tomb of the earth, she is free of all that held her back of all that was not her.
She is not lost. She is found hidden ready to rise.
We’re on this earth to learn to love. That love [is] in God, in death, so the dead aren’t dead. They’re not annihilated; they’re consummated. And they don’t go anywhere, because in God, we live and move and have our being. —James Finley, Turing to the Mystics, Introductions for the Practice
Credits and References: “Composting” by Jason Baker. Used with permission. Hidden with Christ in God by Esther Hizsa, 2021. John 12:24 Acts 17:28 “Soil” by Tina Reynolds. Used with permission.
An Everyday Pilgrim 