My body didn’t get the memo that things that spark my anxiety and spike my cortisol– an email from the lawyer, booking a flight, any change of plan– don’t threaten my life. They aren’t the end of the world.
So I need to gently comfort my anxious body and remind her: It’s a false alarm. There’s no fire, no danger, and nothing to fear. I’m right here. We’ll be okay.
I see the birds up in the air. I know You feed them, I know You care. So won’t You teach me how I mean more to You than them. In times of trouble, be my help again. –Jon Guerra, I See the Birds
Credits and References: Sprinkler Fire Alarm by Nick Sherman. Used with permission. False Alarm by Esther Hizsa, 2025 Murder of Crows by TumblingRun. Used with permission
Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!” Immediately he was cleansed of his leprosy. –Matthew 8:3
An uncomfortable conversation sat in my belly undigested, occupying my thoughts, stopping the flow of oxygen.
I looked up and saw Love. She gazed softly upon me, warming my skin, easing my heart.
Love let the feelings rise– the shame of causing a problem, the fear I’m not enough, the disappointment that I’ve misunderstood again.
She invited me to turn my soft gaze upon these darlings and the one who ignited them. Befriend them all and let them go, Love said. Let forgiveness flow.
I breathed and imagined gazing softly, befriending, releasing.
Rest now. You’re safe, Love said. All is well.
Peace. Be still. –Mark 4:39
Credits and References: Christ Healing a Leper by Rembrandt van Rijn by Picryl. Used with permission. Cleansed by Esther Hizsa, 2025. Calm morning sea and boat. Small boat on blue sea in Makarska, Croatia, summer 2020 by Martin Vorel. Used with permission
After ten days of packing, cleaning and saying goodbye to our home of thirty years, Fred and I arrive back in Vernon, the snow globe of our lives shaken and set down again.
What do I see as the snow swirls and falls?
Fires out of control, the sun a small red ball in the sky. A storage unit full, the rental truck returned. Fred relieved and recovering.
My siblings gathered around the table, having travelled thousands of kilometres to be together while our mother still lives. We’re talking about high school, making decisions, savouring food and wine, kidding each other– gratitude, a holy presence.
Our mother is here and not here, sitting in her chair, legs raised, tapping her feet together from time to time as if she’s Dorothy. There’s no place like home, no place like this.
No magic spell needed, no desire to return to the past, only the wonder of discovering what each moment reveals and the grace given to hold it.
Watch closely: I am preparing something new; it’s happening now, even as I speak, and you’re about to see it. –Isaiah 43:19 (The Voice)
Credits and References: Snowglobe 2 by remediate.this. Used with permission. No Place Like This by Esther Hizsa, 2025. Fisheye Snowscape by Lauren Waterman. Used with permission.
I dreaded this for so long– going through my belongings, deciding what to keep, pitch, or give away, packing, carting, loading.
But we’re into it now. The boxes are labelled and stacked. It’s happening. We’re being uprooted and replanted, moved from city to city, life to life, cup to pot
transplanted from getting to giving, hiking to hobbling, pushing to resting, planning to seeing how the way forward reveals itself.
I don’t like this work, but I like what You’re doing in me from cup to pot to garden.
A line of peace might appear if we restructured the sentence our lives are making, revoked its reaffirmation of profit and power, questioned our needs, allowed long pauses . . . —Denise Levertov,Making Peace
Credits and References: Growing Roots and Replanting by MissMessie. Used with permission. Replanted by Esther Hizsa, 2025
This summer, we aren’t camping and hiking in the mountains. We’ve booked a moving truck, signed endless documents, and will spend our vacation packing, loading and disposing of furniture.
Then, of course, there’s the unloading and unpacking.
This summer hasn’t offered us spacious days without to-do lists and deadlines looming.
We don’t have resilient bodies and endless energy. Nor are we spared that awful feeling in the pit of our stomachs when surprised by another complication, another expense.
This is hard, You say and hand me the most delicious peach I’ve ever tasted. This summer, the orchards are bursting with them.
One summer, when I was little, my great aunt and uncle arrived from Switzerland. They were so happy to see us, she nearly suffocated me in her bountiful bosom, and he produced an endless supply of chocolate from his pockets.
There is so much this summer doesn’t have for us, but all is not lost.
Look out for it, You say, smiling.
And I notice joy isn’t waiting until we’re all moved in but keeps arriving unannounced with peaches and hugs and chocolate in its pockets.
Let a joy keep you. Reach out your hands and take it when it runs by. –Carl Sandburg
Credits and References: Packing by Becky Stern. Used with permission. This Summer by Esther Hizsa, 2025. Chocolat by Chloé Chevalier. Used with permission.
I keep waiting for something to happen that will give my hope a place to land instead of letting hope land here in this precarious place.
It seemed like a joke. The monk chased by a tiger comes to a precipice, grabs a vine and swings himself over the edge and away from the tiger’s grasp. He looks down, and far below another tiger looks up at him and paces hungrily. Meanwhile, two mice gnaw away the vine. At that moment, he spies a strawberry growing nearby. What does he do? He eats the strawberry. And it’s the sweetest one he’s ever tasted.
It isn’t a joke. It’s my life and yours.
We all want a stronger vine, a secure ledge, a life without tigers and cliffs, and You give us strawberries, the sweetest moments we’ve ever tasted. As we take and eat, our eyes are opened.
The One who gives strawberries will also catch us when the mice have had their fill.
Some people trust the power of chariots or horses, but we trust you, Lord God.. –Psalm 20:7 (CEV)
Credits and References: Strawberry by Michael Frank Franz. Used with permission. Letting Hope Land by Esther Hizsa, 2025. Strawberries by Paul Istoan. Used with permission.
If I don’t poke the bear, it will continue to sleep.
If I shift my attention to the light outside my cave, I can go about happily as if there weren’t four hundred pounds of smelly, drooling, menacing fear in my abode.
Just keep your distance, I remind myself daily.
But life, that unpredictable, uncontrollable child, fears nothing.
She can’t resist sinking her fingers into fur, shouting in its ear. Oh God, now she’s got a stick. She can’t wait to see the show.
The bear is on its hind feet in seconds, thrashing and ferocious. But she just giggles and says, “Do it again.”
She wants to play with it, play with us.
The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek. –Brené Brown, Dare to Lead
Credits and References: European Brown Bear (Ursus arctos) at Korkeasaari (Högholmen) Zoo in Helsinki by Arto Alanenpää. Wikipedia commons. Don’t Poke the Bear by Esther Hizsa, 2025. Brown Bear by Brooke. Used with permission.
Jesus told them many things in parables, saying: “A farmer went out to sow his seed.As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up.Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow.But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root.Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants.Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.Whoever has ears, let them hear.” —Matthew 12:3-9
You scatter seeds of love on my path, and by the time I recognize them, the birds have come and eaten them all.
Then I will be the birds lifting your eyes to see love above and around as blue as cloudless wonder.
You scatter seeds of love in rocky places, where trust is thin and roots wither when old fears scorn and scorch.
Then I will be the willows, oaks and maples shading your path, the cool breeze tickling the back of your neck, the rain nourishing your roots.
You scatter seeds of love, and some fall among sinewy beliefs where memories prickle and choke.
Then I will be a sea of purple, blooming in the thistles, for there is no place My love does not abide.
Sometimes Your seeds fall on good soil and produce a kind thought, a creative idea, a poem for thirty, sixty, perhaps, a hundred wandering pilgrims.
Yes, and in those graces, My seeds of love are carried by birds, shaded and watered in thin places, thrive in thorns, and produce a bumper crop of lovers.
″If you become a bird and fly away from me,” said his mother, “I will be a tree that you come home to.” — Margaret Wise Brown,The Runaway Bunny
Credits and References: The Parable of the Sower by madison.murphy. Used with permission. Bumper Crop by Esther Hizsa, 2025 Photo of Peaches by Unsplash from Freerange Stock
As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him.She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said.But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”
“Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things,but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”–Luke 10: 38-42 (NIV)
Luke didn’t tell you that when Jesus answered me, he put his hand on my back and spoke so softly only I could hear. I didn’t feel ashamed; I felt seen, oddly hopeful.
And Luke didn’t tell you what came next. Jesus got up and helped me. I protested. “Lord, I’m taking you away from the others.”
But he laughed and said, “Did you hear the one about the shepherd who left the ninety-nine to look for the one lost in the kitchen?”
Mary patted the seat beside her, and when I sat down, she squeezed my hand. Then, as we ate and drank, Jesus repeated every word I missed.
When you find the lost sheep, wouldn’t you hoist it up on your shoulders, feeling wonderful? — Luke 15:5 (Voice)
Credits and References: St Martha and St Mary Stained glass window from St Andrew’s Presbyterian church in Toronto. Photo by Fr Lawrence Lew, O.P. Used with permission. What Luke Didn’t Tell You by Esther Hizsa, 2025 Lost Little Lamb by Matthew Kirkland. Used with permission.
Trust, I tell myself as I cycle in the early morning mist. I need to trust I’ll receive what I need, know what to do. I can let go of my life and rest in Your love.
I wish I could trust, rest, stop thinking, thinking, thinking about the spinning tops I can’t corral, wanting them to land, fearing where they will.
I know, You say, and my heart softens.
Then, after a long pause, This is suffering.
I’m suddenly aware I’ve stopped breathing and gasp for breath, take another.
I breathe and pedal Your words a cool hand on my forehead, Your goodness opening me to the goodness of this moment, the wonder that goodness is possible in a world of spinning uncertainties.
It’s a lie, any talk of God that doesn’t comfort you. –Meister Eckhart (1260-1328)
Credits and References: Way Still On by Nirmal Adhikari. Used with permission A Cool Hand on My Forehead by Esther Hizsa, 2025. Boasting about Tomorrow by ON BORROWED TIME.Used with permission.
An Everyday Pilgrim 