In these times when it is difficult to express the heaviness in so many of our hearts as we witness immoral leadership making decisions that impact our communities, this story shared recently in Piloting Faith reminds me that we are not in this alone. 

“They say that long ago, when the world was quieter and people still listened with their whole bodies, a young woman named Amaru lived high in the mountains of the Andes. She came from a long line of weavers—women who threaded the memory of the earth into cloth, each design a quiet offering to the sacred.

But Amaru was untethered. Her mother had died. Her teacher had gone. The elders whispered that the thread of her spirit had become tangled. She felt it, too—like a silence inside her that had once been singing. One day, she climbed to the highest ridge. The wind was thin. The stillness vast. She pressed her back against a stone and wept—not with drama, but with that ancient kind of sorrow that lives in the bones. The kind that asks no questions. The kind that simply aches.

Then—a sound.        Whirrrrr.          A flash of color, a shimmer of wings: a hummingbird.

It hovered in front of her, still as breath, beating like a heart just beneath the surface of silence. She followed it—not with certainty, but with that soft kind of instinct that rises when words fall away. It led her over stone and through thickets, to a cave hidden behind a waterfall. Inside, the darkness pulsed. The walls shimmered faintly, as if remembering. And in that remembering, Amaru began to remember too.

She closed her eyes, and the cave became the sky. She saw her ancestors—not as names or photos, but as presence, as rhythm, as song. They were dancing and weaving and soaring, reminding her: you are not alone.
The hummingbird hovered near her chest. And a voice—not outside, but within—whispered:
We walk with you. We always have. Be still, and you will remember.

When she returned to her village, Amaru weaved differently. The stories in her cloth shimmered with new color, new memory. She didn’t speak of the cave. She didn’t need to. People felt it. In her presence, they remembered their own rootedness, their own sky. And ever since, when someone in the village is lost, they say:
Look for the hummingbird. She shows the way back to those who walk with you.”

I wonder who the ancestors that walk with you are.
I wonder how you are remembering your “rootedness” in these times.
May his story be a reminder that we are not alone.
May we resist together knowing we are buoyed by the ancestors and justice seekers that came before us.

In faith,
Rev. Claudia Jiménez
Minister of Faith Formation

PS Do you recognize where this photo was taken?