Posted on by Michael J. Cunningham

The Mirror and the MRI

The Mirror and the MRI

 

The mirror shows what you arrange to show.

The MRI shows what you did not know was there.

One instrument serves the self that performs.

The other serves the self that is.

 

 

The Mirror

Most of us have been trained, quietly and relentlessly, to become mirror-people.

A mirror, after all, is a practical thing. It tells us how we appear. It helps us calibrate the face we present before we walk out the door. It asks the same question every time: How do I look?

And so we learn to manage ourselves the way we manage our appearance. We adjust. We curate. We smooth out what is jagged, conceal what is uncertain, brighten what seems dull. We do this socially — Did that land well? Did they like me? We do it professionally — Did I seem capable? Did I hold the room? We do it spiritually — Did I seem at peace? Did I say the wise thing?

This is not dishonesty. It is survival. Many of us learned early that the safest way to exist in the world is to become very good at presentation.

The mirror has its uses. But something quietly dangerous happens when it becomes the primary instrument by which we understand ourselves. We begin to believe that the reflection is the truth. We begin to mistake how we appear for who we are.

And the soul — that deep interior place that tightens in certain conversations, that softens in genuine love, that knows before the mind can justify — the soul gets left on the other side of the glass. Observed. Never inhabited.

 

The MRI

An MRI does something entirely different.

It does not care how you’ve arranged yourself. It does not respond to the face you put on in the morning or the persona you’ve spent years carefully constructing. It passes through all of that. It looks at what is actually inside — the density of tissue, the flow of fluid, the presence or absence of things that should or should not be there.

You cannot perform for an MRI. You can only lie still.

And in the lying still, you are seen.

There is a kind of spiritual reckoning in this image. Because the deepest work of the interior life is not about improving our reflection. It is about submitting, humbly and without defense, to being seen all the way through.

This is what the contemplative tradition has always understood. The Desert Fathers called it the stripping of the false self. The mystics called it kenosis — the gentle, sacred emptying. Thomas Merton wrote of the true self hidden beneath all our performances, waiting quietly like a seed beneath winter ground. Celtic Christianity spoke of thin places — those moments when the membrane between what we show and what we are becomes transparent, and something eternal peers through.

The MRI asks not How do I look? But what is actually here?

And that question, honestly held, is the beginning of transformation.

 

The Locked Rooms

Here is an uncomfortable truth that the mirror will never show you:

The rooms you think are hidden are visible in the shape of your avoidance.

Every house has them — rooms you do not enter. Not because they are empty, but because they are too full. The grief that never finished. The anger that felt too large. The longing that seemed too vulnerable to admit. The failure that became the story you’ve organized your entire life around avoiding.

The people around you already sense these rooms. They have felt the subtle change in your energy when a conversation drifts near them. They have noticed what you never bring up, what you minimize, what you deflect with humor or busyness or sudden competence.

And here is what the spiritual tradition says about those locked rooms: they are not where your shame lives. They are where your most essential material waits. Every locked room, when finally entered with courage and a willingness to be seen, turns out to contain not chaos — but sorrow needing to be witnessed, not danger — but something deeply human, not emptiness — but the most real version of yourself, waiting with extraordinary patience.

Sacred Noticing — the practice of paying attention with the whole of yourself — is, at its heart, the practice of learning to see with the eyes of the MRI rather than the mirror.

Not to catalogue your flaws. Not to perform your healing. But to look, gently and without flinching, at what is actually here. To let yourself be seen by the One who has always seen you, and loved you, from the inside out.

 

What Changes

When we stop living at the mirror — when we stop curating our reflection and begin, slowly, to inhabit what is actually there — something shifts in the way we move through the world.

The footprint we leave becomes honest. You cannot easily perform when you are fully present to yourself. You may still make mistakes. You may still be reactive. But the trace you leave is genuinely yours — unmistakable, unrepeatable, carrying the signature of something that does not die.

People sense this. They receive not the managed version, not the performance, but the actual emanation of a soul that is present to itself — and therefore finally, fully present to them.

This is what love actually is. Not the appearance of warmth, but the warmth itself. Not the performance of peace, but peace that passes understanding — because it was never manufactured. It was found, in the deep interior places, by someone willing to be seen all the way through.

God, after all, does not use a mirror. God has always been the MRI.

 

 

Be still.

Let the instrument pass through you.

Do not arrange yourself.

Do not prepare your best angle.

Simply lie in the grace of being known —

all the way down,

all the way through..

 

 

Questions for Reflection

Where in your life are you most likely to reach for the mirror — to curate, adjust, or perform?

What is one “locked room” in your interior life that you sense is waiting to be entered?

When have you experienced the grace of being truly seen — not for how you appeared, but for who you are?

What would it feel like to be still, today, and let yourself be known all the way through?

 

 

 

A Closing Invitation

 Uncross your arms. Let your face be soft.

You are not here to be impressive.

You are here to be present.

That is enough.

And has always been enough.

 

Copyright 2026 Michael J. Cunningham OFS

 

 

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A Lenten Practice Worth Trying (Sacred Noticing)

 

A Lenten Practice Worth Trying: Notice. Pause. Respond. (Sacred Noticing)

Someone was trying to tell me something last week, and I wasn’t really there.

I was in the room. I was nodding. But I was already composing my response, already somewhere else. And when I finally tuned back in, the moment had passed — and I had left behind something less than my best self. Not intentionally. Not maliciously. But the trace I left in that exchange — the atmosphere that lingered after I walked away, what that person carried from our conversation — was shaped more by my distraction than my love. We call that a spiritual footprint. It is the lasting presence we leave in every encounter, every room we enter, every exchange we have — chosen or not, conscious or not. The question Lent presses upon us is not whether we leave one. We always do. The question is whether the one we’re leaving is the one we would choose if we were paying attention.

That’s what I think Lent calls us to look at. Not what we’re giving up. But what we’re leaving behind.

We know the familiar Lenten practices. We give something up — chocolate, wine, social media — as an act of penance and self-discipline. We take something on — extra prayer, Mass, works of charity — as almsgiving, a turning outward toward others. Both are ancient, both are good. But there is a third invitation that Lent always carries, quieter than the other two, and perhaps more demanding: conversion of heart. Not the dramatic, road-to-Damascus kind. The slow, daily, ordinary kind. The turning of attention toward what actually matters in each moment we are given.

Viktor Frankl, the psychiatrist who survived the Nazi concentration camps and went on to write one of the most important books of the twentieth century, put it this way: “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

He learned that in the most extreme conditions the human spirit can face. He discovered that the one freedom no one could take from him was the freedom to choose how he met each moment. That space — between what happens and what we do about it — is where character is formed. Where love either happens or doesn’t. Where our spiritual footprint is laid down, one moment at a time, for better or worse, consciously or not. Lent is an invitation into that space.

Sacred Noticing is a practice designed to help us find it, expand it, and use it — not in a chapel, but in the middle of an ordinary Tuesday.

It has three movements that work together as one flowing rhythm.

Notice. Not just what’s happening around you, but what’s really present. The person in front of you — what do they need right now that you might be missing because you think you already know? The situation unfolding — what else might be true here that your assumptions are hiding? Notice invites us to approach the familiar as if for the first time. Francis of Assisi practiced this with every creature he encountered. He called it reading the book of creation. We might call it paying attention with love. And every time we do it, the footprint we leave becomes a little more intentional, a little more worthy of the love we say we want to give.

Pause. This is the space Frankl named. Taking a breath, a pause. Feet on the ground. One quiet question: What does this moment actually need from me? The pause interrupts the automatic, the reactive, the habitual. It is a tiny act of asceticism — a small dying to the ego’s need to respond immediately and on its own terms. In this sense, the pause is genuine Lenten penance. Not dramatic. But real. And in that brief stillness, something shifts. The footprint we were about to leave — shaped by irritation, distraction, or simple inattention — gets a chance to become something else.

Respond. From that deeper place. From something closer to wisdom than reaction. From something closer to love than habit. Your response may be words, or action, or simply staying present when you’d rather leave. Sometimes the most powerful response is a quality of attention that says to another person: you matter, I am here, this moment between us is not nothing. That is the footprint worth leaving. That is what lingers long after the conversation ends.

This is almsgiving in its fullest sense — not only the check we write or the food we donate, though those matter. It is the gift of our genuine presence. It is what we offer when we stop performing our way through the day and start actually meeting the people in front of us. It is the most personal form of charity there is — and unlike money, we have it available in every single moment.

This is penance in its deepest sense — not only what we deny ourselves, but the small daily discipline of not letting our first impulse have the last word. Three seconds. One breath. The pause that chooses love over reaction. Every time we do it, we are practicing the conversion Lent is actually after.

And this is prayer — not confined to morning quiet, but carried into the afternoon argument, the exhausting meeting, the moment someone needs more of us than we feel we have to give. When we bring that quality of presence into our ordinary encounters, we are not just being more mindful. We are being more holy. And the world around us — the people who move through our days — begins to feel the difference in the footprint we leave.

Try it today in one small moment. The traffic light turns red — let it be an invitation instead of an interruption. Someone says something that stings — notice what rises in you before you speak. The phone rings — one breath before you answer it. See what changes. Notice what you leave behind.

Many days of that kind of attention leaves its mark. On you. And on everyone you encounter along the way.

The ancient Lenten call is metanoia — a turning, a change of mind, a reorientation of the whole self. We don’t have to go somewhere extraordinary to answer it. We just have to show up differently to where we already are — and trust that the footprint we leave when we do will be one we’re glad we chose.

Notice. Pause. Respond. Repeat.

That may be all the Lenten practice you need.

Michael Cunningham OFS is the author of The Practice of Sacred Noticing: Transforming Your Spiritual Footprint, releasing April 2026. Weekly reflections at spiritualbreak.com.

 

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Known

Known

 

I thought I knew

The formulas, the truths, reality

But now I know

Nothing

 

Only presence,

Being,

 

A temporary glimpse of you,

By peaking into your heart,

Seeing the love which pumps relentlessly to get out

Letting you live

Or survive

Or delight

 

Which it is I cannot tell

But I know I love you

 

Not for what you have done

Good or bad

Not for what you have become

Rich or poor

Not for what you gave

Willing or involuntarily

 

But just because

Because I encountered you

 

That’s all.

It was enough

It is enough

Posted on by Michael J. Cunningham

 

Friday the 13th: A Day to Notice

 

It’s Friday the 13th today. I notice the date on my phone this morning in a way I didn’t notice yesterday’s. I notice the ladder on the sidewalk. I notice the black cat outside the house, who, for the record, doesn’t seem to know what day it is. He’s doing just fine.

I’m not a superstitious person. Not really. But if I’m honest, I’m a little more awake today than I was yesterday. There’s a hum to the day. I’m watching it more carefully, scanning for what might go wrong, half-seriously expecting something to jump out at me. As if the date itself has teeth.

And I think most of us are like this. We joke about it, sure. We knock on wood and throw salt over our shoulders and pretend we’re being ironic. But underneath the humor, something real is happening. We’re noticing. We’re paying attention to the day in a way we usually don’t bother with. The calendar has been highlighted as special, and so we show up differently. Maybe more alert. Perhaps, more present. More aware that the next moment may matters.

Which makes me wonder: when was the last time I paid this much attention on a Wednesday?

Because here’s what I find interesting. Some of our normal activities are done on autopilot. Driving to work, putting out the trash, even feeding the dog. Certain activities are moved between without really being terribly aware of what spiritual trace I might be leaving.

But give me a day with a reputation, and suddenly I’m wide awake. Suddenly the moments matter.

So superstition, for all its silliness, proves something rather important about us. We already have the capacity to notice. We just apparently need permission. And a number on a calendar is enough to grant it. But here’s where my thinking has taken a turn recently.

I’ve been spending the morning watching the day. Carefully. A little nervously. Waiting to see what it does.

But what if the day has been watching me?

What if every day is watching? Not just this one. What if every moment I walk through — the room I enter, distracted, a conversation half-listened to, the person I pass without seeing — what if all of it is already awake, already open, already receiving whatever I bring into it? Already noticing the trace I’m leaving behind, long before I think to notice it myself?

I think of my friend Tom in his New Hampshire woods. (The picture above). We were walking his property one afternoon when he stopped, breathed deeply, and said, “Mike, this is my sanctuary. This is my chapel.” Those woods didn’t become sacred because Tom finally noticed them. They were already there. Already holding something. He just stopped long enough to receive what was being offered.

I wonder if every day is like Tom’s woods.

Already present. Already watching. Already waiting to see what we’ll bring.

And if that’s true, then we’re not just in the audience of our own lives, watching the day unfold from a safe distance. We’re in the movie at the same time. Being watched and participating. Leaving traces in a story that is somehow both ours and not ours, one that’s already paying attention to us; whether we return the favor or not.

I don’t have a tidy conclusion for this one. I just have the question. And maybe the question is enough for today.

What would change if you walked into tomorrow knowing the day was already watching?

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About Sacred Noticing

ABOUT SACRED NOTICING

A Contemplative Practice for Daily Life

By Michael Cunningham, OFS

 

YOUR SPIRITUAL FOOTPRINT

Every interaction leaves a trace. Think about the last difficult conversation you had—what did you leave behind after you walked away? Not the decisions or outcomes, but the quality of presence people experienced. The atmosphere that lingered. Whether others felt more settled or more anxious, more open or more defended.

This is your spiritual footprint—the accumulated presence you leave behind in every encounter. Some people leave peace and possibility in their wake. Others leave disturbance and tension. Most of us leave a mixed trail, largely unconscious of the impact our presence creates.

Neuroscience has a term for this: “social-emotional contagion”—the way our inner states spread to those around us through mirror neurons and emotional resonance. We affect each other simply by how we show up.

Your spiritual footprint is being created whether you’re aware of it or not. Sacred Noticing is a practice for making that footprint conscious and intentional.

WHAT IS SACRED NOTICING?

Between what happens to you and what you do about it lies a space. Sacred Noticing teaches you how to find it, expand it, and use it.

It’s a simple rhythm—Notice, Pause, Respond—that brings contemplative awareness into the ordinary moments as your spiritual footprint is formed. Not a technique for special occasions, but a way of being that meets you in the moments you’re already living: the tense meeting, the triggering email, the conversation with your teenager, the decision under pressure.

What makes Sacred Noticing distinct is its completeness. Many practices stop at awareness. You learn to notice what’s happening, to be present, to observe without judgment—valuable, but incomplete. Others focus on contemplation during set-aside time—also valuable, also incomplete. Sacred Noticing completes the cycle, moving from awareness through wisdom to action. It transforms not just how you see but how you respond, not just your interior life but your actual presence in the world.

The ancient Celtic Christians spoke of “thin places”—moments when the sacred breaks through the ordinary. Sacred Noticing helps you recognize that these thin places aren’t rare mystical experiences but are available in every pause, every breath, every moment you stop long enough to let wisdom catch up with your racing mind.

THE THREE MOVEMENTS

NOTICE: Bring contemplative awareness to what is actually present in this moment—not what you expected or hoped for, but what’s actually here. See beyond automatic assumptions. Approach familiar situations with fresh eyes. Notice both the outer situation and your inner responses without judgment.

PAUSE: Create space between what happens and how you respond. You have two options here: Just pause and wait/relax, in whatever form that takes for you. Or be more structured and use the Three-Breath Method is your primary tool: Breath one interrupts reactive patterns. Breath two grounds you in this actual moment. Breath three opens you to wisdom about what’s truly needed here.

This isn’t just spiritual technique—it works with your neurobiology.[1] Ancient contemplatives knew this worked; modern neuroscience explains why.

RESPOND: Act from integrated awareness rather than unconscious reaction. Your response arises from the wisdom accessed in the pause, serving the whole situation rather than just immediate impulses. Sometimes the wisest response is words. Sometimes action. Sometimes continued presence without doing anything at all.

With practice, these three movements flow together into one continuous awareness. You don’t need years of meditation experience. You need to commit to learning a rhythm that, practiced consistently, may transform your way of being in the world

WHERE IT COMES FROM

Sacred Noticing carries DNA from the contemplative tradition that formed me: the Franciscan practice of seeing the sacred in all creation, the Centering Prayer discipline of creating interior space for presence, the Lectio Divina practice of contemplative reading applied beyond scripture, and the Celtic understanding that thin places are moments of true presence available anywhere.

But Sacred Noticing is not a blend of these practices. It’s something that grew from this soil into its own form—a complete contemplative method for transforming your spiritual footprint in daily life.

I didn’t set out to create a new contemplative practice. Sacred Noticing emerged from years of lived experience—retreat leadership, spiritual direction, and my own navigation of daily decisions within the Franciscan tradition.

Over time, I found myself working with a consistent rhythm: noticing what was emerging (often before it was obvious), pausing long enough for wisdom to surface, then offering the next best response. What began as spiritually led decision-making gradually became an everyday reflex. Eventually I realized this wasn’t just how I was approaching my own life—it was a learnable method that could serve others.

WHY IT’S ACCESSIBLE

You don’t need to be Christian to practice Sacred Noticing. You don’t need to believe in God or embrace theological frameworks. The practice works because it engages fundamental human capacities—the ability to notice, to pause, to respond wisely.

At the same time, I’m not hiding the Christian contemplative roots. Sacred Noticing emerges from Franciscan spirituality and centuries of contemplative wisdom. Understanding these roots enriches the practice, even if you don’t share the faith tradition.

For contemplative Christians, Sacred Noticing offers fresh language for ancient practice and helps carry prayer into every interaction. For secular seekers, it provides a structured contemplative method accessible without religious commitment. For those of other faith traditions, it can complement rather than conflict with your existing spiritual path.

The test isn’t whether you believe what I believe. The test is whether the practice changes your spiritual footprint—whether you leave behind more conscious presence and less unconscious reactivity.

WHAT TO EXPECT

Sacred Noticing is practice-based and alignment-backed, not a clinical protocol. It resonates with what we know about attention training and nervous system regulation, and, it has been refined through years of retreats, spiritual direction, and daily leadership.

The practice increases sensitivity to both beauty and pain. As awareness deepens, you notice more of what’s actually present—which includes suffering you might have missed before. This marks genuine spiritual development, not a problem to fix.

Sacred Noticing doesn’t make life easier. It makes you more present to life as it is—with all its beauty and pain, challenge and grace. It’s not another self-improvement technique to master but a relational disposition that may permeate how you inhabit your days.

Most people find that thirty days of gentle consistency provides enough experience to sense whether this practice serves them. The most faithful measure is lived fruit: a calmer presence, clearer speech, wiser timing—noticed first in small ways, then more often.

BEGIN WHERE YOU ARE

The invitation is simple: Notice. Pause. Respond. Repeat.

Choose one familiar situation—your morning coffee, your commute, a recurring interaction. Practice approaching it with Sacred Noticing. See what you’ve been missing because you thought you already knew what was there. Pause before responding to the next trigger. Ask yourself: what does this moment actually need from me?

The practice will feel mechanical at first. That’s normal. You’re building new neural pathways, developing what becomes spiritual muscle memory. With consistent practice—thirty days minimum, often longer—the three movements begin to flow together.

You don’t need to master contemplative theory before you start. You begin with what you have, where you are. Trust the practice to work in you as you work with the practice.

Remember: thin places are everywhere, waiting for your awakened presence to reveal them

 

 

Sacred Noticing is fully detailed in “The Practice of Sacred Noticing: Transforming Your Spiritual Footprint” (2026), which includes structured practices, weekly exercises, contemplative poetry and photography, and guidance for specific situations. The book is due to be published mid April 2026.

 

The practice is offered as a gift to the contemplative community. Share it freely. When teaching or writing about Sacred Noticing, attribution is appreciated: “Sacred Noticing by Michael Cunningham, OFS”

 

http://www.spiritualbreak.com

 

© 2026 Michael J. Cunningham, OFS

This document may be reproduced for non-commercial educational and spiritual formation purposes with attribution.

[1] The first breath interrupts the amygdala’s reactive response. The second activates your parasympathetic nervous system. The third accesses prefrontal cortex wisdom.