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The Boat Without Oars

A Spiritual Break Reflection

In the year 891, three Irishmen washed ashore on the coast of Cornwall, England in a boat made of hide stretched over a wooden frame. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which was not given to sentiment, thought the event strange enough to record. What made it strange was not that they had arrived. It was that they had set out, deliberately, without oars. When they were brought before the court of King Alfred and asked why, their answer entered history in a single sentence: they wished to be pilgrims for the love of God, and they cared not where.

I am the son of Irish parents, and I confess that when I first met this story, it did not feel like history. It felt like family. Because I recognized the move: the extravagant, slightly alarming gesture that turns out, on closer inspection, to be theology. Those three men were not being careless. They had simply decided, with their whole bodies, that God was a better navigator than they were — and then they built a boat that made the decision irreversible.

They were not alone. The early Celtic monks had a name for this: peregrinatio pro amore Dei — wandering for the love of God. It was pilgrimage with the destination removed. Columba left Ireland for Iona in c.563 not knowing what his mission would become; the island claimed him as much as he chose it. The Voyage of St. Brendan tells of monks who sailed wherever wind and current carried them, trusting the steering to Someone else. This was how mission and location were often discerned in that world. Not by strategy. By drift.

Now look at your own week. Count the oars.

The calendar is an oar. The GPS is an oar. The to-do list, the fitness tracker, the itinerary, the five-year plan — oars, every one. We are the most thoroughly rowed generation in human history. Even our leisure has an agenda now; we optimize our rest and measure our sleep. And if we are honest, even our prayer can become another form of rowing — twenty minutes, timer set, technique applied, progress quietly assessed. There is nothing wrong with oars. But a life that never ships them has made a decision about who is steering, and it is worth noticing what that decision is.

So here is a practice I have come to love, and one we now offer on retreat at San Damiano in the late afternoon, when the light goes gold on the hills. We call it a Drifting Prayer. The invitation is short enough to memorize: The Celtic monks used to set out to sea in small boats with no oars. They let the current decide. For the next while, the grounds are your current. There’s nowhere to get to and nothing to bring back. Walk, or don’t. If something finds you, let it.

You do not need a retreat center to pray it. You need a coracle — which is to say, a boundary. Thirty minutes. The park near your office. The road home taken slowly. A Saturday afternoon you refuse to schedule. The boundary is the only decision you make; it is the little boat that holds you. Then you ship the oars: leave the phone, drop the errand, release the outcome. If it helps, borrow the pilgrims’ own prayer of consent — Lead me; I care not where — which may be the most honest six words ever said to God.

And then you drift. You follow what gently draws you — a turn in the path, a bench, a birdsong, a doorway, a memory that rises unbidden. You steer only for safety. And when you catch yourself reaching for the oars again — planning tomorrow, evaluating the walk, quietly converting the hour into something productive — you notice, you smile, and you let the current have the boat back. That reach for the oars is not failure, by the way. It is the practice. Every time you release the handle, something in you learns a little more about trust.

Somewhere in the drift, something may arrest you. Stop there. You do not need to name it, photograph it, or turn it into a lesson. If something finds you, let it. And if nothing finds you — if the whole hour is just wind and footsteps and an ordinary sky — then the drifting itself was the prayer, and it was enough.

I want to say a particular word to those in a drifting season of life, because some of you did not choose your coracle. Retirement chose it. Recovery chose it. The empty house, the waiting room, the long stretch between what ended and whatever comes next. Our culture will tell you that because you are not doing anything, nothing is happening. The three men in the boat say otherwise. Being led is a form of prayer — perhaps the oldest one. And notice this, because it matters: the monks did not drift to relax. They drifted to be sent. Columba’s drift ended at Iona, and Iona changed the world. If you are in a season when the way forward is unclear, the drift is not the opposite of discernment. It is discernment, conducted at the speed of trust.

The other prayer forms will still be there when you come ashore — the chair, the sacred word, the Scriptures, the chapel. A Drifting Prayer replaces none of them. It simply consecrates the hours they cannot reach: the in-between ones, the unplanned ones, the ones we were about to waste by filling.

This week, then: one oarless hour. Choose your coracle. Say the six words. And let the current decide.

Where in your life are you still gripping the oars — and what might find you if, for one hour, you let the current decide?

Reflection Copyright 2026 Michael J. Cunningham OFS

 

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The Yellow Light

The Yellow Light

A Spiritual Break Reflection

This morning, washing hands at the sink, soap bubbles catch the light and turn into tiny rainbows. For just a moment, my hands slowed in the warm water. Not because I needed to stop and have a “home-made” spiritual experience, but because something lovely was happening right there in my kitchen sink.

It reminded me of traffic lights—specifically that yellow light that begs us from motion into stillness. Not the jarring red that demands we stop, but that gentle amber invitation: something’s shifting here.

I sometimes notice these yellow light moments scattered throughout my days like breadcrumbs. They’re not asking for dramatic responses or profound revelations. They’re simply there, quiet invitations to notice what’s already present.

Sometimes it’s the particular way morning light falls across the lobby at the retreat house, turning ordinary wood golden. My mind pauses mid-sentence, not because I must stop and appreciate beauty, but because beauty has already stopped me. The moment passes, I return to whatever I was supposed to be doing, but something has shifted—a small opening where grace slipped in.

Or it’s the sound of rain beginning while writing an email. That first gentle pattering doesn’t demand I abandon my work for contemplation. It simply offers itself, and if I happen to notice, the soundtrack of an afternoon changes from mental chatter to nature’s rhythm.

These moments seem to arrive most naturally at transitions. Walking from the house to the car, I may notice how the air feels different today. Shifting from one task to another, there’s often a brief pause where I remember I’m not just a person checking boxes but someone alive in this moment. Even breathing has these built-in yellow lights—that slight pause between inhale and exhale, where everything briefly suspends.

Last week, talking with my daughter, she said something that made her voice catch slightly. Such a small thing—anyone might miss it. But there it was, a yellow light moment. I found myself listening differently, not interrogating or fixing, just receiving what she was really saying beneath the words. The conversation meandered into places it wouldn’t have gone if I’d stayed in my usual efficient parent mode. She was happy to be talking with me, the words might be somewhat irrelevant.

I don’t think life is constantly signaling us to pay attention—that would be exhausting. But there do seem to be these natural pause points woven through our days, gentle as that amber light that says transition is happening, no rush.

The poet Rumi wrote about selling cleverness and buying bewilderment. Maybe these yellow lights are life’s way of offering that trade. For just a moment, we can let go of knowing exactly where we’re going and simply be present to where we are.

This isn’t about trying to notice everything or turn daily life into a spiritual practice. It’s more like discovering that ordinary moments have their own quiet wisdom if we happen to be available when they offer it. The way tea changes color as it steeps. How shadows move across the wall as the afternoon progresses. The peculiar and beautiful silence that overcomes when snowfall begins.

Some days, I’m moving too fast to notice any yellow lights at all. Other days, one small moment of recognition—a dog stretching in a patch of sun, the smell of coffee brewing, the feeling of soft socks on tired feet—creates a tiny opening. Not a door demanding I walk through, just a window showing me what’s here.

Awakening isn’t something we achieve through effort. It could be more like slowly recognizing what’s been glowing softly all along. The sacred is scattered throughout our hours, not as a test or a challenge, but as a quiet gift for anyone who happens to be looking when life gently signals: here’s something worth noticing, if you’d like.

Tomorrow morning, you might catch one of these moments. Or you might not. Either way, they’ll keep coming, gentle as light itself, marking the transitions between rushing and resting, doing and being, sleeping and waking up to what’s been here all along.

The yellow lights aren’t trying to stop us or make us more spiritual. They’re simply part of the landscape, faithful as breathing, available as morning. And sometimes, when we’re moving at just the right speed, we notice them. And something in us says oh, yes and slows down just enough to receive what’s being offered.

That’s all. That’s enough. That’s everything.

 

 

Copyright 2026 Michael J. Cunningham OFS

Posted on by Michael J. Cunningham

What Do I Leave Behind?

If I were trying to explain my idea of the Spiritual Footprint to a friend, I would not begin with a theory. I would begin with a question: What do I leave behind? Not what do I intend, not what do I believe about myself and not what image do I hope others have of me—but what remains in people after they have spent time with me?

That question is at the heart of the Spiritual Footprint. I use the image of a footprint because it is simple, concrete, and honest. A footprint shows that someone has passed through a place. It reveals presence, movement, and direction. In the same way, each of us leaves a mark on the lives we touch. Our words, tone, choices, attitudes, patience, impatience, kindness, silence, courage, and care all leave something behind. Some marks are small and temporary. Others are carried for years.

We may understand this most clearly when we begin by admitting that others have left a Spiritual Footprint in us. We carry the memory of people who encouraged us, wounded us, steadied us, dismissed us, welcomed us, or made us feel small. Their presence did not disappear when the encounter ended. It stayed with us. If that is true—if others leave something behind in us and with us—then why would we imagine that we do not do the same?

This is where our personal empathy becomes more than a virtue; it becomes a form of spiritual sight. The more empathetic we become toward what others carry, the more able we are to recognize what they may be carrying from us. We begin to see that people are not only reacting to our intentions; they are responding to our tone, our timing, our attentiveness, our impatience, our gentleness, and our willingness to make room for them. Once we see that, we cannot easily unsee it.

This is what makes the Spiritual Footprint so important. It moves spirituality from the realm of private feeling and into the realm of lived impact. Many people today think about spiritual wellness in terms of inner peace, balance, mindfulness, healing, or emotional health. Those things matter deeply. But there is more needed to press the question further. We ask ourselves to consider not only whether we feel centered, but whether our presence helps others feel seen, respected, encouraged, safe, and less alone.

There can be a painful gap between the person I believe I am and the person others actually experience. I may think of myself as kind, but do people experience kindness from me? I may think of myself as caring, but do I take time to listen? I may value honesty, but is my honesty also gentle? I may believe I bring strength, but does my strength protect others or overpower them? The Spiritual Footprint helps bring those questions into the light without turning them into shame. It is not about perfection. It is about awareness.

I think this is why this work becomes especially relevant for our time. We live in a culture that measures almost everything: productivity, influence, performance, health, popularity, and success. Even spirituality can become something we try to manage, improve, or display. The Spiritual Footprint offers a different measure. It asks whether my life leaves behind peace or tension, hope or discouragement, warmth or coldness, healing or harm. It asks whether the people around me are more burdened or more blessed because of my presence.

This does not mean living for the approval of others. The idea is not about trying to control everyone’s opinion or becoming anxious about every interaction. It is about taking responsibility for the atmosphere we help create. We cannot control how others interpret us, but we can pay attention to how we speak, how we listen, how we repair what we damage, and how we treat people when there is nothing to gain. In that sense, the Spiritual Footprint can be a daily examination of love in action.

What I appreciate most is that the Spiritual Footprint is formed in ordinary places. It is shaped in family conversations, workplace pressures, friendships, difficult decisions, apologies, interruptions, disappointments, and passing encounters with strangers. It has helped me. Legacy is often spoken of as something that belongs to the end of life, but I believe this visibility makes legacy immediate. My Spiritual Footprint is not only what people may say about me someday; it is what people experience from me today.

That changes the way I understand spiritual wellness. Wellness is not only the state of my inner life; it is also the quality of my presence. A spiritually well person is not simply calm, reflective, or personally grounded. A spiritually well person becomes, over time, someone through whom others encounter mercy, steadiness, honesty, humility, courage, and peace. The point is not to appear holy. The point is to become less harmful and more healing.

This is why the Spiritual Footprint is both encouraging and demanding. It is encouraging because every day gives us another opportunity to leave something good behind: a kind word, a patient silence, a sincere apology, a moment of courage, a willingness to listen, a choice to be gentle when we could have been harsh. It is demanding because it reminds us that our lives are never neutral. We are always contributing something to the emotional and spiritual climate around us.

In this sense, it gives us a practical way to think about holiness without making it abstract. Holiness is not only what happens in prayer or worship, though those are essential. Holiness is also what remains after we leave the room. Did someone feel more seen? Did a wound begin to heal? Did fear soften? Did peace become more possible? Did my presence make it easier for someone else to believe that goodness is real?

If Sacred Noticing is the practice that can help transform the Spiritual Footprint, then the Spiritual Footprint itself is the larger invitation. It asks us to live with a deeper awareness of consequence. Every conversation, every decision, every act of kindness, every harsh word, every apology, every moment of patience or impatience leaves a mark. The question is whether we are willing to notice the mark we are making and choose, with humility, to leave behind more peace than unrest, more courage than fear, and more love than indifference.

One way to make this real is to imagine taking a camera with you for a day—not to photograph yourself, but to notice what others might be seeing or glimpsing as you move through the world. What does your face communicate when you are rushed? What does your tone leave behind when you are tired? What does your silence say in a difficult moment? What does your kindness make visible? If you could see the day from the other side of your presence, what would become clear? Once we begin to see our lives from that angle, we cannot simply return to not knowing. Awareness changes responsibility.

That is why I would tell a friend that the Spiritual Footprint matters now. In a world crowded with noise, speed, self-promotion, and anxiety, it restores one of the simplest and most searching spiritual questions: What do I leave behind? The answer is not written only in our intentions. It is written in the experience of the people we meet, the relationships we shape, the wounds we repair, and the love we make visible through the ordinary pattern of our lives.

 

Reflection derived from The Practice of Sacred Noticing: How to Transform Your Spiritual Footprint

Copyright 2026 Michael J. Cunningham OFS

 

Posted on by Michael J. Cunningham

A Walk on the Beach


A Walk On The Beach

 

Gone was the smell of rubber, normally ingrained in my father. My mother’s singing voice amplified and persisted more than usual. Strange phenomenon that I only really noticed during family holidays. Let me explain.

My parents were from the West Coast of Ireland; my mom was a “city girl” from Limerick, and my dad a country boy. Even though Limerick is technically on the coast, it cannot really be called a beach town, as the main waterway that dominates the city is the mighty River Shannon.
When the family moved to England in the early 1950s for work and children started to arrive, my parents’ “go to” place every year was the beach. Specifically, the wonderful and sometimes wild coast of Cornwall, home of the novel Poldark, Cornish pasties, and the best clotted cream in the world. (In my opinion).

Family time there always included time on the beach every day, regardless of the weather, which, being England, did not always co-operate with the summer season. These were wonderful days. For my parents, because neither of them could swim, the walk on the beach, with toes in the water was a wonderful break for them. My father had a fresh soap odor. This replaced the rubbery taste that had accompanied him for years of working at the Avon Tire Company. My mother’s step became lighter, and she would sing more than normal. We never knew if that was gift, but we took it as one. And having Fish and Chips a few times during the week was a real bonus. Especially as the fish was likely fresh off the boat and not some frozen specimen as we might find inland. Everything; the sea breeze, the food, the atmosphere, all tasted better.

We all have these places that represent a “walk on the beach”. Somewhere where pondering or reflecting seems to be better, freer, more in contact with nature and with God. Regardless of the weather!

Why is this? What does the ocean wash away that our steady, asphalt-filled, media-entrapped world cannot release from within? I think we may not be able to name it, but we can feel it. There is a release that this wide open place tells us about the doors and passageways of our regular lives. There is something else out there. Something requiring our immersion and permission to enter. Or perhaps expecting us to give ourselves permission to be present to it. Nature. Seasons. The place where land meets sea. Not just physically, but spiritually.

For myself, this taste of the ocean and the coast was always a desirable location to be. Now, located near the Pacific in California, it is always a place of refuge and enjoyment. The openness, the wildness, the calming nature of the waves, all contribute to why so many of us love the sea and the seashore.
I think we all feel this way, even when the ocean can be scary and intimidating. We have a certain respect for our own powerlessness when it rises up to meet us in a way we cannot contain. Just as life is that way sometimes. I wonder what your own experience of the ocean and shorelines is? Is the sea capable of washing away something in your soul, beyond the surface sand, and the daily tides?

All of life may not be a walk on the beach, but still, we look forward to one when we can get there.

 

 

 

 

Copyright 2026 Michael J. Cunningham OFS

Posted on by Michael J. Cunningham

Why Can’t Every Day Be a Spiritual Day?

I have been asked this question more than once over the years. Sometimes by retreatants leaving San Damiano on the last morning. Sometimes by people who attend the Monday gatherings. Sometimes, honestly, by myself.

The literal answer is that, of course, it cannot be. The world will not stop for you. The meetings will be scheduled. The emails will arrive. The unpleasant colleague will still be sitting across the table tomorrow morning. We cannot turn each day into a retreat.

But the question contains its own answer if we are willing to look at it differently.

What we are really asking, when we ask that question, is whether the peace we found on retreat can travel home with us. Whether the silence that opened something can keep opening it on a Tuesday morning. Whether God, who felt so near in the chapel, can be near in the conference room too.

The answer is yes. But it requires a different kind of seeing.

I spent thirty-five years in the competitive high-tech industry. Some of that time was spent trying to help people in discord work toward a common goal. We usually had the goal. What we sometimes did not have was a culture, or a set of behaviors, that matched it. People in the same meeting could agree on the destination and still treat each other in ways that made the destination impossible. I watched it for decades. I sometimes contributed to it.

It was in those years that I came to believe Karl Rahner was right when he said the Christian of the future will be a mystic, or will not exist at all.

That sentence is often misread as a warning about decline. It is actually a description of what is required to remain human. Rahner was not talking about visions or ecstasies. He was talking about the lived experience of love, of goodness, of God — directly, in one’s own life, not borrowed from a teacher or absorbed from a book. He believed that without that direct experience, faith would not survive what was coming.

I think he was describing not just the future of faith but the future of any meaningful day at work.

So, I spent more than a decade trying to figure out how the peace of the monastery could travel into the ordinary. The Celts knew how. The desert fathers knew how. The Sufis, the Hasidim, and the Zen masters knew how, each in their own language. None of them taught withdrawal as the goal. They taught a way to stay present in the midst of what is, without losing the thread that connects you to God.

This is what I have come to call everyday mysticism. It does not require a different life. It requires different attention. The same conference room becomes a different room when you walk into it, noticing, pausing, and responding from a settled heart rather than a reactive one. The unpleasant interaction is not transformed by avoidance. It is transformed by the trace you leave inside it.

That trace is your spiritual footprint. It is the soul leaking out around the edges of whatever you do. And it can be formed.

So no, every day cannot be a spiritual break day. But every day can carry the same mystical possibility, if you are willing to bring it in yourself. The retreat is not the place. The retreat is the disposition. You can leave the chapel and take it with you, or you can sit in the chapel and never receive it.

The choice is interior. It is yours. And it is available tomorrow morning at nine.