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Noticing

Noticing

Today I am going to notice

What’s going on

Just for an untimed moment,

To linger,

dangle in the present,

Not reflecting, just considering,

Savoring the existing,

Not moving on,

Judging,

Or reacting,

But rather

Letting it dissolve

In my mouth,

Without expectations of reward,

Attribution,

Praise,

Worthiness.

Just leaving it alone with me;

In a timeless exercise.

 

I will not wonder whether others are watching,

Fill my mind with expectations of how I look, or feel to others,

But purely be present,

As a human who observes,

Their surroundings,

In this Garden of Eden,

And suffering,

And most of all … love.

 

Today I will be Atticus Finch,

Perhaps not “climbing into their skin”

But at least noticing.

What makes someone cry,

Or smile.

Why a leaf droops in the evening shade,

And strains upwards in the mid-day sun.

 

Taking as many moments as it takes to notice,

And then capturing it, carefully,

Like the smell of a home-cooked meal,

Where words won’t describe,

The inner warmth

Felt by just a pure, heartfelt,

Connection.

 

A connection without words,

the presence of God.

 

Posted on by Michael J. Cunningham

Being and Doing: What Centering Prayer Teaches

Being and Doing: What Centering Prayer Teaches

If you practice centering prayer, you already know the dance between being and doing. You sit in silence, consenting to God’s presence. That’s being. But when thoughts arise—and they always do—you gently return to your sacred word. That’s doing. Not much doing, just a whisper of intention, a soft returning. But it’s doing nonetheless.

The practice works because being and doing aren’t opposites. They’re partners.

What Happens in the Prayer

In centering prayer, you’re not trying to empty your mind or stop your thoughts. You’re learning a different way of relating to them. A thought arises—your to-do list, a worry, a memory—and you don’t fight it. You simply notice it’s there, and gently return to your sacred word.

Notice. Return. Notice. Return.

That gentle returning is doing. But it emerges from being—from your fundamental openness to God’s presence within you.

This is what Thomas Keating meant when he said centering prayer isn’t about getting rid of thoughts but about changing our relationship to them. You’re learning that you don’t have to chase every thought, engage every worry, or solve every problem that floats through your awareness.

You can simply let them pass, like boats on a river, while you remain present to Something deeper.

What This Teaches About Life

Here’s what surprised me after years of centering prayer: the practice wasn’t just teaching me how to pray. It was teaching me how to live. That same quality of gentle noticing and returning? It works in daily life too.

You’re in a meeting and your mind starts racing toward the next task. Notice. Gently return to presence, to this meeting, to these people.

You’re washing dishes and treating it like just another chore to get through. Notice. Gently return to the experience—the warm water, the simple service, this moment.

Someone says something that triggers defensiveness and you feel the familiar reaction rising. Notice. Pause. Return to your deeper intention—to listen, to understand, to respond from love rather than react from fear. Sacred Noticing is centering prayer extended into the rest of your day.

The Same Gentle Movement

In centering prayer: Thought arises → Notice → Gently return to sacred word
In Sacred Noticing: Stimulus arises → Notice → Pause → Respond from presence

See the similarity? Both practices involve the same fundamental movement—a gentle returning to presence when you’ve drifted into autopilot. A soft choosing of being even in the midst of doing.

The miracle of centering prayer isn’t that thoughts stop coming. They don’t. The miracle is that you learn you don’t have to be controlled by them. You can notice them and choose something deeper—presence, openness, consent to God’s action within you.

The miracle of Sacred Noticing is the same. The tasks don’t stop coming. The to-do list doesn’t disappear. But you learn you don’t have to be controlled by the tyranny of productivity. You can notice what’s present and choose to engage your life from being, not just doing.

Both Require Doing

Here’s what people sometimes miss: even centering prayer involves doing.

You choose to sit. You choose your sacred word. You choose to return to it, again and again, with the gentlest intention. It’s minimal doing—a whisper, not a shout—but it’s doing nonetheless.

This is the integration: Being doesn’t mean doing nothing. It means doing from a different place—from presence, from openness, from consent rather than control. In prayer, you consent to God’s presence and action within. That consent is both being (receptive openness) and doing (active choice to return when thoughts pull you away).

In daily life, you consent to each moment as it is, bringing that same quality of receptive presence to whatever needs doing. The dishes still need washing. The email still needs sending. The difficult conversation still needs to happen. But you’re there; actually there, while it’s happening.

The Practice Extends Itself

Centering prayer taught me I could sit for twenty minutes in receptive silence, gently returning to presence whenever I drifted. That was revolutionary. Sacred Noticing taught me I could bring that same quality of gentle returning into the rest of my day. That was life-changing.

  • You’re making coffee—notice you’re lost in planning, gently return to the experience of making coffee.
  • You’re talking to your spouse—notice you’re formulating your response instead of listening, gently return to presence with them.
  • You’re walking to your car—notice you’re already three tasks ahead, gently return to the walk itself, the air, the light, your body moving.

Same gentle movement. Same patient returning. Same integration of being and doing.

The Gift of Both

What centering prayer gives you in the silence, Sacred Noticing gives you in the noise.

  • Both teach you that being isn’t separate from doing. Being is what makes your doing human, conscious, alive.
  • Both teach you that you don’t have to control everything. You can trust the gentle returning, the patient practice, the accumulated moments of choosing presence.
  • Both teach you that the spiritual life isn’t somewhere else, in some other moment when things are quieter or holier or more perfect. It’s here, in this moment, with these tasks, in this ordinary life.

The sacred word in centering prayer isn’t magic. It’s just a way back to presence when you’ve drifted. Sacred Noticing isn’t magic either. It’s just the same way back, extended into the rest of your day.

Notice. Return. Notice. Return.

In prayer and in life, being and doing dance together. And both are sacred.

Pause for Thought:
The gentle returning you practice in centering prayer—what if that same movement could inform every moment of your day?

Michael Cunningham, OFS
spiritualbreak.com

Posted on by Michael J. Cunningham

New Year, New Energy

New Year, New Energy

Well, here we are again. We are at the threshold again. The calendar has turned, the confetti has been swept away, and here you are—perhaps carrying more of last year than you’d like. The resolutions are there, waiting like unopened packages. But something feels heavy, doesn’t it? The list of changes you want to make feels less like possibility and more like one more thing you don’t have the energy for.

We get tired in place. That’s a phrase that keeps returning to me, one I hear frequently. Not just physically exhausted, though that’s real enough. But spiritually tired—when the very thought of moving forward feels like too much. When the familiar groove, even if it’s wearing you down, feels safer than the risk of stepping out.

Last week I talked about the carousels we ride—those repeating patterns that define us, the comfortable orbits we trace again and again. Family roles we’ve inhabited for decades. Professional identities we’ve polished until they shine. Spiritual practices we can perform without really showing up. Round and round, the music playing, the world whirring past.

But here’s what I’ve learned: the carousel doesn’t lock you in. You can step off. But another question arises, do you believe you have the energy to do it.

The Lie of the Empty Well

At time, we tell ourselves we’re running on fumes. That whatever reservoir of grace or vitality or spiritual fuel we once had has gone dry. And so, we stay put, conserving what little we think we have left, afraid that any significant movement will empty us completely.

But what if that’s backwards? What if the very act of staying “tired in place” is what’s draining us? What if the energy we need doesn’t come from hoarding what we have, but from opening ourselves to what’s already being offered?

Noticing—and I mean really notice—how your body feels when you think about making a genuine change. Not a surface resolution to exercise more or read more books. But a real shift in how you show up in your life. There’s probably resistance there. Fear, maybe. Exhaustion, certainly. The truth of leaving or staying will fulfil itself.

Instead … pause. Don’t rush past that feeling or argue with it. Just let it be there. This is important information about where you are, not where you think you should be.

Grace Isn’t Waiting for You to Be Ready

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: if we wait until we feel energized before we begin, we may never begin. The gift of new energy doesn’t usually arrive before we need it. It shows up when we take the first step without it.

This is what true faith looks like—not certainty, not feeling spiritually charged and ready, but willingness. Just willingness. Diving right into the smallest crack in your resistance.

St. Francis understood this. He didn’t rebuild San Damiano because he felt full of energy and vision. He was most likely suffering from PTSD. He started picking up stones while still confused, still broken, still unsure of what he was doing. The clarity came later. The energy came from the doing.

What spiritual gifts position us for this kind of movement? I keep returning to three:

Poverty of spirit—admitting we don’t have this figured out, that we’re not in control, that we genuinely need help. This isn’t resignation. It’s the opposite. It’s saying: I can’t do this alone, and I’m willing to receive what I need. Be ready.

Present-moment awareness—not getting lost in the weight of all the changes we think we need to make, but showing up fully for this single breath, this one choice, this particular moment. Sacred Noticing isn’t about fixing everything. It’s about being awake to what’s happening now.

Trust in abundance—believing, against all evidence of our tiredness, that we are not operating from scarcity. That grace is not something we have to earn or manufacture, but something we’re swimming in, whether we notice it or not. It is there, waiting inside to be released.

The Disposition of Beginning

You don’t need to change your whole life today. You don’t need to feel ready. You don’t need to have energy you don’t feel.

You just need to be willing to notice differently. To pause before automatically saying yes to the familiar pattern. To respond from intention rather than from habit, even once.

The carousel is still there. Its music is still playing. But you’re standing still for a moment, aware that you have a choice. That awareness itself is grace. That pause itself is energy you didn’t manufacture.

What if the “new you” isn’t about becoming someone different, but about allowing yourself to show up as who you already are beneath all the tired patterns? What if the energy source you need isn’t something you have to generate, but something you have to stop blocking?

The New Year doesn’t care about your resolutions. But it does offer something more valuable: this present moment, empty of expectations, full of possibility. The question isn’t whether you have energy for the year ahead. The question is whether you’re willing to receive what’s already being given.

Right now. In this breath. On this ordinary day. Today.

New energy doesn’t announce itself with trumpets. It whispers: take one step. That’s all. Just one.

And then, unexpectedly, you find you can take another.

What carousel are you ready to step off of? What would it mean to stop being tired in place?

 

Copyright 2026 Michael J. Cunningham OFS

 

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The Carousel of Our Own Making

 

A Reflection on Freedom and the Sacred Noticing of Our Patterns

Notice

We ride the carousel of our own lives—round and round, the painted horses rising and falling in their predetermined arc. The music plays, familiar and comforting. We know every note, every rhythm, every moment when the brass ring appears. For a time, it’s delightful. The lights flash, the world blurs into pleasant motion, and we feel the rush of movement without the risk of actually going anywhere.

But sit with this long enough, really notice it, and something shifts. The delight becomes duty. The music, once charming, becomes the soundtrack of our confinement. We realize that we’ve ridden this same circuit a thousand times—the same conflicts, the same compromises, the same carefully constructed identity spinning in its grooved track.

And here’s the uncomfortable truth that Sacred Noticing reveals: we are both the rider and the operator. We bought the ticket. We climb aboard each morning. We hold ourselves to the painted horse even when our legs ache and our spirit longs for solid ground.

Pause

St. Francis of Assisi knew something about carousels. The whole courtly world of Assisi was one—the merchants spinning in their pursuit of wealth, the nobles in their pursuit of honor, the church in its pursuit of power. Round and round, each carousel maintaining its own illusion of progress while going nowhere at all.

His genius was the pause. That moment in the cave. That kiss of the leper. That stripping away of his father’s clothes in the public square. Not a rejection of the world, but a rejection of the wheel.

In that pause, in that stepping off, he discovered something radical: we have freedom of movement. We always have. The carousel continues spinning, but we need not remain on it. We are the only ones who lock ourselves into the patterns of our lives—into jobs that drain us, relationships that diminish us, identities that no longer fit the people we’re becoming.

But here’s the deeper truth that Francis embodied: the only thing truly spinning is the world itself. We’ve mistaken the world’s motion for our own. The earth turns on its axis, seasons cycle, circumstances rise and fall—but we, at our center, can be still. We can be home.

And home, Francis teaches us, isn’t a place we’re spinning toward or away from. Home is the ground of our being, the presence of God that travels with us. He made home in a cave, in a leper colony, on a mountain, beneath the stars. Home was wherever he stood in awareness of the Divine presence.

The Franciscan insight is that this freedom isn’t found in acquiring something new. It’s found in the poverty that lets go. It’s in the simplicity that walks away from the most recent, irrelevant call. It’s in the humility that admits: this ride isn’t serving me anymore. It’s in the recognition that I can plant my feet anywhere and call it holy ground.

Respond

So what does Sacred Noticing call us to do?

First, notice without judgment where you’re spinning. What patterns have become prisons? What familiar circuits have you mistaken for the journey itself? Be gentle here—we don’t climb onto carousels because we’re foolish, but because they once brought us joy, or safety, or belonging.

Then pause. Really pause. Step off the platform even if just for a breath. Feel what solid ground is like beneath your feet. This is the contemplative moment—not thinking about freedom, but experiencing it. Recognize that while the world spins in its endless revolution, you don’t have to spin with it. You can be still. You can be centered. You can be home right here, right now.

Finally, respond. Not with drama or self-recrimination, but with the simple wisdom of someone who recognizes they’re free to move. Maybe you walk away from the carousel entirely. Maybe you return for one more ride, but now as a choice rather than a compulsion. Maybe you invite others to step off with you. Maybe you simply stand still and let the world do its spinning while you rest in the unchanging love that holds you.

Francis would remind us: the creation is vast. God’s playground extends far beyond our small mechanical circles. There are fields to walk through, lepers to embrace, birds to preach to, a sun to call brother, a moon to call sister. And wherever we stand in that vastness, we are home. Because home isn’t a destination. Home is the awareness that we are held, we are loved, we are free—no matter what spins around us.

The carousel will keep spinning. The world will keep turning. They always do. But you—blessed, beloved, free—you can notice where you are, pause in the awareness of your own stillness at the center, and respond with the wisdom of one who knows: I can make home wherever I am.

The question isn’t whether you can step off.

It’s whether you’ll notice that you’ve been standing on holy ground all along.

Reflection Copyright 2026 Michael J. Cunningham OFS

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A Christmas Night Homily

Christmas Night Homily

 

This Christmas, I found myself at Mass at my granddaughter’s school in Washington, DC. Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart—a small chapel, an intimate gathering. The celebrations held that quality of closeness where every word matters, where presence itself becomes prayer.

 

The Nigerian priest who celebrated Mass that evening remains unnamed in my notes, though his homily has stayed with me like light through a window. His focus: coming into the light—a major theme of Advent and Christmastide. But Father made this achingly personal. His words centered not on the presence of God, but on our practiced art of turning away.

 

He spoke of his own darkness—a time when depression rendered him to long days of sadness in his room, the curtains drawn, the world shut out. Until a fellow priest entered, crossed the room, and threw back those curtains.

 

“Come out into the light,” the priest said.

 

In that moment, everything shifted. What followed in his homily was not performance but presence—authentic love pouring through words, gesture, the very movement of his hands. This was real.

 

He offered three invitations.

 

 

Come Into The Light

 

Do not remain in the darkness. This was his first call. Not a command but an invitation.

 

Remaining ignorant of God’s presence can be an accident or a choice. We all have free will. The expression of love in the world is how God’s presence is detected. Where love is absent, other wills make themselves known. Simple, really, when you see it this way.

 

How often do we choose the familiar shadows over the unfamiliar light? We know where the walls are in darkness. We’ve learned to navigate by feel. But the invitation remains: step into the doorway where morning breaks.

Regardless of our spiritual path, love draws us. Even those who feel unloved yearn for it. This is turning the light on. Coming out of the darkness. If you are darkening someone else’s room, you could do something to change that.

Release The Past

Being present is where we live our lives. And yet many define themselves by what others say they are, or what they say about themselves. The past becomes identity. Where we have been becomes who we are. This is a choice, not a permanent state of being.

Our past whispers of who we were. But the present moment—this breath, this choice, this opening—speaks of who we might become. Keeping God in the frame, discerning rather than deciding, exploring instead of retracting, discovering where the light is, or could be, and then following it—this makes all the difference.

Our past is not us. It’s where we have been, not where we are going, unless we choose to return there.

What would it mean to release the stories others have told about you?

What would it cost to release the stories you’ve told yourself?

 

 

Embrace Responsibility

Even as children, we learn the benefit of not being the “guilty one.” Quickly, we develop skills to blame others for where we are, or what we might become.

How much energy flows into changing others? How little remains for transforming ourselves?

Many spend their lives trying to change the behavior of those around them. Yet psychologists and spiritual directors tell us the same truth: the person who has the greatest opportunity to change us is ourselves.

Still, we spend so much time trying to become someone who is trying to mold us, and then blame them for how it turned out. I took the wrong advice. Made the wrong move. Went to the wrong school. Picked the wrong job.

The list goes on.

And while others certainly play a part in shaping our path, blaming them for what happens to us will not help in the long run. We are, to a certain extent, masters of our own destiny. To claim this mastery, we must become more vulnerable, willing to take responsibility for our decisions and their outcomes.

 

This is not burden but liberation. Not guilt but grace. The freedom to choose, again and again, the direction we will turn.

Coming Home

And so we return to that Christmas Mass, to curtains thrown back, to light flooding a darkened room.

The invitation is always the same:

 

Come into the light.

 

Not tomorrow.

Not when you’re ready.

Not when you’ve figured it all out.

 

Now.

 

This moment.

 

Here.