I’ve been thinking about walls lately. Not the kind that divide nations or keep people out, but the smaller, older walls; the ones that mark boundaries between one field and another, between the tamed and the wild, between what we’ve claimed and what claims us.
There’s a stone wall near where I lived, ancient and crumbling, that runs along the edge of a churchyard. On one side: mowed grass, orderly headstones, the careful geometry of consecrated ground. On the other: meadow grass grows waist-high, thistles, the anarchic beauty of things left to themselves.
I watched a child walk along the top of it. Arms outstretched, heel-to-toe, completely concentrated. She couldn’t have been more than twelve. The wall is maybe eighteen inches wide—easy enough to walk, dangerous enough to matter.
What struck me wasn’t her balance. It was her face. She wasn’t trying to get from one side to the other. She was walking the wall itself. The in-between. The place that is neither here nor there.
We spend so much energy trying to get from one side to the other, don’t we? Trying to cross over, to arrive, to finally be the thing we’re becoming. We treat thresholds as obstacles—inconvenient gaps between where we are and where we want to be.
But what if the threshold is the point?
What if that narrow space between things—between childhood and adulthood, between one culture and another, between who we were and who we’re becoming—isn’t a gap to be crossed quickly, but a place to dwell?
The girl on the wall was completely present. Not rushing toward either side. Just walking. Just being exactly where she was.
I think about how often I’ve felt “between.” Between callings. Between loves. Between certainties. And how often I’ve interpreted that feeling as lostness rather than location.
But what if liminal isn’t another word for lost?
What if the spaces between the stone walls, the thresholds, the places where one thing becomes another; the places where God speaks most clearly? Not because the answers are there, but because in the in-between, we finally stop demanding answers long enough to listen.
The mystics knew this. They had a word for it: kenosis. Self-emptying. The spiritual practice of becoming nothing so you can be filled with Something Else.
The girl reached the end of the wall. Jumped down. Ran off across the meadow without looking back.
But for those few minutes, she’d inhabited a space most of us rush past. She’d been fully present to the between.
I’m learning—slowly, awkwardly—to do the same. To stop treating my in-between seasons as waiting rooms. To recognize them as sacred spaces in their own right.
To walk the wall with my arms outstretched.
To be, for a little while, precisely nowhere in particular.
And to discover that nowhere is exactly where I need to be.
What are we all looking for? If we start by being honest with ourselves—unless we’re completely consumed by our own ego—most everyone would accept the same definition. It would all come down to three words: unshakable inner peace.
That unshakable inner peace comes from God, of course. But how we get there, how we find it, varies considerably according to our beliefs, lifestyles, and attitudes.
So let me dial back just a little bit. What does it mean for us to be at peace? For the purposes of today, let’s say that being at peace means not being in turmoil. It’s being OK with things—not necessarily in a state of bliss, but managing well. You’re on the plus side of whatever heavy things you’re carrying. You’re not discontent with the world overall.
But are we all there? Not everyone is. Most of us aren’t. So where would you put yourself in this category? Where would you like to be?
Often, we look for downtime—prayer time, relaxation, meditation, all of the above—to try and dial down from whatever might be a heightened state. I’m not necessarily talking about being anxious, but you know that feeling when you’ve just had enough with something. Your day at work, whatever. And so we’re looking for lots of different ways to try and relax.
Relaxing is one way into this process. Relaxing with deliberation, using some of those tools I mentioned. A lot of what we end up doing, of course, is separating our normal, perhaps stressful life from our prayer life or our relaxed life. We are more aggravated under one set of circumstances than another.
In the ideal world, of course, whatever we’re doing during our normal life—whether we’re at school or working or retired—we don’t want to be in turmoil, annoyed, angry, or discontent. So how do we get some of this peace to spill over into those situations?
Perhaps some of those situations are unavoidable, but we can have better ways of dealing with them. When we’re faced with the things that aggravate us, we can engage—hopefully through dialogue—and resolve whatever it is. This usually involves more than one person, although sometimes that internal dialogue with ourselves can be just as challenging as when it involves someone else.
Once we have that resolution, we do get that very smooth “aha moment” of inner peace. Forgiveness has occurred. Reconciliation has happened. It’s palpable, and it isn’t just for our soul—physically, we can feel it as well.
There are literally thousands of books in the world, since the beginning of time, trying to give us ways to cope more with the everyday, with whatever lot in life we’ve been given and whatever we make of it. Leaning into the contemplative, into the place where peace can happen in our everyday lives—this is the goal.
As a retreat director, this is one of the main reasons that people come on retreat. They want to go quiet for a while. They want to renew and refresh, reconnect with their inner self and with the supreme being, God. And even those that don’t necessarily believe in a supreme being still want to meditate, quiet down, relax, and look for the same peace that all those following religious paths are seeking.
But what about the separation of our prayer life or our peace-seeking life from our regular life? This is one of the things that causes them to be separated—the fact that we think about them differently. “This is my prayer time. This is my break time. This is my weekend. This is my vacation.”
We want to have the pleasure of being OK with the world in our everyday life. Part of that is not trying to separate it. We can’t have one face to deal with the rest of the world and another face when we want to have conversations with God. It doesn’t make any sense, and it doesn’t work.
Brother Lawrence, an 17th-century French monk, wrote about “the practice of the presence of God”—where every moment of every day, even in the most mundane and boring of tasks, becomes a celebration of the presence of God.
I’m not suggesting that we’re going to be able to dial in the spiritual characteristics of Brother Lawrence as we’re driving down the freeway getting cut off. But we can do what he invited us to do: be aware of the presence of God all the time, not just when we have time to pray.
This was the revelation that the monks in his monastery had. When they were praying at set times, they realized Brother Lawrence was always praying—because he was always aware of the presence of God in all things. In the dirty dishes and laundry he was moving around the monastery. In the cleaning of pots and pans.
Perhaps this awareness would help us bring some of this peace into our own daily lives. What do you think?
Reflection and image Copyright 2025 Michael J. Cunningham OFS
In my own spiritual journey, I have discovered that the moments of deepest connection with God often come not when I am trying to figure something out but when I allow myself to not know, to rest in mystery, to trust that there are forms of communication happening beneath the level of my conscious understanding. Prayer, at its most profound, becomes less like problem-solving and more like the way a child might approach a beloved grandparent—with complete trust, open affection, and no agenda other than to be present.
This is where the practice of Sacred Noticing becomes essential. When we begin to pay attention to the spiritual dimension of our everyday experiences—when we notice the way morning light transforms an ordinary room into something luminous, when we feel the mysterious peace that sometimes emerges from silence, when we recognize the sacred in a stranger’s smile; we are recovering our childlike capacity to see with the eyes of the heart.
Sacred Noticing is not about forcing spiritual meaning onto ordinary events but about recovering our natural ability to recognize the spiritual that is already present in all that surrounds us. Children do this instinctively. They see faces in clouds, personalities in stuffed animals, magic in puddles after rain. They have not yet learned to dismiss these perceptions as “just imagination.”
But what if imagination is a form of spiritual perception? What if the ability to see meaning, beauty, and connection where others see only material reality is not childish but deeply wise? What if we have educated ourselves out of precisely the kind of awareness that our souls most need?
The path back to the open eyes of the heart does not require abandoning intellectual rigor or scientific thinking. Rather, it asks us to expand our definition of knowledge to include other forms of truth. We can appreciate both the biochemistry of love and its mystery, both the neuroscience of consciousness and the reality of the soul, both the physics of light and its capacity to serve as a metaphor for divine illumination.
This integration requires what I think of as “both/and” thinking rather than “either/or” thinking. We can be both intellectually sophisticated and spiritually receptive, both scientifically literate and mystically aware, both educated and wonder-filled. The child within us is not the part that needs to be outgrown but the part that needs to be reclaimed and integrated with our adult wisdom.
The practice begins simply: looking at the world around us with fresh eyes, allowing ourselves to be moved by beauty without needing to analyze it, trusting our interior responses to people and situations even when we cannot explain them logically. It means permitting ourselves to be amazed by ordinary miracles—the fact that we can love and be loved, that consciousness exists at all, that meaning emerges from mystery.
When we recover this childlike capacity for wonder, we do not become less intelligent; we become more fully human. We reconnect with the part of ourselves that can receive love without earning it, that can rest in mystery without solving it, that can trust the goodness of existence even when we cannot prove it scientifically.
The divine resides deeply within us all, but it often communicates through channels that our overly educated minds have learned to dismiss. The child within us knows this intuitively. That child is still there, waiting patiently for us to remember how to see with eyes of wonder, how to trust what cannot be proven, how to remain open to the mysteries that our hearts recognize even when our minds cannot comprehend them.
Perhaps today we might risk looking at our world through the open eyes of the heart of a child. We might notice the way light falls across our kitchen table and allow ourselves to see it as a gift rather than merely photons behaving according to physical laws. We might feel the love of someone close to us and trust that this love is as real as anything that can be measured, as true as any scientific fact.
In recovering our childlike capacity for wonder, we do not become naive; we become wise in a different way. We learn to live in both worlds—the world of measurement and the world of mystery, the realm of proof and the realm of trust. And in that integration, we find ourselves home again in the place we never really left but had simply forgotten how to see: the kingdom of heaven that exists wherever hearts remain open to the divine that dances through all things, waiting patiently for eyes willing to see and souls ready to receive.
Image and Reflection Copyright 2025 Michael J. Cunningham OFS
A reflection on awakening to the spiritual path through crisis
During a briefing this morning, on the latest of tragically many political assassinations and assassination attempts, the governor of Utah asked the open question: “Are we at a watershed moment?”
The governor responded to himself, saying it could be “the start of improvement and leaving darker times, or it could be the beginning of going into even darker times.”
You could taste the empathy, the sadness, and the distress in his voice, and, to a certain extent, the leadership in his voice. He was clearly implying the need for civil discourse.
This need has never been greater, and it reminded me of when we were young parents—we had two kindergarteners/first graders. Our first and second children are only 11 months apart, so this puts them in the category of Irish twins. On the rare occasion that they caused trouble (humor intended), they would immediately blame the other for whatever had occurred, whether this was an argument about who started it or perhaps something that was broken that they “didn’t do.”
My wife and I had an interesting strategy. We would say, “OK, well, we can’t find out the truth here, so let’s have you find it out.” These issues often occurred before supper for some reason.
So we sent them both into the smallest bathroom in the house with instructions: “You guys go stay in the bathroom until you figure out what is really the truth and who’s to blame and try and reconcile with each other.” Of course, they didn’t know what “reconcile with each other” meant. “Work it out” or “be nice to each other”—I guess those were the words that we used.
So then they went to the bathroom, and we proceeded to listen to what probably would be a good skit in any television sitcom. It usually started with the arm-folding exercise of deadly silence, followed by the “It’s your fault!” “No, it’s your fault!” exchange, which got louder and louder. That also usually ended up with some silence, and then they would start to pick apart the facts of the matter—whatever they were, where someone was, why “I couldn’t have done it,” why “you did it”—sort of like an investigation with the prosecution and defense alternating roles. Some of the funniest conversations would occur here.
Eventually, they would come to the conclusion that “Well, it could have been one of the others—it could have been their younger brother that did it—but now they were going to get the blame for it, and we’re never going to get out of the bathroom.”
After a while we would stop listening outside the bathroom. The sessions didn’t really last that long, but they probably seemed like an eternity to the children—perhaps 10 minutes, perhaps 15; long enough to be able to calm down, realize that they’re in this together (even if it’s just being in the dock together), and figure out what they needed to do to get out.
Now, we’ll never know as parents how many of the stories that emerged out of those results were the truth, the admission of guilt, or whatever. But what it did was help them to reconcile with each other, and it also helped us avoid issuing immediate punishment, at least, not complete injustice, when you’re at the end of your rope as a parent.
I tell this story not because it’s a model for anything in particular as far as parenting goes. Modern psychologists would probably analyze this and explain why this is bad on so many different levels. But I don’t think the kids actually took it that seriously in the end, and some of them even use it with their children now, which they feel bad about. It might be one of those unfortunate hand-me-downs that sometimes happen in families.
Nevertheless, I can’t help but think about this situation that we are in right now in our country, where we have sort of got the opposite of all of this. What we’ve created are separate virtual and physical gymnasiums—giant ones—depending on which side of the argument you’re on, instead of having one assembly hall or gymnasium or gathering space at a high school where people can interact, discuss, and share what’s going on.
One group goes in there, and then they can shout without repercussions, without any pushback, to a global audience or a small audience—whatever they want to say about someone on the other side. And for the most part, the people in these two gymnasiums are not listening to each other. They’re just shouting at each other, but the ones that are doing the shouting are reinforcing the next person shouting. And guess what? Every time someone shouts, the louder you shout, the meaner you shout, the more someone else gets paid for it—maybe even yourself.
This is what has happened: we have lost the ability to dialogue. And I’m not sure that what happened in the bathroom all those years ago in our children’s childhood was what would be considered dialogue, but they were talking to each other. They were discussing something that was contentious to them, at least in their little worlds at that time. And it had a repercussion; a repercussion on how they turned out, how they learned to debate, how they learned to reconcile, how they learned to listen to others.
I’m on the brink of publishing a new book. It’s called Practice of Sacred Noticing, and sacred noticing is a simple mechanism for some of the things that we do when we really want to interact with other humans well. We notice them. We listen to what they’re saying. We absorb what they’re saying. We then wait to let that settles; like ripples in the pond. What does that mean? What should I do? How should I respond? All before we respond. And then the third step is just responding: So we Notice, pause, respond.
This is not rocket science, but it’s something that we need right now.
We also need a break. People are building their own lifeboats. They’re trying to find a way to insulate the ones they love from all that’s going on in the world. They don’t want to engage in a shouting match or, worse still, a shooting match, as it appears to be turning into.
We have to decide what the environment is that we want in our own homes, just as we do in our towns, just as we do in our states, just as we do in our country.
One option is to shut down the gymnasiums. The people collecting the money in the gymnasiums can only do so if we keep shouting. Not that everything that goes on in these two particular gymnasiums is shouting, but taking a break will help us—and it won’t help those who are trying to get rich from all the shouting.
The lifeboat
There she sits …
And what a beauty
Designed to survive any gale
Weather and stormy sea sealed
As if I were a whale
Taking care of all my Jonahs
Someone asked me today
“What’s it for?”
“In case of storms”
And they asked “are you going out to sea?”
And I could not answer
It’s ready, though
My lifeboat
Big enough to hold family
And no others
Because love one’s count
And if it comes …
The big storm that is
I am ready
And have done my duty
To protect myself and a few loved ones
And forget about the others
Who are near or far
Because a lifeboat is for me to live
And survive
For a little while
Reflection, poem and image Copyright 2025 Michael J. Cunningham OFS
Have you ever been with a child and they stop and notice the same scene you are looking at, but they see something completely different? A friend is walking through the museum with his six-year-old niece when she stops suddenly in front of a painting—not one of the famous masterpieces that adults typically notice, but a small landscape tucked away in a corner. “Uncle,” she whispered, tugging on his sleeve, “look how the trees are dancing with the clouds.” When the uncle followed her gaze and saw what he had missed entirely: the way the brushstrokes created movement, the way the artist had captured something alive and joyful that his educated eye had categorized simply as “nineteenth-century landscape, probably minor artist.” The curator in the museum had told him what to “see”, his niece less so.
In that moment, she was seeing something he had been trained not to see. Or perhaps more accurately, had been educated out of seeing it.
We live in a world that prizes what can be measured, proven, and replicated. This is not inherently problematic—scientific thinking has given us tremendous gifts, solved countless problems, and expanded our understanding of the physical universe in remarkable ways. But somewhere in our journey toward intellectual sophistication, many of us have inadvertently closed the doors to other ways of knowing, other forms of truth that cannot be captured in laboratories or proven through logical arguments.
Children, before they learn to be embarrassed by wonder, well before they discover that adults often dismiss what cannot be explained, possess what I call “the open eyes of the heart.” They approach the world with a willingness to believe that trees might indeed dance with clouds, that love is a real force that can be felt even when it cannot be weighed, that mystery is not a problem to be solved but a reality to be entered. And many times, they enter it willingly. How many of us had an imaginary playmate? I know I did, at least before my siblings arrived on the scene.
This capacity for wonder is not naivety—it is a form of spiritual intelligence that recognizes a dimension of reality our rational minds often overlook. When a child trusts that someone loves them, they are not being unscientific; they are responding to evidence that exists in the realm of relationship, gesture, presence, and care. These are real data, even if they cannot be quantified. (A frequent response in our family to “love you” is “love you more”, from the child.)
Yet as we mature intellectually, we often develop what might be called “educated skepticism”—a protective mechanism that guards us from being fooled or appearing foolish. We learn to question everything, to demand proof for every claim, to be suspicious of experiences that cannot be replicated in controlled conditions. While this serves us well in many contexts, it can also close us off from the very experiences our souls most need.
The matters of the soul—love, meaning, purpose, connection with the divine—exist largely in the realm of feeling, faith, emotion, and trust. These are not lesser forms of knowledge; they are different forms of knowledge. A mother’s love for her child is no less real because it cannot be measured with instruments. The peace that comes from prayer is not imaginary because it cannot be reproduced on demand. The sense of meaning that emerges from serving others is not delusional because it cannot be proven through double-blind studies.
When we insist that only what can be scientifically verified is real, we cut ourselves off from precisely those experiences that make life worth living. We may gain intellectual sophistication, but we risk losing the connection with our soul; where the divinity resident in our soul gives us the ability to recognize and receive the gifts that exist beyond the reach of our analytical minds.
Young children have not yet learned to be ashamed of mystery. They can hold two contradictory ideas without anxiety, accept that some things cannot be explained, and trust their interior responses to people and situations. They live naturally in what the contemplative tradition calls “unknowing”—not ignorance, but a willingness to remain open to realities that exceed their understanding.
This is why Jesus told his followers that they needed to become like children to enter the kingdom of heaven. He was not advocating for intellectual regression but for spiritual receptivity—the recovery of that childlike capacity to trust, to wonder, to remain open to mysteries that cannot be controlled or fully comprehended.
The divine prefers to work in the realm of mystery. God speaks through burning bushes and still small voices, through dreams and synchronicities, through the love we feel for others and the peace that passes understanding. These are not primitive superstitions but sophisticated forms of communication that require different kinds of literacy to receive.
Perhaps this is why so many spiritual traditions emphasize the need for “beginner’s mind”—the willingness to approach the sacred with the fresh eyes of someone who does not already know everything, (or think they do) who remains curious rather than certain, who can be surprised by grace.
But here’s what I discovered in my own journey back to childlike wonder: the child within us never really disappears. That capacity for awe, for trust, for seeing dancing trees and feeling the reality of love—it remains, buried beneath layers of intellectual sophistication and protective skepticism, waiting patiently for us to remember what we once knew instinctively.
The question becomes: how do we find our way back? How do we recover those open eyes of the heart without abandoning the wisdom we’ve gained through experience? And perhaps most importantly, what happens when we do?
Reflection and Image Copyright 2025 Michael J. Cunningham OFS
