Posted on by Michael J. Cunningham

“The Man with the Face of a Bin”: A Tale of One City

 

“The Man with the Face of a Bin”: A Tale of One City

I did not go looking for this headline. It found me, the way the best material always does, wedged between two stories. A man in a silver cape, wearing an actual rubbish bin as a helmet, had just come second in a British parliamentary by-election. I read it twice. Then I read his manifesto, which is where this stopped being a funny headline and started to become a homily of sorts.

His name is Count Binface. He is, by his own account, an intergalactic space warrior, leader of the Recyclons, from the planet Sigma IX. He has stood for election against two sitting Prime Ministers and lost to both, stood for Mayor of London and lost that too, and on the thirteenth of August stood in Clacton against Nigel Farage (a well-known British politician) and lost again — this time with 9,455 votes to Farage’s 22,239. In electoral terms that is a drubbing. In every other term, nearly ten thousand people in one of the most fought-over patches of England looked at a man dressed as a household waste container and decided he had the better idea.

Reading the Manifesto Out Loud, With a Straight Face

Try it sometime. Here is an actual, documented Count Binface policy platform: cap the price of a croissant at £1.10. (Around $1.45) Cap a 99 ice cream at 99 pence. Cap a kebab at £2. Tie every government minister’s salary to a nurse’s salary for the next hundred years. Strip MPs of their subsidized Parliament-canteen food and drink. Build at least one affordable house.

Read that last one again. Not a thousand houses. Not a bold ten-year plan with a ribbon-cutting ceremony. At least one. He has said, in interviews, with a completely straight face, that he is confident he can hit that target, if not surpass it. It is the single strangest housing policy in modern British politics, and it is also, I would argue, the most honest one on offer — because it does not pretend to be more than it is.

Compassion, Filed Under Comedy

Binface has pledged to hand over the royal palaces — except the one the King still needs — and the seized homes of Russian oligarchs to people who currently have nowhere to sleep. Whatever surplus his campaigns raise, he sends to Shelter, the housing charity, rather than keeping it. This is a joke candidate quietly outperforming a great many non-joke candidates on the single question that most defines whether a society is caring for the people at its edges.

I am not going to stand here and tell you a man in a bin helmet is doing Franciscan charity. But I will say that the instinct underneath the joke, house the person who has no house, and don’t make a production of your own generosity while you do it, is the same instinct that has animated every genuinely compassionate movement in Christian history. Including the one that started with a rich man’s son giving away his father’s cloth in a piazza. (St Francis of Assisi). Count Binface just tells the joke first so the compassion can sneak in the side door while everyone is still laughing.

Humility Is Also a Policy Position

Notice what almost no other politician does: Count Binface makes fun of himself before anyone else gets the chance. He runs as a joke, campaigns as a joke, and loses as a joke, on purpose, every single time. There is no spin team explaining why second place was actually a victory. There is no dignified photograph pretending the silver bin is a crown. Self-deprecation is not a small trick. It is the discipline of refusing to think more of yourself than the moment warrants — which happens to be a fairly good working definition of humility, and a startlingly rare quality in the one wearing a suit and standing at a podium.

Affordability as a Form of Care

The croissant cap gets the headline but pause on what it is actually about. A price cap on small daily pleasures — coffee-shop pastries, ice cream from a van, a kebab on the way home — is a joke wrapped around a real observation: that the cost of ordinary life has crept up on people faster than their wages have, and nobody in a blue suit wants to say so plainly, because plainly is not how you get re-elected. Binface says it in the shape of a pastry, and the room laughs, and then the room goes quiet for a second, because everyone in it has felt that exact squeeze at the check-out.

Tying ministers’ pay to nurses’ pay works the same way. It is a punchline built on a real question: whose labor do we actually value, and does our economy tell the truth about it? A hundred years is an absurd timeframe on purpose. The absurdity is the delivery mechanism. The question underneath it is not absurd at all.

Care for Each Other, One Ridiculous Line Item at a Time

Strip out the space warrior and the Recyclons, and what is left is a platform obsessed, almost embarrassingly, with whether ordinary people are being looked after — housed, fed, paid fairly, protected from a cost of living that keeps rising faster than anyone’s patience. That is not a Franciscan biography. It is a Franciscan instinct: care for the person in front of you, be honest about what you actually have to give, and don’t dress up your own importance while you’re giving it.

A Tale of One City

Clacton will forget the vote count by Christmas. It will remember the bin. Not because the bin was holy — I want to be clear, nobody is canonizing a man from planet Sigma IX — but because the bin got people to take seriously, for one afternoon, what the man in the blue suit could not get them to take seriously. That is not sainthood. That is just a good aim.

Sometimes the truest way to be taken seriously is to stop asking to be taken seriously.

 

 

 

Posted on by Michael J. Cunningham

A boy, a stone and a Pond

 

 

A boy stood at the edge of a pond, choosing a stone.

Not the flattest one. Not the one that would skip farthest or make the biggest sound. He turned it over twice. He decided something private about it. Then he let it go.

Asked why that one. He shrugged. “It just felt right.”

He never watched where it landed. By the time the rings were spreading, he was already bent over, looking for the next one.

I have thought about that boy many times.

Because most of us do the opposite. We throw the stone and then we stand there, counting circles. We drop a word, a kindness, a hard conversation into the water, and we wait for the ripples to tell us whether it mattered. Did it reach the far shore? Did anyone see the splash? Was it enough?

Here is what I believe, and you may not agree with me. Everything we do is a spiritual act. Everything. There is no neutral surface on this pond. There is no throw that lands nowhere. Every word, every silence, every small decision made in a kitchen or a car or a hallway sends something outward, and that something touches lives we may never meet. We sort our days into what counts and what doesn’t. The water makes no such distinction. It receives everything.

And here is the strange part. We already know this. Something in us knows it before we act. In the half-second before the words leave, before the hand moves, something inside has already registered: this will land somewhere. On someone.

That knowing has a name. It is called intention.

Intention is the part of the throw no one else ever sees. The person on the far shore receives the ripple. The tone, the timing, the visible act. What they never receive is the inside of your hand at the moment of release. Why you did it. What you hoped. Whether the kindness was whole, or carrying a second, smaller motive underneath.

But unseen is not absent. The intention travels with the stone. It is stitched into the act the way the boy’s private decision was stitched into that particular stone. The pond never knew why he chose it. He knew. And somehow, that was enough to change the throw.

Sit with that for a moment, because it opens in two directions at once.

The first is freedom. If intention is real even when no one sees it, then the worth of what you do is not decided on the far bank. The kind act that went unnoticed lost nothing. The apology that was misread lost nothing. The love was in the release, not the reception. You can stop standing at the water’s edge, waiting for permission to call your throw worthwhile. It already was.

The second direction is harsher. If intention travels unseen, then all of it travels. The motive we thought we tucked inside a generous gesture does not stay hidden in any way that matters. It bends the throw. You have felt this from the other side. The gift that somehow asked something of you. The compliment with a hook in it. No one explained it. You just knew. Intention leaks. It always has.

Mystics have a word for the alternative. Purity of intention. Not purity as perfection. None of us throws a clean stone every time. Purity as singleness. One motive, not three. Doing the thing for its own sake. The mystics went further and said: for God alone. Which is another way of saying that when the heart is single, the outcome can be released the instant the stone leaves the hand. What happens next belongs to the water. It was never ours.

The boy will never know what his stones did. Ten thousand throws he never watched land. And something in him will stay light because of it. Not because the ripples didn’t matter. Because he trusted them to the water.

So do we. Or so we could.

Pause for Thought: Before your next word or act, don’t ask whether it will be seen. Ask what is actually in your hand.

This week, notice the half-second before you speak. That small interior moment when the intention forms. Don’t judge what you find there. Just notice it. Then throw the stone as cleanly as you can, and trust the rest to the One who receives every ripple, even the ones we never watch land.

Peace and all good, Michael

 

 

Reflection derived from The Practice of Sacred Noticing: Transforming Your Spiritual Footprint

 

Posted on by Michael J. Cunningham · 2 Comments

The Boat Without Oars

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

 

Posted on by Michael J. Cunningham · 2 Comments

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