I Am the Instrument: A Reflection on Sacred Transparency
You know that moment when you pick up your camera and suddenly… click. You’ve taken a picture. But you can’t even remember deciding to do it.
This happened to me a while ago. Walking on the beach, some young children scare off the birds scurrying on the seashore. My footing faltered, yet somehow my phone was in my hand. The photo: the birds flying off, leaving the food buried in the sand below, in a flurry all around me. The Southern Californian sun was mixed with the sea spray. I stared at the image later, wondering. When did I take this? Why?
I am a camera, who cannot see, or even know why I took the picture.
We spend so much time trying to be good at things. Good photographers. Good musicians. Good writers. Good prayers, even. But what if… what if the trying is getting in the way?
Meister Eckhart knew something about this. He talked about the Grund—this deep place inside us where God lives. Not God as separate from us, but God as the very ground of who we are—the place we touch when we stop trying so hard.
My friend plays the flute. She used to practice for hours every day, frustrated that her music never quite captured what she heard in her heart. Then something shifted. She stopped practicing to get better and started just breathing into the instrument, letting whatever wanted to come, come.
I am a flute, who has the breadth, but not the sound, or from where it comes.
The music that flows through her now… it’s not hers, exactly. She has the breath. She learned the fingerings. But the melody? That comes from somewhere else. Somewhere deeper. And people stop on the street when they hear it. Not because it’s perfect. Because it’s true.
This is what Eckhart meant about detachment. Not coldness. Not not caring. But this letting go of our need to be the source of things. To be in control. To understand.
I write these morning reflections, and half the time I don’t know where the words come from. My fingers move across the keyboard and thoughts appear that I wasn’t thinking a moment before.
I write these words, as the ink bleeds from me, not knowing their form or meaning.
It’s unsettling at first. This not knowing. We want to be the author of our lives, our art, our prayers. But what if we’re meant to be something else? Something simpler and more mysterious?
What if we’re meant to be instruments?
Not tools that get used up. But… channels. Pipes with no blockages. Wires with no resistance. Waterfalls of God’s love, flowing through us into a world that’s thirsty for exactly what wants to come through.
The birds in my photo probably don’t know they were being photographed. The birds don’t know they’re beautiful. The light doesn’t know it’s falling perfectly. And yet… something is being revealed. Something is being shared.
I am a prayer, or sayer of thoughts, not of my making.
We can practice this. This not knowing. This letting go. We can learn to stop interrupting the flow with our need to understand it, to direct it, to take credit for it.
When you pick up your camera today, or your pen, or your instrument… try asking: What wants to be seen? What wants to be heard? What wants to be said?
Then step back. Breathe. Let your hands do what they know how to do. Let the light fall where it wants to fall. Let the words come from that deep place Eckhart called the ground of being.
You might be surprised by what flows through you when you stop trying to be the source.
You might discover you’ve always been the instrument you were meant to be.
Image, poem and Reflection Copyright 2025 Michael J. Cunningham
There’s a question that surfaces often in our rapidly changing spiritual landscape: “How do we connect across the growing chasm between traditional faith and the increasing percentage of our neighbors who’ve stepped away from institutional religion?”
I’ve discovered that the answer isn’t found in arguments or apologetics. It’s found in something far simpler and more profound: the recognition that we’re all walking the same path, just using different maps.
Consider this … You woke up this morning carrying something—perhaps worry about a loved one, stress from work pressures, or the weight of a world that feels increasingly divided. You breathed. You hoped. You reached out, in whatever way you could, toward something larger than yourself. Whether you call that reaching “prayer,” “intention,” or simply “getting through the day,” the movement is the same. The longing is identical.
This is where the Franciscan heart becomes a bridge.
When Francis embraced the leper outside Assisi, he wasn’t checking the man’s religious credentials. He was responding to suffering with love. When Clare opened her doors to women seeking meaning beyond the confines of medieval marriage, she wasn’t conducting theological interviews. She was creating a space for authentic spiritual seeking.
At our beloved San Damiano Retreat in Northern California, this ancient Franciscan wisdom intersects with our current contemporary world. Our mission statement reads simply: “to provide a hospitable place of spiritual renewal for people of all faiths.” And our retreat offerings Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction to programs on building resilient relationships—demonstrate what this looks like in practice.
Someone recently stopped by my office at the retreat and reflected on the following. “What strikes me most about the San Damiano approach is this gentle clarification: “We are Franciscan Catholics and our retreat themes reflect our faith tradition. The retreats are open to all people of good will, regardless of religious affiliation.” There’s no disguising, no bait-and-switch. Just honest hospitality that says, “This is who they are, and there’s room for you here too.”
Think about what this means. A stressed-out executive, perhaps someone who hasn’t set foot in a church for years, can attend an eight-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program and begin to discover that same present-moment awareness that the mystics have cultivated for centuries. A couple struggling in their marriage can find tools for deeper connection through a weekend retreat that honors psychological wisdom and spiritual tradition. Someone carrying grief can find healing in community without having to first sort out their beliefs about afterlife or theology.
The beautiful truth is that Franciscan values—radical love, care for creation, attention to the marginalized, and embrace of simplicity—aren’t just religious positions. They’re human necessities. When we offer programs focused on these universal needs, we’re not watering down our tradition. We’re distilling it to its essence.
Consider the many Contemplative Walks offered at San Damiano. Visitors practice “recognizing the sacred light of Christ in all things” while walking slowly through gardens on ancestral territory. Here, Christian mysticism, indigenous wisdom, and ecological awareness converge. Participants don’t need to believe in Christ to experience the sacred light that permeates creation. They simply need to slow down enough to notice it.
This is evangelization in its truest sense—not persuasion but invitation, not conversion to doctrine but introduction to a way of seeing. The person seeking stress relief discovers the path to contemplative prayer. The couple learning communication skills encounters the mystery of love that transcends human understanding. The grieving parent finds themselves held by a community that knows something about resurrection, even if they’ve never articulated it that way.
As I enter my third year at San Damiano, I am still deeply moved by the Franciscan commitment to financial accessibility: “We are committed to providing access regardless of financial circumstances.” This isn’t just good social policy—it’s profoundly Franciscan. It says that spiritual nourishment isn’t a luxury good for those who can afford it but a basic human need that requires no credentials, financial or theological.
In our polarized time, this kind of radical hospitality becomes prophetic. While others build walls between sacred and secular, traditional and progressive, believer and seeker, the Franciscan charism creates doorways. It says: Your questions are welcome here. Your doubt is not a disqualification. Your different path doesn’t make you a stranger.
What if we stopped asking, “How can we get them to believe what we believe?” and started asking, “How can we serve what you are already seeking?” What if we recognized that the person struggling with addiction, the executive burned out from corporate culture, the parent overwhelmed by modern life’s demands, are all engaged in spiritual work, whether they name it that way or not?
Programs like “Your Story, Your Legacy” honor the deep human need to make meaning of our lives and leave something worthwhile behind. This isn’t Christian work or secular work—it’s soul work. It’s the work of becoming fully human.
The thirty-five percent who’ve stepped away from traditional religious institutions haven’t stopped being spiritual. They’ve stopped believing that institutional religion holds the only keys to transcendence. The Franciscan response isn’t to argue with this conclusion, but to demonstrate through our actions that institutions can be containers for the sacred rather than gatekeepers of it.
When we create spaces where people can encounter truth without having to sign doctrinal statements, experience love without religious prerequisites, practice compassion without theological explanations, we’re not abandoning our tradition. We’re embodying its deepest wisdom.
The path you’re walking—whether you call it Christian discipleship or mindful living or simply trying to be a good human—passes through the same territories: suffering and healing, loneliness and connection, fear and love, despair and hope. The Franciscan heart recognizes these territories as sacred geography, regardless of the spiritual vocabulary we use to navigate them.
This is what true hospitality looks like: not the tolerance that says “I’ll put up with your differences,” but the recognition that says “your seeking and my seeking spring from the same source.”
In the end, what binds us together isn’t shared doctrine but shared humanity. What calls us forward isn’t the same creed but the same longing for meaning, connection, and love.
The bridge we’re building isn’t between us and them. It’s between the false divisions we’ve created and the unity that was always already there, waiting for us to notice it.
What would happen if we simply started there?
Copyright 2025 Image and Reflection Michael J. Cunningham OFS
This following post is an introduction to San Damiano Retreat for those visiting us for the first time. It also provides a summary of the Franciscan Way, which we promote and try and live out in our everyday lives here at the center. I hope that you find this helpful in your own journeys, and perhaps explains a little more what we are up to here in the hills surrounding the Bay area. God Bless … Michael Cunningham
The Franciscan Way: A Path for Today’s Seeker
An Introduction to Franciscan Spirituality
Welcome to San Damiano Franciscan Retreat Center. I’m delighted you’ve chosen to spend this sacred time with us in this beautiful place named after a small, dilapidated chapel that changed the course of history eight centuries ago.
As we begin our journey together, I’d like to offer you an introduction to Franciscan spirituality—not as a historical curiosity or scholarly exercise, but as a living, breathing path that continues to transform hearts and minds in our modern world, just as it did in the 13th century.
The San Damiano Moment: Where It All Began
It’s fitting that we gather in a retreat center named San Damiano, for it was in the original San Damiano chapel near Assisi that a young Francis, still searching for meaning and purpose, knelt before a Byzantine crucifix and heard Christ speak to him: “Francis, go repair my house, which is falling into ruins.”
Initially, Francis took these words literally, using his father’s cloth and money to rebuild the physical chapel. But as his journey unfolded, he came to understand a deeper meaning—that Christ was calling him to help renew the Church itself, not through power or wealth, but through radical simplicity, authentic joy, and loving service.
That San Damiano moment stands as a metaphor for Franciscan spirituality itself—an unexpected encounter with divine presence that calls us beyond our limited understanding toward a broader vision of what it means to live the Gospel.
The Heart of Franciscan Spirituality
At its essence, Franciscan spirituality is not about complicated theological systems or rigorous religious practices. Rather, it centers on a few simple yet profound elements that continue to resonate across centuries and cultures:
1. Gospel Simplicity
Francis was captivated by the Gospel. When he heard the words of Jesus sending out his disciples without money, extra clothes, or provisions, Francis exclaimed, “This is what I want! This is what I seek!” He embraced radical simplicity not as deprivation but as freedom—freedom from the endless cycle of acquiring and protecting possessions.
In today’s world of consumerism and complexity, Franciscan simplicity offers a counter-cultural invitation to discern what is truly essential. It asks us: What possessions, habits, or attachments might be weighing down your heart? What would it mean to travel more lightly through life?
2. Creation as Sacred Text
Perhaps Francis’s most distinctive contribution to Christian spirituality was his profound sense of kinship with all creation. He addressed the sun, moon, water, and even death as brothers and sisters in God’s family. For Francis, creation wasn’t merely a backdrop for human activity but a sacred text revealing divine presence.
Francis didn’t love nature in the abstract or romantic sense. He encountered specific creatures with reverence and joy—birds that listened to his preaching, a wolf he befriended in Gubbio, the elements that sustained life. This wasn’t sentimentality but profound theological insight—that every created thing bears the divine fingerprint.
In our age of ecological crisis, this aspect of Franciscan spirituality offers prophetic wisdom. It invites us to move beyond seeing nature as a resource to exploit toward recognizing it as a community to which we belong.
3. Perfect Joy in Imperfect Circumstances
One of the most striking features of Franciscan spirituality is its emphasis on joy, even amid difficulty. Francis was known as “God’s troubadour,” singing and celebrating God’s love even as he embraced voluntary poverty and encountered resistance.
In a famous story, Francis explained to Brother Leo what constitutes “perfect joy”—not success or acclaim but maintaining peace and gratitude even when rejected, misunderstood, or suffering. For Francis, joy wasn’t dependent on external circumstances but flowed from the conviction of being loved by God.
In our anxious, achievement-oriented culture, this Franciscan perspective offers revolutionary freedom—the possibility of finding joy not when everything goes right, but even when things go wrong.
4. Contemplation in Action
Franciscan spirituality beautifully integrates contemplation and action. Francis would withdraw to remote hermitages for extended prayer, then return to towns and villages to preach and serve. This rhythm created a spirituality that was both deeply mystical and practically engaged.
Clare of Assisi, Francis’s spiritual sister and founder of the Poor Clares, developed this contemplative dimension even further. Her “gaze” upon Christ through prayer transformed her seeing of everything else. As she wrote to Agnes of Prague: “Place your mind before the mirror of eternity… and transform your entire being into the image of the Godhead itself.”
This integration offers us guidance for our fragmented lives—neither escapist spirituality disconnected from the world’s needs nor frenetic activism disconnected from spiritual roots, but a harmonious flow between contemplation and compassionate action.
The Franciscan Path in Everyday Life
How might we live this Franciscan vision in our daily lives, eight centuries after Francis walked the hills of Umbria? Let me suggest a few practical applications:
Practicing Presence
Franciscan spirituality invites us to cultivate attentiveness to the present moment. Francis had a remarkable ability to be fully present to whatever person, creature, or situation was before him. In our distracted, multi-tasking world, this simple practice of presence can be revolutionary.
Try this: For one day, approach each person you meet as if they were Christ in disguise. Notice how this shifts your attention and transforms ordinary encounters.
Embracing Vulnerability
Both Francis and Clare embraced vulnerability not as a weakness to overcome but as a sacred space for encounter with God and others. Francis’s willingness to be seen as foolish—singing in the streets, embracing lepers, appearing before the Pope in rags—created openings for authentic connection.
In our culture that values strength, control, and competence, Franciscan vulnerability offers liberation. Where might you risk being more authentically yourself, less defended, more open to connection?
Practicing Generous Simplicity
Franciscan simplicity isn’t about following rigid rules of poverty but about cultivating a generous heart that holds possessions lightly. Francis gave away not only material goods but status, reputation, and control.
Consider: What would one step toward greater simplicity look like in your life? Perhaps it’s clearing physical clutter, reducing digital noise, or simplifying your schedule to create space for what truly matters.
Reading the Book of Creation
Francis found God revealed not only in Scripture but in the natural world. This “Book of Creation” complemented the “Book of Scripture,” each illuminating the other.
Try this Franciscan practice: Spend time regularly in nature—not hiking with earbuds in or checking items off a fitness app, but simply present, attentive to the specific creatures and elements around you. What might God be revealing through this sacred text?
Building Peace Through Encounter
Francis was a remarkable peacemaker, even crossing battle lines during the Crusades to meet with the Sultan of Egypt in a spirit of respectful dialogue. For Francis, peace wasn’t achieved through avoiding conflict but through courageous encounter across differences.
In our polarized society, this Franciscan commitment to building bridges invites us to move toward, not away from, those who differ from us—approaching them with curiosity and respect rather than defensiveness or dismissal.
Conclusion: The Ongoing Invitation
As we begin our time here at San Damiano Retreat Center, we stand in a spiritual tradition that continues to offer wisdom, challenge, and hope. The Franciscan path doesn’t offer escape from life’s complexities but a way to move through them with greater freedom, joy, and love.
Francis himself never intended to start a spiritual movement. He simply sought to follow the Gospel with his whole heart, without gloss or compromise. In doing so, he discovered that the way of radical love leads not to constriction but to an expansive freedom—what he called “the perfect freedom of the children of God.”
That same invitation extends to each of us today. In the coming days, may we open ourselves to the transforming power of Franciscan spirituality. May we, like Francis before the San Damiano cross, be willing to listen deeply to how Christ might be calling us to “repair the house” in our own time and place.
The Prayer of St Francis
As we begin this journey together, let us pray in the spirit of Francis:
*Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; Where there is injury, pardon; Where there is doubt, faith; Where there is despair, hope; Where there is darkness, light; Where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek To be consoled as to console, To be understood as to understand, To be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive, It is in pardoning that we are pardoned, And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.*
Peace and all good—Pax et bonum—as Francis would say.
Meister Eckhart was a priest, mystic, and theologian in the late Thirteenth and Early Fourteenth Century. He was, as many preachers of his time, not always accepted by his peers and found himself the subject of the Church’s inquisition process. Today, many centuries later, his work is seen for the far-reaching insights which are perhaps even more relevant today. One of his many famous sermons focuses on the issue of “inward and outer work.” Here, he talks of the struggle we all can relate to, how do we resolve the conflict between the inner life and closeness to God, and our outer life and its relation to the world.
In his own words:
“Suppose a man should withdraw into himself with all his powers,
outward and inward, then when he is in that condition there is in him
no image or motive, and he is without any activity within or without.
Then he should well observe whether there is any inclination toward
anything. But if a man is not drawn to any work and does not want to
undertake anything, then he should force himself into some activity,
whether inward or outward (for a man should not be satisfied with
anything, however good it may seem or be) so that, when he finds
himself oppressed or constrained, it may appear rather that that man
is worked rather than that he works; thus he may learn to co-operate with
his God.”
So much of us have a segmented prayer life, times we allocate for dedicated prayer, and then the time when everything else fills the “prayer void.” What Meister Eckhart invites us to here is to remove “our agenda or our will” from the top of our activities. It is where our need for a result dominates the conversation, the work, the task, whatever that may be. This does not mean we remove our gifts and skills from the process, but instead we gradually erase a firm and thickly drawn line between our will and that of God. When Eckhart says “that man is worked, rather than he works”, we are gradually blending the two worlds of our outer and inner; then our soul becomes permeated with the will of God, as God “works us” rather than us trying to work Him.
He also notes later in that sermon,
“But if the outward work tends to destroy the inward, one should follow
the inward. But if both can be as one, that is best, then one is cooperating
with God.”
Following the inward also, funnily enough, is totally in line with scripture. Following the inward will always be basked in the warmth of love, and therefore leads us into the peace of Christ we all seek. Those who have it, or have felt it, know what a gift it is.
And while Eckhart encourages us towards the inner, it is the world where our outer is most visible; at work, at home, in community, in leisure, while helping others or just being creative, we will feel the results.
For Eckhart wants us to explore the God which we know is present in all. Eckhart invites us to ditch our ego and selfish agendas to ensure we stay in the room with Him forever.
The Inward and the Outward
Here I go again,
The agenda is on the billboard of my mind,
Some added in giant type, readable to all,
Others less so, needing eyeglasses to perceive.
The dual nature of what dominates creates my to-do list for each moment,
Cluttering and countering the peace which fills the background,
Wanting to obscure and wash away my agenda.
Leaving no room for anything.
Save the work and peace which resides within.
Reflection, image and poem Copyright 2025 Michael J. Cunningham OFS
We frequently hear that silence is the language of God. This silence we speak of, of course, is often related to contemplative prayer, the silent variety in particular. Scripture tells us of the importance of this, and even the times when Jesus went into the desert to fast and pray. We can only assume this was also in silence.
Can you imagine just wandering off into the desert, leaving the broken vegetation and walking through the untended natural garden which it creates? There is something beautiful about us leaving our everyday worries and cares and heading out towards some sublime time with God. When this happens with deliberation, such as the time we spend on a retreat, we can enter into the relationship with all the creature comforts, hoping for a connection, some reassurance that God has not left or abandoned me.
Or course, our needy spirit is talking here. Or rather, our needy ego. Here we go again, demanding God’s presence, or some evidence that God loves me. Rather like the inner child who still speaks to us.
Today, I received a telephone call on “Whatsapp” it was a random call from my 3-year-old granddaughter in Singapore who just decided (over breakfast there) that she needed to speak to her “papa.” Phone at the ready, mom obliged, and I was able to take the call and watch her eat breakfast, show me her 3-day old birthday cake and get the “fix” she needed to reassure her I was well and hadn’t forgotten about her.
I certainly can relate this episode to my relationship with God. For sure, I want to hear from Him, telling me I am on the right track, some indication that He is present and ideally, a sign that He loves me.
Maybe the desire herein is really just the Holy Longing, which so many of our spiritual leaders over the years have spoken. The hunger and desire to belong to Him and Him to us. Perhaps that hunger, the presence of the desire for reassurance, should be enough.
However, the reality is when God is silent, then the chances are, things are well from a spiritual perspective. For when he is silent, He is with us.
He is with us always. Let us remember this “silent presence” which dwells deep within us this week; as we take a mental walk in the desert, just to be with Him in the silence.
Reflection and image Copyright 2024 Michael J. Cunningham OFS
