Posted on by Michael J. Cunningham · 3 Comments

Known

Known

 

I thought I knew

The formulas, the truths, reality

But now I know

Nothing

 

Only presence,

Being,

 

A temporary glimpse of you,

By peaking into your heart,

Seeing the love which pumps relentlessly to get out

Letting you live

Or survive

Or delight

 

Which it is I cannot tell

But I know I love you

 

Not for what you have done

Good or bad

Not for what you have become

Rich or poor

Not for what you gave

Willing or involuntarily

 

But just because

Because I encountered you

 

That’s all.

It was enough

It is enough

Posted on by Michael J. Cunningham

 

Friday the 13th: A Day to Notice

 

It’s Friday the 13th today. I notice the date on my phone this morning in a way I didn’t notice yesterday’s. I notice the ladder on the sidewalk. I notice the black cat outside the house, who, for the record, doesn’t seem to know what day it is. He’s doing just fine.

I’m not a superstitious person. Not really. But if I’m honest, I’m a little more awake today than I was yesterday. There’s a hum to the day. I’m watching it more carefully, scanning for what might go wrong, half-seriously expecting something to jump out at me. As if the date itself has teeth.

And I think most of us are like this. We joke about it, sure. We knock on wood and throw salt over our shoulders and pretend we’re being ironic. But underneath the humor, something real is happening. We’re noticing. We’re paying attention to the day in a way we usually don’t bother with. The calendar has been highlighted as special, and so we show up differently. Maybe more alert. Perhaps, more present. More aware that the next moment may matters.

Which makes me wonder: when was the last time I paid this much attention on a Wednesday?

Because here’s what I find interesting. Some of our normal activities are done on autopilot. Driving to work, putting out the trash, even feeding the dog. Certain activities are moved between without really being terribly aware of what spiritual trace I might be leaving.

But give me a day with a reputation, and suddenly I’m wide awake. Suddenly the moments matter.

So superstition, for all its silliness, proves something rather important about us. We already have the capacity to notice. We just apparently need permission. And a number on a calendar is enough to grant it. But here’s where my thinking has taken a turn recently.

I’ve been spending the morning watching the day. Carefully. A little nervously. Waiting to see what it does.

But what if the day has been watching me?

What if every day is watching? Not just this one. What if every moment I walk through — the room I enter, distracted, a conversation half-listened to, the person I pass without seeing — what if all of it is already awake, already open, already receiving whatever I bring into it? Already noticing the trace I’m leaving behind, long before I think to notice it myself?

I think of my friend Tom in his New Hampshire woods. (The picture above). We were walking his property one afternoon when he stopped, breathed deeply, and said, “Mike, this is my sanctuary. This is my chapel.” Those woods didn’t become sacred because Tom finally noticed them. They were already there. Already holding something. He just stopped long enough to receive what was being offered.

I wonder if every day is like Tom’s woods.

Already present. Already watching. Already waiting to see what we’ll bring.

And if that’s true, then we’re not just in the audience of our own lives, watching the day unfold from a safe distance. We’re in the movie at the same time. Being watched and participating. Leaving traces in a story that is somehow both ours and not ours, one that’s already paying attention to us; whether we return the favor or not.

I don’t have a tidy conclusion for this one. I just have the question. And maybe the question is enough for today.

What would change if you walked into tomorrow knowing the day was already watching?

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

Big Belonging and Small Belongings

WEEK 2: BIG BELONGING AND SMALL BELONGINGS

Where Your Identity Really Lives

Last week we explored the question “Who am I?” This week, Advent invites us deeper: Where do we actually find our identity?

The Small Belongings

Consider these questions:

Do I belong to a place? My hometown? My country?

Do I belong to my ancestry? My heritage?

Do I belong to my achievements? My career success or failures?

Do I belong to my relationships? My spouse? Children? Friends?

These are what I call “small belongings.” And before you misunderstand—they’re not bad. They’re not wrong. They’re part of our human experience. They matter deeply.

But they’re not primary.

When we try to build our identity on small belongings alone, we end up feeling that sense of unbelonging we talked about last week. We feel displaced, disconnected, unsure.

Why? Because we’re trying to build a house on shifting sand.

The BIG Belonging

There’s another kind of belonging—what I call BIG belonging.

BIG belonging is our belonging to God. Our essence as spiritual beings made in God’s image. This is the foundation. This is the ground that doesn’t shift.

When we root ourselves in this BIG belonging—when we remember who we truly are as beloved children of God—then all the small belongings find their proper place.

They don’t define us. They simply express different aspects of the beloved life we’re living.

The Interior Garden

Think of yourself as a garden—a sacred interior space, uniquely yours:

I am the ground
I am the flowers
I am the petals
I am the perfume

I feel the rain
I feel the wind
I feel the sun

This garden is your soul. The place where God dwells vibrantly within you. Here you can explore what’s truly happening in your life—the storms, the sunshine, the new growth, the old—all residing together in this sacred space.

This is YOU. Not someone else’s opinion of you. The person you are becoming, with new growth through different seasons. The parts under repair and the parts blooming.

This is your essence. This is your BIG belonging.

The Incarnation Was Plan A

The Franciscan theologian John Duns Scotus taught something revolutionary: God didn’t become human primarily because of sin or to “fix” us.

God became human because of love.

The Incarnation was always Plan A—God’s desire to be with us, to show us who we truly are, to remind us of our essence as beloved spiritual beings.

The Word became flesh to reveal this truth: You belong to God, and God belongs to you.

You are not alone. You have never been alone.

Mary’s “Fiat”

When the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary with news that challenged everything, she responded with one word: “Fiat”—”Yes.”

Mary shows us what it means to live from our true essence. She could have responded from fear, from her social role, from others’ expectations.

Instead, she responded from her essence—as one beloved by God, trusting in God’s presence, saying yes to her deepest identity.

Mary’s yes wasn’t passive. It was radical trust. It was choosing to live from her BIG belonging rather than from the world’s definitions.

This Week’s Invitation

Name your small belongings. Write them down. Where have you been seeking identity? Notice without judgment.

Practice Mary’s “fiat.” Each morning this week, say: “God, I say yes to being your beloved today.”

Visit your interior garden. Spend 5 minutes in silence. What’s growing there? What needs tending? What’s blooming that you hadn’t noticed?

Belonging

Let me leave you with this:

So to belong is to be at home,
At rest,
In Love,
Peaceful,
With friends and those you cherish.

It is to be covered in chocolate,
Warm but not hot,
Dreamy, but not asleep,
Dripping with love,
Leaking out uncontrollably.

This is happiness indeed.
In the presence of God.

 

─────────────────────

 

© 2025 Michael J. Cunningham, OFS

Advent Week 2 • From the series “Awakening to the Divine Within”

spiritualbreak.com

 

Posted on by Michael J. Cunningham · 3 Comments

“AWAKENING TO THE DIVINE WITHIN” – Advent Week One

 

Dear Lord,

In this season of waiting and wonder,
let us see ourselves as you see us.

Help us to discover who we truly are
in your loving presence.

For it is in knowing ourselves as your beloved
that all other belonging begins.

Give us eyes to see the Divine that dwells within us,
ears to hear your still small voice,
and hearts open to receive your infinite love.

We ask this in the name of Jesus,
who came to show us who we truly are.

Amen.

THE EXPERIENCE OF UNBELONGING:

Let me tell you a story. Picture this: You’re standing in line at the airport during the Christmas rush. The terminal is packed with holiday travelers. Everyone around you is on their phone—scrolling, texting, checking in, checking out. The person next to you is video-chatting. Behind you, someone’s playing a game with the volume too loud. Across from you, a woman is frantically typing an email.

You look up. You’re surrounded by hundreds of people, and yet… you feel utterly alone.

Have you ever experienced that feeling of unbelonging—even when you’re in the middle of a crowd?

A few years ago, I traveled to Singapore during the Christmas holidays to visit my daughter and her family. Singapore is one of the most densely populated places on earth—18,500 people per square mile. From the 16th floor of my daughter’s apartment, I could see thousands of lit windows each evening. I would stand there at dusk, looking out, knowing that behind each glowing window, families were sharing their lives together, just as we were. Thousands of families. Tens of thousands of people. All so close.

But what struck me most was something else while riding the MRT, Singapore’s metro system. It’s efficient, clean, crowded. One evening, I boarded a train car with easily a hundred other passengers. I looked around. Of those hundred-plus people, only two of us weren’t staring at our phones. I was one of them.

It was surreal. We were all traveling together through this city, our bodies inches apart, swaying with the same movement of the train. And yet everyone was somewhere else—somewhere inside their devices. Disconnected from where they actually were. Disconnected from each other. Disconnected from themselves.

I call this strange phenomenon unbelonging. That feeling of being surrounded by people yet feeling completely separate. Present in body but absent in spirit.

I wonder if this is how we often experience our own lives. Present but not truly here. Connected to devices but disconnected from our deepest selves. Surrounded by activity but separate from what matters most.

 

REFLECTION MOMENT:

I’d like to invite you into a brief moment of reflection. Just sit with this question quietly in your heart. You don’t need to share anything aloud right now. Just notice.

When have you felt that sense of unbelonging? When you’re with people but not truly present with them—or when you’re not sure who you are in the midst of the crowd?

This feeling of unbelonging isn’t just about our disconnection from others. It’s often a symptom of something deeper: we’ve forgotten who we truly are.

And Advent—this season of waiting for the Incarnation—invites us back to the most fundamental truth about our identity.

About being with God. Being present. Being aware. Being.