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“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.

Posted on by Michael J. Cunningham

Sacred Noticing: A Contemplative Practice for Daily Life

 

…  Between what happens to you and what you do about it lies a space.
This practice teaches you how to find it, expand it, and use it…  

The Practice
1. NOTICE with contemplative awareness what is present in this moment.
2. PAUSE to create sacred space for wisdom to emerge before responding.
3. RESPOND from integrated awareness with wise, heart-centered action.
4. REPEAT this rhythm throughout your day, allowing it to become a natural way of being.

What Makes Sacred Noticing Different
You’ve likely practiced mindfulness. Perhaps you pray contemplatively. Maybe you’ve developed your own ways of staying present.
Sacred Noticing honors what you already do while offering something more: a complete cycle from awareness through wisdom to action. It’s not mindfulness alone. It’s not contemplation in isolation. It’s spiritual awareness in action—integrating all three into one flowing movement designed for the messy beauty of everyday life.

Most practices excel at one thing:
• Mindfulness develops present-moment awareness
• Contemplative prayer opens space for reflection
• Decision frameworks guide wise action

Sacred Noticing weaves them into a single practice. Because genuine spiritual awareness can’t stop at noticing. It must move through wisdom into response. And that response must arise from something deeper than reaction.

How It Works in Real Life

The Method:
NOTICE with contemplative awareness what is present.
• See beyond automatic assumptions and habitual interpretations
• Ask: What else might be true that I’m not seeing?
• Approach familiar moments with fresh eyes
• Notice both the outer situation and your inner response without judgment
PAUSE to create sacred space before responding.
• Use the Three-Breath Method: Take three conscious breaths, feel your feet on the ground, ask “What does this moment need from me?”
• Interrupt automatic reactions and create space for wisdom
• Remain open to what wants to emerge without forcing
• The pause isn’t emptiness—it’s fullness, presence, possibility
RESPOND from integrated awareness with wise action.
• Let your response arise from the wisdom accessed in the pause
• Choose responses that serve the whole situation, not just immediate reactions
• Your response may be words, actions, or continued presence—whatever serves best
• Sometimes the wisest response is not to respond, but to remain present

Yellow Light Moments

Throughout your day, countless opportunities invite you to choose conscious response over automatic reaction. Like traffic lights signaling a chance to slow down, these yellow light moments are everywhere:
• The phone ringing—take one breath before answering
• Email notifications—notice your inner response before clicking
• Transitions between tasks—reset your presence
• Someone’s words triggering reaction—choose response over reactivity
• Difficult conversations—create space for wisdom to emerge
These moments sanctify the ordinary. Every transition offers a thin place where conscious presence can break through habitual response.

Getting Started

Begin small. Choose one routine activity today—morning coffee, walking to your car, a familiar conversation. Bring the three movements to that single moment.
Be patient. What feels deliberate at first becomes intuitive. Trust the practice to work in you as you work with the practice.
Expect sensitivity. Sacred Noticing increases awareness of both beauty and pain. This isn’t a flaw—it’s genuine spiritual development. Practice sacred self-compassion.
Let it integrate. The fruits of Sacred Noticing appear in daily life—in the quality of your presence, the depth of your relationships, the wisdom of your responses.

A Practice for All

Sacred Noticing emerges from the Franciscan tradition of seeing the sacred in all creation. It draws from Centering Prayer, Lectio Divina, and Celtic spirituality—yet remains accessible to all.
Whether you practice contemplative prayer, meditation, or neither, this method provides everything you need to cultivate presence and wisdom in daily life. You need not hold particular beliefs to benefit, though the practice deepens and enriches faith for those who bring their spiritual commitments to it.

What This Practice Offers

Sacred Noticing transforms:
• Automatic reactions into conscious responses
• Ordinary moments into sacred encounters
• Scattered awareness into integrated presence
• Reactive living into wisdom in action
This is not quick-fix spirituality. It’s a lifelong practice of increasing awareness, deepening wisdom, and more conscious living. The practice doesn’t make life easier—it makes you more present to life as it is, with all its beauty and pain, challenge and grace.

The Transformation

Once you begin truly seeing, you cannot unsee.
Once you taste the wisdom available in the pause, reactivity loses its grip.
Once you experience the freedom of conscious response, automatic patterns lose their power.
This is both the promise and the challenge of contemplative awareness.

 

Begin Now

The invitation is simple: Notice. Pause. Respond. Repeat.
Begin where you are with what you have. Every moment contains the possibility of awakening. Thin places are everywhere, waiting only for your awakened presence to reveal them.

Coming Soon: The Practice of Sacred Noticing – A complete guide to this contemplative method for daily life.

Sacred Noticing is offered as a gift. Share it freely. (Click to download) 

When teaching or writing about Sacred Noticing, a simple attribution is appreciated:

 

Copyright 2025 Michael J. Cunningham OFS

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The Head Check: Jesus and the Sacred Turn

A blurred image of a traffic light showing a red signal, with streaks of colorful motion representing fast-moving vehicles in the background.

Part Two: Jesus and the Sacred Turn

Jesus had the most important destination of anyone who ever walked the earth. Yet he kept stopping. He kept turning his head. He kept noticing people in the blind spots.

Consider this moment: He’s on his way to Jairus’s house to heal a dying girl. A legitimate emergency. Life or death. And in the middle of the urgent crowd pressing around him, he stops.

“Who touched me?” (Luke 8:45)

His disciples are bewildered. “Master, the people are crowding and pressing against you” (Luke 8:45). Everyone is touching you! But Jesus knows the difference between accidental contact and desperate reach. A woman with a bleeding disorder, someone everyone else had walked past for twelve years, had reached out to touch his cloak.

He could have kept walking. The dying girl couldn’t wait. But he turned. He did the head check. He saw the woman everyone else missed. “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace” (Luke 8:48).

Two people healed that day. Both in blind spots. Both requiring Jesus to turn aside from his urgent path.

Or consider Zacchaeus, hanging out in that sycamore tree (Luke 19:1-10). The crowd was focused on Jesus—the road ahead, the teaching about to happen. But Jesus looked up. He saw the tax collector whom everyone had learned not to notice, the man so desperate to see Jesus that he climbed a tree.

“Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today” (Luke 19:5).

The head check, again and again. The sacred practice of turning to see what others miss.

And then there’s Moses at the burning bush. He was going about his business, tending sheep, focused on the work at hand. But something caught his peripheral vision—a bush burning but not consumed. The text is specific: “I will go over and see this strange sight” (Exodus 3:3). Moses had to turn aside to see it. He had to do a head check.

And God responds: “I have indeed seen the misery of my people” (Exodus 3:7). God is the one who notices. God is the one who does the head check for all of humanity, seeing those in the blind spots of power and privilege.

I wonder sometimes if God isn’t in our blind spot too.

We spend so much time looking ahead—making plans, pursuing goals, worrying about the future. We spend time checking the rearview mirror—reviewing our past, replaying our regrets. But God is often just over our shoulder, in that place we’re not looking. In the present moment. In the person beside us. In the interruption we didn’t plan for.

One of my colleagues, another Franciscan Retreat Center Director, tells me the most important parts of his day are the interruptions; when grace seeps into the daylight in an unexpected way. Always open to the invitation. Something for all of us to work on!

What if the spiritual life is less about the road ahead and more about the continual turning of the head? What if holiness is measured not by the destinations we reach but by who we notice along the way?

Jesus teaches us this again and again. “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me” (Matthew 25:40). He’s in the blind spot. The hungry person. The stranger. The prisoner. The one we almost missed.

The apostle James warns us: “Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,’ but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it?” (James 2:15-16).

How many times do we pass by people’s real needs because we’re looking straight ahead? We offer prayers when presence is required. We give advice when listening is needed. We move forward when turning aside is the call.

The head check isn’t about having all the answers. It’s about having the humility to turn and look. To see. To notice. To be present.

This week, perhaps we can practice the sacred head check:

Before each transition—entering your home, starting work, beginning a meal—pause. Turn. Look around. Ask: “Who is here that I almost missed?”

Stay with that person for a few more seconds of full attention. Watch what happens.

The grocery clerk becomes Daniel, celebrating his first birthday without his father. The quiet colleague becomes someone carrying unseen grief. Your spouse becomes not a fixture in your landscape but a soul worthy of complete attention.

And perhaps, in turning to see them, you discover something else: God has been there all along, hoping you would turn your head.

“The last move is the ‘head check,’ ensuring no one is in my blind spot, that person who is in my life unnoticed, with whom I might collide, or I nearly did, but didn’t notice at the time.”

May we become people who notice. People who turn. People who see.



Copyright 2025 Michael J. Cunningham OFS

A reflection in the spirit of awakening to the spiritual path around us
Copyright © 2025 Michael J. Cunningham

Posted on by Michael J. Cunningham

On Inner Peace

A scenic landscape featuring ruins and grassland under a bright sun, with a cloudy sky in the background.

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

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I Am the Instrument

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

I Am the Instrument

I am an instrument.

I am a camera, who cannot see,

Or even know why I took the picture.

I am an instrument.

I am a flute, who has the breadth,

But not the sound, or from where it comes.

I am an instrument.

I write these words, as the ink bleeds from me,

Not knowing their form or meaning.

I am an instrument.

I am a prayer, or sayer of thoughts,

Not of my making.