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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 · 2 Comments

About Sacred Noticing

ABOUT SACRED NOTICING

A Contemplative Practice for Daily Life

By Michael Cunningham, OFS

 

YOUR SPIRITUAL FOOTPRINT

Every interaction leaves a trace. Think about the last difficult conversation you had—what did you leave behind after you walked away? Not the decisions or outcomes, but the quality of presence people experienced. The atmosphere that lingered. Whether others felt more settled or more anxious, more open or more defended.

This is your spiritual footprint—the accumulated presence you leave behind in every encounter. Some people leave peace and possibility in their wake. Others leave disturbance and tension. Most of us leave a mixed trail, largely unconscious of the impact our presence creates.

Neuroscience has a term for this: “social-emotional contagion”—the way our inner states spread to those around us through mirror neurons and emotional resonance. We affect each other simply by how we show up.

Your spiritual footprint is being created whether you’re aware of it or not. Sacred Noticing is a practice for making that footprint conscious and intentional.

WHAT IS SACRED NOTICING?

Between what happens to you and what you do about it lies a space. Sacred Noticing teaches you how to find it, expand it, and use it.

It’s a simple rhythm—Notice, Pause, Respond—that brings contemplative awareness into the ordinary moments as your spiritual footprint is formed. Not a technique for special occasions, but a way of being that meets you in the moments you’re already living: the tense meeting, the triggering email, the conversation with your teenager, the decision under pressure.

What makes Sacred Noticing distinct is its completeness. Many practices stop at awareness. You learn to notice what’s happening, to be present, to observe without judgment—valuable, but incomplete. Others focus on contemplation during set-aside time—also valuable, also incomplete. Sacred Noticing completes the cycle, moving from awareness through wisdom to action. It transforms not just how you see but how you respond, not just your interior life but your actual presence in the world.

The ancient Celtic Christians spoke of “thin places”—moments when the sacred breaks through the ordinary. Sacred Noticing helps you recognize that these thin places aren’t rare mystical experiences but are available in every pause, every breath, every moment you stop long enough to let wisdom catch up with your racing mind.

THE THREE MOVEMENTS

NOTICE: Bring contemplative awareness to what is actually present in this moment—not what you expected or hoped for, but what’s actually here. See beyond automatic assumptions. Approach familiar situations with fresh eyes. Notice both the outer situation and your inner responses without judgment.

PAUSE: Create space between what happens and how you respond. You have two options here: Just pause and wait/relax, in whatever form that takes for you. Or be more structured and use the Three-Breath Method is your primary tool: Breath one interrupts reactive patterns. Breath two grounds you in this actual moment. Breath three opens you to wisdom about what’s truly needed here.

This isn’t just spiritual technique—it works with your neurobiology.[1] Ancient contemplatives knew this worked; modern neuroscience explains why.

RESPOND: Act from integrated awareness rather than unconscious reaction. Your response arises from the wisdom accessed in the pause, serving the whole situation rather than just immediate impulses. Sometimes the wisest response is words. Sometimes action. Sometimes continued presence without doing anything at all.

With practice, these three movements flow together into one continuous awareness. You don’t need years of meditation experience. You need to commit to learning a rhythm that, practiced consistently, may transform your way of being in the world

WHERE IT COMES FROM

Sacred Noticing carries DNA from the contemplative tradition that formed me: the Franciscan practice of seeing the sacred in all creation, the Centering Prayer discipline of creating interior space for presence, the Lectio Divina practice of contemplative reading applied beyond scripture, and the Celtic understanding that thin places are moments of true presence available anywhere.

But Sacred Noticing is not a blend of these practices. It’s something that grew from this soil into its own form—a complete contemplative method for transforming your spiritual footprint in daily life.

I didn’t set out to create a new contemplative practice. Sacred Noticing emerged from years of lived experience—retreat leadership, spiritual direction, and my own navigation of daily decisions within the Franciscan tradition.

Over time, I found myself working with a consistent rhythm: noticing what was emerging (often before it was obvious), pausing long enough for wisdom to surface, then offering the next best response. What began as spiritually led decision-making gradually became an everyday reflex. Eventually I realized this wasn’t just how I was approaching my own life—it was a learnable method that could serve others.

WHY IT’S ACCESSIBLE

You don’t need to be Christian to practice Sacred Noticing. You don’t need to believe in God or embrace theological frameworks. The practice works because it engages fundamental human capacities—the ability to notice, to pause, to respond wisely.

At the same time, I’m not hiding the Christian contemplative roots. Sacred Noticing emerges from Franciscan spirituality and centuries of contemplative wisdom. Understanding these roots enriches the practice, even if you don’t share the faith tradition.

For contemplative Christians, Sacred Noticing offers fresh language for ancient practice and helps carry prayer into every interaction. For secular seekers, it provides a structured contemplative method accessible without religious commitment. For those of other faith traditions, it can complement rather than conflict with your existing spiritual path.

The test isn’t whether you believe what I believe. The test is whether the practice changes your spiritual footprint—whether you leave behind more conscious presence and less unconscious reactivity.

WHAT TO EXPECT

Sacred Noticing is practice-based and alignment-backed, not a clinical protocol. It resonates with what we know about attention training and nervous system regulation, and, it has been refined through years of retreats, spiritual direction, and daily leadership.

The practice increases sensitivity to both beauty and pain. As awareness deepens, you notice more of what’s actually present—which includes suffering you might have missed before. This marks genuine spiritual development, not a problem to fix.

Sacred Noticing doesn’t make life easier. It makes you more present to life as it is—with all its beauty and pain, challenge and grace. It’s not another self-improvement technique to master but a relational disposition that may permeate how you inhabit your days.

Most people find that thirty days of gentle consistency provides enough experience to sense whether this practice serves them. The most faithful measure is lived fruit: a calmer presence, clearer speech, wiser timing—noticed first in small ways, then more often.

BEGIN WHERE YOU ARE

The invitation is simple: Notice. Pause. Respond. Repeat.

Choose one familiar situation—your morning coffee, your commute, a recurring interaction. Practice approaching it with Sacred Noticing. See what you’ve been missing because you thought you already knew what was there. Pause before responding to the next trigger. Ask yourself: what does this moment actually need from me?

The practice will feel mechanical at first. That’s normal. You’re building new neural pathways, developing what becomes spiritual muscle memory. With consistent practice—thirty days minimum, often longer—the three movements begin to flow together.

You don’t need to master contemplative theory before you start. You begin with what you have, where you are. Trust the practice to work in you as you work with the practice.

Remember: thin places are everywhere, waiting for your awakened presence to reveal them

 

 

Sacred Noticing is fully detailed in “The Practice of Sacred Noticing: Transforming Your Spiritual Footprint” (2026), which includes structured practices, weekly exercises, contemplative poetry and photography, and guidance for specific situations. The book is due to be published mid April 2026.

 

The practice is offered as a gift to the contemplative community. Share it freely. When teaching or writing about Sacred Noticing, attribution is appreciated: “Sacred Noticing by Michael Cunningham, OFS”

 

http://www.spiritualbreak.com

 

© 2026 Michael J. Cunningham, OFS

This document may be reproduced for non-commercial educational and spiritual formation purposes with attribution.

[1] The first breath interrupts the amygdala’s reactive response. The second activates your parasympathetic nervous system. The third accesses prefrontal cortex wisdom.

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

New Year, New Energy

New Year, New Energy

Well, here we are again. We are at the threshold again. The calendar has turned, the confetti has been swept away, and here you are—perhaps carrying more of last year than you’d like. The resolutions are there, waiting like unopened packages. But something feels heavy, doesn’t it? The list of changes you want to make feels less like possibility and more like one more thing you don’t have the energy for.

We get tired in place. That’s a phrase that keeps returning to me, one I hear frequently. Not just physically exhausted, though that’s real enough. But spiritually tired—when the very thought of moving forward feels like too much. When the familiar groove, even if it’s wearing you down, feels safer than the risk of stepping out.

Last week I talked about the carousels we ride—those repeating patterns that define us, the comfortable orbits we trace again and again. Family roles we’ve inhabited for decades. Professional identities we’ve polished until they shine. Spiritual practices we can perform without really showing up. Round and round, the music playing, the world whirring past.

But here’s what I’ve learned: the carousel doesn’t lock you in. You can step off. But another question arises, do you believe you have the energy to do it.

The Lie of the Empty Well

At time, we tell ourselves we’re running on fumes. That whatever reservoir of grace or vitality or spiritual fuel we once had has gone dry. And so, we stay put, conserving what little we think we have left, afraid that any significant movement will empty us completely.

But what if that’s backwards? What if the very act of staying “tired in place” is what’s draining us? What if the energy we need doesn’t come from hoarding what we have, but from opening ourselves to what’s already being offered?

Noticing—and I mean really notice—how your body feels when you think about making a genuine change. Not a surface resolution to exercise more or read more books. But a real shift in how you show up in your life. There’s probably resistance there. Fear, maybe. Exhaustion, certainly. The truth of leaving or staying will fulfil itself.

Instead … pause. Don’t rush past that feeling or argue with it. Just let it be there. This is important information about where you are, not where you think you should be.

Grace Isn’t Waiting for You to Be Ready

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: if we wait until we feel energized before we begin, we may never begin. The gift of new energy doesn’t usually arrive before we need it. It shows up when we take the first step without it.

This is what true faith looks like—not certainty, not feeling spiritually charged and ready, but willingness. Just willingness. Diving right into the smallest crack in your resistance.

St. Francis understood this. He didn’t rebuild San Damiano because he felt full of energy and vision. He was most likely suffering from PTSD. He started picking up stones while still confused, still broken, still unsure of what he was doing. The clarity came later. The energy came from the doing.

What spiritual gifts position us for this kind of movement? I keep returning to three:

Poverty of spirit—admitting we don’t have this figured out, that we’re not in control, that we genuinely need help. This isn’t resignation. It’s the opposite. It’s saying: I can’t do this alone, and I’m willing to receive what I need. Be ready.

Present-moment awareness—not getting lost in the weight of all the changes we think we need to make, but showing up fully for this single breath, this one choice, this particular moment. Sacred Noticing isn’t about fixing everything. It’s about being awake to what’s happening now.

Trust in abundance—believing, against all evidence of our tiredness, that we are not operating from scarcity. That grace is not something we have to earn or manufacture, but something we’re swimming in, whether we notice it or not. It is there, waiting inside to be released.

The Disposition of Beginning

You don’t need to change your whole life today. You don’t need to feel ready. You don’t need to have energy you don’t feel.

You just need to be willing to notice differently. To pause before automatically saying yes to the familiar pattern. To respond from intention rather than from habit, even once.

The carousel is still there. Its music is still playing. But you’re standing still for a moment, aware that you have a choice. That awareness itself is grace. That pause itself is energy you didn’t manufacture.

What if the “new you” isn’t about becoming someone different, but about allowing yourself to show up as who you already are beneath all the tired patterns? What if the energy source you need isn’t something you have to generate, but something you have to stop blocking?

The New Year doesn’t care about your resolutions. But it does offer something more valuable: this present moment, empty of expectations, full of possibility. The question isn’t whether you have energy for the year ahead. The question is whether you’re willing to receive what’s already being given.

Right now. In this breath. On this ordinary day. Today.

New energy doesn’t announce itself with trumpets. It whispers: take one step. That’s all. Just one.

And then, unexpectedly, you find you can take another.

What carousel are you ready to step off of? What would it mean to stop being tired in place?

 

Copyright 2026 Michael J. Cunningham OFS