A Spiritual Break

Posted on January 3, 2026 by Michael J. Cunningham · 1 Comment

The Carousel of Our Own Making

A Reflection on Freedom and the Sacred Noticing of Our Patterns

Notice

We ride the carousel of our own lives—round and round, the painted horses rising and falling in their predetermined arc. The music plays, familiar and comforting. We know every note, every rhythm, every moment when the brass ring appears. For a time, it’s delightful. The lights flash, the world blurs into pleasant motion, and we feel the rush of movement without the risk of actually going anywhere.

But sit with this long enough, really notice it, and something shifts. The delight becomes duty. The music, once charming, becomes the soundtrack of our confinement. We realize that we’ve ridden this same circuit a thousand times—the same conflicts, the same compromises, the same carefully constructed identity spinning in its grooved track.

And here’s the uncomfortable truth that Sacred Noticing reveals: we are both the rider and the operator. We bought the ticket. We climb aboard each morning. We hold ourselves to the painted horse even when our legs ache and our spirit longs for solid ground.

Pause

St. Francis of Assisi knew something about carousels. The whole courtly world of Assisi was one—the merchants spinning in their pursuit of wealth, the nobles in their pursuit of honor, the church in its pursuit of power. Round and round, each carousel maintaining its own illusion of progress while going nowhere at all.

His genius was the pause. That moment in the cave. That kiss of the leper. That stripping away of his father’s clothes in the public square. Not a rejection of the world, but a rejection of the wheel.

In that pause, in that stepping off, he discovered something radical: we have freedom of movement. We always have. The carousel continues spinning, but we need not remain on it. We are the only ones who lock ourselves into the patterns of our lives—into jobs that drain us, relationships that diminish us, identities that no longer fit the people we’re becoming.

But here’s the deeper truth that Francis embodied: the only thing truly spinning is the world itself. We’ve mistaken the world’s motion for our own. The earth turns on its axis, seasons cycle, circumstances rise and fall—but we, at our center, can be still. We can be home.

And home, Francis teaches us, isn’t a place we’re spinning toward or away from. Home is the ground of our being, the presence of God that travels with us. He made home in a cave, in a leper colony, on a mountain, beneath the stars. Home was wherever he stood in awareness of the Divine presence.

The Franciscan insight is that this freedom isn’t found in acquiring something new. It’s found in the poverty that lets go. It’s in the simplicity that walks away from the most recent, irrelevant call. It’s in the humility that admits: this ride isn’t serving me anymore. It’s in the recognition that I can plant my feet anywhere and call it holy ground.

Respond

So what does Sacred Noticing call us to do?

First, notice without judgment where you’re spinning. What patterns have become prisons? What familiar circuits have you mistaken for the journey itself? Be gentle here—we don’t climb onto carousels because we’re foolish, but because they once brought us joy, or safety, or belonging.

Then pause. Really pause. Step off the platform even if just for a breath. Feel what solid ground is like beneath your feet. This is the contemplative moment—not thinking about freedom, but experiencing it. Recognize that while the world spins in its endless revolution, you don’t have to spin with it. You can be still. You can be centered. You can be home right here, right now.

Finally, respond. Not with drama or self-recrimination, but with the simple wisdom of someone who recognizes they’re free to move. Maybe you walk away from the carousel entirely. Maybe you return for one more ride, but now as a choice rather than a compulsion. Maybe you invite others to step off with you. Maybe you simply stand still and let the world do its spinning while you rest in the unchanging love that holds you.

Francis would remind us: the creation is vast. God’s playground extends far beyond our small mechanical circles. There are fields to walk through, lepers to embrace, birds to preach to, a sun to call brother, a moon to call sister. And wherever we stand in that vastness, we are home. Because home isn’t a destination. Home is the awareness that we are held, we are loved, we are free—no matter what spins around us.

The carousel will keep spinning. The world will keep turning. They always do. But you—blessed, beloved, free—you can notice where you are, pause in the awareness of your own stillness at the center, and respond with the wisdom of one who knows: I can make home wherever I am.

The question isn’t whether you can step off.

It’s whether you’ll notice that you’ve been standing on holy ground all along.

Posted on July 11, 2025July 11, 2025 by Michael J. Cunningham

Emergency Pause: Three Breaths Before Responding to Triggers

Emergency Pause: Three Breaths Before Responding to Triggers

There’s a moment—you know the one—when someone says, with precision, the thing that sets you off. Maybe it’s that specific tone your spouse uses, or the way a colleague dismisses your idea, or how your teenager rolls their eyes when you ask about homework. In that moment, something primal awakens within us, and we’re ready to react with the full force of our accumulated frustrations.

But what if, in that precise moment, we could find what the mystics have always known exists: a sacred space between stimulus and response?

John Cassian, that 3rd-century desert father, who I often refer, discovered something profound in his retreat from the distractions of city life. Even in the supposed peace of the desert, he found himself bombarded by what he called “a river full of thoughts”—not unlike the 60,000 thoughts modern psychology tells us we experience daily. His insight was revolutionary: thoughts become desires, desires become passions, and passions inevitably become actions.

The emergency pause is our invitation to interrupt this ancient pattern. And in particular, the one which happens at lightning speed.

The Sacred Space of Three Breaths

I learned this practice not from a book but from necessity. Years ago, during a particularly heated discussion at a planning meeting, I felt a familiar surge of defensiveness rising. Someone had criticized an approach I’d suggested, and my Irish heritage was preparing to respond with full on Celtic intensity. But something—call it grace, call it wisdom born of too many regrettable responses—made me pause—made me wait.

I took a breath. Then another. Then a third.

In those few seconds, something shifted. The heat didn’t disappear, but it transformed. Instead of reacting from that place of wounded ego, I found myself responding from what felt like a deeper well—one that held both my legitimate concerns and genuine care for the person who had challenged me. The conversation that followed changed everything. Not because I became passive, but because I became present.

Why Three Breaths?

There’s something almost sacramental about the number three in our tradition. Trinity. Three days in the tomb. Peter’s three denials and three affirmations of love. But practically speaking, three breaths give us just enough time for our nervous system to shift from fight-or-flight mode into what neuroscientists call the “rest and digest” state—the place where wisdom has room to breathe, and maybe emerge.

The first breath creates space. Like the moment of silence after the church bells stop ringing, it opens a gap in our reactivity.

The second breath invites presence. Here we remember that this moment, even this difficult moment, is where God meets us.

The third breath calls forth choice. We remember that we are not victims of our emotions but stewards of our responses.

The Art of Sacred Noticing in Conflict

This practice isn’t about becoming spiritually superior or emotionally detached. It’s about what I call “sacred noticing”—paying attention to what’s actually happening both within us and around us before we decide how to respond.

Notice the tension in your shoulders. Notice the story your mind is telling about the other person’s intentions. Notice the difference between the facts of what happened and the interpretation you’ve layered on top. Notice, too, that even in this moment of conflict, you are still held by a love larger than your immediate frustration.

As I wrote in my reflection on “The Mothering Instinct,” we all need someone to “mother” us—to hold us with unconditional love even when we’re at our worst. The emergency pause connects us to that divine mothering presence that never withdraws, even when we’re triggered.

Making Friends with Your Triggers

Here’s what I’ve learned after decades of trying to be less reactive: our triggers are often pointing toward something that needs our attention. They could even be our friends. The colleague who dismisses our ideas might be reflecting our own fear of not being heard. The family member who always seems to push our buttons might be showing us where we haven’t yet made peace with parts of ourselves.

This doesn’t mean we become doormats or stop setting healthy boundaries. It means we respond from a place of centered strength rather than scattered reactivity. Like the trees in “Tall Stories About Trees,” we learn to bend without breaking, to stay rooted while moving with the wind.

A Practice for the Week

This week, I invite you to experiment with the emergency pause. When you feel that familiar surge of reactivity—whether it’s frustration, defensiveness, anger, or hurt—try this:

Breath One: Create space. Literally step back if possible, even just an inch. Let your shoulders drop.

Breath Two: Get present. Feel your feet on the ground. Remember you are held by grace in this moment.

Breath Three: Choose response over reaction. Ask yourself: “What would love do here? What would serve the highest good of all involved?”

Then respond—not from your first impulse, but from the deeper wisdom that emerges when we stop moving so fast through our days.

The Ripple Effect of Pause

The beautiful thing about this practice is how it spreads. When we respond rather than react, we invite others into that same spacious place. We become what the mystics called “instruments of peace”—not by avoiding conflict, but by meeting it with presence.

Your teenager might still roll their eyes, but they’ll also sense something different in your response. Your colleague might still disagree, but they’ll feel heard rather than attacked. Your spouse might still use that tone, but they’ll encounter your grounded strength rather than your triggered defensiveness.

As I often remind retreatants, we cannot control what happens to us, but we can choose what happens through us. The emergency pause is our doorway to that freedom—the space between what life hands us and how we choose to receive it.

In that space, we discover we are more than our reactions. We remember we are beloved souls learning to love in a world that doesn’t always make it easy. And in that remembering, both we and those around us find a little more room to breathe.

The way opens as you walk it—one breath at a time.

Posted on June 6, 2025 by Michael J. Cunningham · 4 Comments

Beyond Boundaries: The Franciscan Heart as Bridge

Beyond Boundaries: The Franciscan Heart as Bridge

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?

Posted on January 28, 2025January 29, 2025 by Michael J. Cunningham

The Ripples of Being

The Ripples of Being

The Ripples of Being by Michael Cunningham

Here in the morning light, as traffic hums beyond the window and coffee drips into the pot, we might consider what the mystics knew: that emptiness teems with possibility. A man named Meister Eckhart once spoke of a desert within the divine, though he might just as well have been describing the space between heartbeats, between breaths, between the moment we reach for another person and the moment our fingers touch.

Sarah stands at her kitchen window, washing dishes. She doesn’t know – how could she? – that her small kindness yesterday (a dollar pressed into a homeless woman’s palm, along with a smile that said I see you) has already begun its journey through the world. The woman bought coffee and spoke to the barista with renewed dignity, who then carried that moment of grace home to her son.

We are, all of us, living in Julian of Norwich’s hazelnut. The entire universe contained in something so small you could close your fist around it. Scientists would later call this quantum entanglement, this way, everything touches everything else, but the mystics (like Julian) always knew. They understood how a prayer whispered in a desert cave might emerge as a song in a Manhattan apartment centuries later.

Look closely at your hands. Really look at them. Teresa of Avilia once said these were the only hands God had now – yours, mine, the barista’s, the homeless woman’s. Divine love wearing human skin, though we forget this most days, caught up in mortgage payments, grocery lists, and whether we remembered to feed the cat.

What would Thomas Merton say if he could see us now, each of us walking around “shining like the sun” while staring at our phones? We are more necessary than we imagine. More beautiful. Even now, as you read these words, something shifts in the universe. A quantum of consciousness changes state. A letter forms on the tongue of someone you’ll never meet in a language you don’t speak, carrying forward some essential part of you.

We live in a world of invisible threads. See how they glisten in the morning light, strung between buildings, between centuries, between hearts. Every act of kindness a stone dropped in still water, the ripples moving outward forever. Every moment of presence a seed planted in soil we cannot see.

Walk gently then, through your ordinary Tuesday. Let the mystics whisper their secrets in your ear: that nothing is truly separate, that love moves like light through the universe, that even your smallest gestures participate in the great dance of being. You’ll never know all the lives you’ve touched, all the stories you’ve entered. That’s part of the mystery too – this holy unknowing, this faithful continuing on.

Tonight, someone will dream a dream that began in the corner of your smile. Tomorrow, a child will find courage in the echo of your laughter. We are all just walking each other home, as Rumi said, though the path spirals through time and space in ways we cannot follow.

Remember this, as you finish your coffee, as you step out into the world: you are necessary. Your presence matters. The universe bends itself around your being in ways no equation can capture. Live with this awareness, if you can. Love with this generosity. Move through your days knowing that each moment ripples outward into infinity, carrying your light forward into futures you cannot imagine but somehow, mysteriously, help to create.

Posted on October 18, 2024 by Michael J. Cunningham

Dream On

DREAM ON

Do you ever have a dream so engaging, that you don’t want to wake up? When it seems that the subconscious is taking us to some other place that the Jungian analysis doesn’t want to visit for once. Where we are not concerned about getting bitten by a rattlesnake in the garden or worrying if that task is late or undone? You know what I mean, the dream of what dreams are made of. We find ourselves drifting off into an unknown world we want to inhabit and stay! The dream we don’t want to leave. And, if we wake up from it for some reason, we try our best to return to it when we return to our bed.

For the most part, these dreams invite us to a place of inner peace; the best dreams are always the ones where we are content, relaxed, and feel that unique inner peace in our hearts, the place where God resides.

The picture illustrated here shows what a dream like this would be like for me if I could try and articulate it. For those who have been sailing on the ocean, particularly on a sailboat, you know it’s a beautiful experience. At least when all is going well.

If you have ever had the opportunity to sail at night, it is a totally different experience. Of course, the navigation is much more complex, as you must use charts, marine knowledge, and a good GPS, but then you have nothing but the wind, slightly illuminated darkness, and the sound of the water on the bow. This is a sublime encounter.

The ocean depicted in the image was taken during a photo excursion on the ocean off the coast of Massachusetts. As you can see there was just enough wind to keep the sailboat moving at a good, but not uncomfortable clip for those on board; the boat was probably doing around 7 knots. This is indicated by the limited whitecaps, which would start to appear around 8 knots and higher. In other words, perfect speed for cruising. The surface of the water is illuminated by the moon, which is out of the image; but its reflection is shown on the right side. And then, of course, there are the stars. Of course, this picture is a composite, with the Milky Way illustrated, but would not be as clear as it is shown in the image. It’s a dream, after all!

So, what has all this to do with my relationship with God? Well, quite a lot, as it turns out. Dreams, of course, can be of both a natural or supernatural nature. There is much written on the topic of interpreting them, and many a professional makes money interpreting them, some more viable and useful than others.

Nevertheless, what goes on in our subconscious when we “remember” a dream often makes a call to action. Whether it is something that is disturbing us that we need to fix or attend to, or something that is a much bigger calling and perhaps even supernatural in nature. These discussions are best left to a conversation with a qualified Spiritual Advisor, who will be very cautious in their handling of your experience.

However, I do see that dreams fulfill a useful purpose in our spiritual balance, when we are off balance, then may indicate that we need to do something different during our waking hours, in order to re-establish peace with ourselves, deal with a problem or a relationship. In other cases, they can indicate how we are doing in our relationship with God. We can treat our dreams the same way as we might interpret some other input we have received, comments from others, listening to a homily, watching a movie, reading a book or poem, or interpreting what a scripture passage means to us. It is best to say open to what our dreams tell us, even if we can’t initially make sense of them. And yes, some of them certainly don’t make sense, but that does not mean we should not listen.

As far as this image is concerned, this depiction of a Dream Journey has all the elements of what a fine dream might look like. The galaxy of stars we inhabit, the wind propelling us through a gentle ocean, and enough illumination to see where I am going, but a perfectly lit world to show off its beauty. Even when the lights are out. Sleep well. God Bless, Michael.

Dream Journey