O Creator of All, make us instruments of peace:

Where there is rejection, let us offer welcome.

Where there is hunger, let us share bread;

Where there is homelessness, let us build shelter;

Where there is brokenness, let us bring healing;

Where there is fear, let us sow courage;

Where there is isolation, let us create community.

Grant that we may not so much seek to be fed as to nourish,

to be housed as to provide a home,

to be comforted as to comfort,

to be understood as to understand.

For it is in gathering that we are strengthened,

it is in giving we receive,

it is in acknowledging our brokenness that we begin to restore,

And it is in serving together that we discover our sacred unity.

May this gathering bind us in compassion,

May our intentions move us to action,

May our gratitude overflow into service,

And may we walk together through the waters, not as strangers,

but as beloved companions on the journey toward justice and peace.

 

So Be It. So Be It. So Be It.

Slowing Down

Slow Down! Why don’t you slow down … “I’m thinking about slowing down.” We hear these phrases from others, sometimes in a less-than-kind tone, and at others, we say to ourselves, “I need to slow down for a while”. Each of these means something else to us, depending on the context and the time.

In summertime, we often take the opportunity to find some time for a vacation when we can really “slow down”. However, expectations often cause us to still remain connected, to phones, text messages, and email. The very tools that help us do our work in a distributed, spread-out way, cause us to wait for another call, email, or message that lets us know that we can’t truly slow down or disconnect.

As someone working in a demanding job, I know the importance of this “slowing down,” this disconnecting from everyday life, even for a short period of time. This is particularly enhanced by being in the company of companions, friends, or family who are trying to do the same thing.

This summer I had such an experience when my wife set up a surprise trip for our family (surprise for me, not for them) where twenty-two of my immediate family, children (grown), spouses and grandchildren boarded two canal barges and “sailed” them through the canals near where I grew up in England. The barges were 40ft long and 20 tons in weight, and the canals are very narrow there, as designed almost 200 years ago as the primary form of goods transport linking cities, rivers, and industry together.

They ruled the transportation of goods until the railways came to take them over at the time of the Industrial Revolution. These barges have all been long converted to accommodation for tourists and barge owners today, and such was our trip back in time.

Traveling through the countryside without traffic, distractions (aside from the occasional cow and other animals in the fields surrounding) was a sublime experience. The barges are only permitted to travel at 3mph, at best, a moderate walking pace.

The scene as you move through the canal is rather like being drawn into a movie at a very slow and consistent zoom of the camera, for you feel like you are in some meditative movie. Being drawn into the next scene involuntarily and gently, with only the gentle hum of the tiny engine as a background chant.

I can imagine it was probably not so serene for the original barge owners, but you could only be envious of the much slower pace of life, the presence of the horse on the towpath drawing them forward in silence. Truly a throwback to a simpler, slower-paced time.

Perhaps this summer you can find a space, even a few hours, where you can “slow down”. Not because you have been instructed to, which some of us have, but because it is needed.

The Canal

She sits dormant,

Unclear, yet ready for takers;

Be them fish, or boaters,

Or herons.

An industrial relic of massive proportions,

Who shaped lives and livelihoods long past,

Ghosts they are not,

For the locks and toll houses and barges remain,

Announcing a footprint two hundred years old,

As swans and barge owners trade their comments,

of weather, and swing bridges today.

Only the trade has changed.

What was work is now leisure.

As the canal slowly draws them through life at a stately 3mph,

This is a meditative, glacial pace,

Slow enough to swallow all to be seen,

Fast enough to show progress.

Like a good meal full of flavor,

Chewing and tasting linger on the tongue,

Leaving digestion for a later time,

Where reflection will be done.

But not yet.

Let the lingering continue for now.

As I taste this prayer of water and man and boat,

Stoking all my senses only to be punctuated by the shrieking delights of children feeding ducks,

Or looking for a new playmate and game.

Yes, this canal has presence.

Not just of a past gone by,

But of lilies and reeds and laughter,

And most of all quiet.

Only the gentle hum of the motor tells,

We are being drawn forward,

Not by horses or men,

But a small engine.

Quietly humming happiness.

Copyright Image, poem and reflection 2025 Michael J. Cunningham OFS

Single Track Road

When navigating a single-track road,

You don’t have to navigate,

just drive on,

hoping there is no oncoming traffic.

Most single-track roads are from the past,

The days of horse and cart,

Unsure how they passed by when confronted,

But it was probably a neighborly exchange.

No one lived far from each other,

And travel had to be done in daylight,

Otherwise, risking inadvertent off-road incidents,

that probably had repercussions.

The roads I drive today are in the west of Ireland,

Bounded by stone walls created by artists,

with painted green center lines,

Making any asphalt seem like brushstrokes in a painting.

As the video game continues,

As our greatest hope is to see no one,

An ironic thought in a landscape which sees few most days,

And to make it home before darkness.

When the single-track road dominates all.

The question remains,

How long can a single-track lane last?

It seems this one does not want to answer the question,

And merely persists to turn and twist; and twist and turn.

Giving up no visibility without a crow’s nest,

She drags us onward to the destination,

Like a conveyer belt,

She sweeps us up and down, from side to side.

Until the whoops and hollers soften,

To a sickly “are we there yet” from the youngsters in the rear,

Now looking for the air sickness bags,

We didn’t think we would need.

The single-track road goes on.

And what is the single-track road known as?

The one you have to travel each day,

Taking you to a destination you may like, or not.

How does that make you feel?

Can I find a turnaround, or a major road?

Where I could find another way out?

Or is it true?

That my life is a single-track road.

Which appears to be two-way, but there is no way out.


The Single Track Road: A Spiritual Reflection

The decision to take the single-track road is rarely made lightly, though we often forget this truth when we find ourselves committed to its narrow path. Standing at the junction where the main road continues straight and the smaller lane veers off into uncertainty, we often pause. Something calls us toward the unknown: perhaps the promise of solitude, the desire to escape the busyness of our ordinary lives, or simply the ancient human longing to discover what lies beyond the road well-traveled way.

In choosing, we are clear about our intentions. We desire something different. We seek the road less traveled, as Frost might say, though rarely considering what it means to travel a road from which there may be no easy return. The single-track road demands commitment in a way that contemporary life rarely asks of us. Once you begin, you must continue. There are no convenient exits, few places to turn around, or escape routes until the road itself offers them up.

I have been on such roads; both literally and metaphorically. The narrow lanes of western Ireland wind between high ancient stone walls, carrying you deep into landscapes that seem untouched by time. In addition, he interior roads we choose when we commit to a spiritual path, a relationship, a way of life that narrows our options and demands we keep moving forward even when the way becomes uncomfortable, even when we begin to question our original decision.

The irony is not lost on me that in seeking solitude and escape, we often find ourselves more trapped than before—though perhaps “trapped” is the wrong word. Perhaps “committed” is preferable. The single-track road teaches us about the difference between being stuck and being devoted, between having no choice and choosing to honor the choice we have already made.

There’s something profoundly spiritual about this experience of commitment without the safety net of easy retreat. It forces us to be present to where we are rather than constantly planning where we might go next. No looking back. When the road ahead twists and turns without revealing its conclusion, when visibility is limited and we cannot see what’s coming, we learn to trust the path itself—and perhaps more importantly, we learn to trust the wisdom that led us to choose this path in the first place.

The neighbors on those old roads understood something we’ve forgotten in our current world of endless options. They knew that encountering another traveler on a narrow way required a different kind of negotiation than passing someone on a highway. It demanded presence, patience, perhaps even conversation. The single-track road creates community in the most unlikely of circumstances, forcing us to acknowledge one another, to make space, to work together for the journey to continue. We have to interact, as we are both blocking each other’s paths. It forces dialogue.

In our spiritual lives, we often find ourselves on similar single-track roads. The decision to pray daily, to forgive someone who has hurt us deeply, to care for an aging parent, to remain faithful to a marriage through difficult seasons—these are choices that commit us to a path from which there is no easy exit. We may have begun with clear intentions, seeking something beyond the ordinary, but find ourselves wondering if we’ve chosen wisely when the road becomes demanding and the destination unclear.

The poem speaks to this reality with honest emotion. The nausea that comes from too much winding, the children in the back seat asking, “Are we there yet?” when we ourselves have lost sight of where we’re going. These are the moments when our spiritual journeys feel less like adventure and more like endurance tests, when what began as a choice starts to feel like fate.

But perhaps this is where the deepest learning happens—in that space between choice and surrender, between intention and acceptance. The single-track road we have chosen becomes a teacher, showing us what it means to be fully committed to a path even when we cannot control its direction or speed. It reveals to us the difference between the roads we take to get somewhere and the roads that take us somewhere we never expected to go.

In contemplative tradition, we speak of the “dark night of the soul”—those periods when the spiritual path feels barren, when prayer becomes difficult, when God seems absent. These are often single-track road experiences. We have committed to the journey of faith, but the road has become more challenging than we anticipated. We cannot easily turn back, yet we struggle to see why we chose this difficult route.

The wisdom of the single-track road is that it teaches us to value the journey itself rather than our ability to control it. When we cannot change direction easily, we learn to notice what is around us rather than constantly scanning for alternative routes. We discover that the stone walls constraining our movement are also works of art, that the painted green center lines make the asphalt seem like brushstrokes in a larger painting.

This is perhaps the most profound spiritual lesson the narrow road offers: that constraint can lead to a different kind of freedom, that limitation can create beauty, that choosing to stay on a difficult path can reveal wonders we would never have seen on the easier way.

The question the poem asks—”How long can a single-track road last?”—touches something deep in the human spirit. How long can we sustain commitment when the way is narrow and demanding? How long can we persist when visibility is limited and the destination uncertain? The poem offers no easy answers, and this too is part of potential wisdom.

Sometimes the single-track road is our life itself—not just a vacation route through the west of Ireland, but the path we find ourselves on day after day, leading to destinations we may like or not. The road that appears to be two-way but offers no real way out. This is the existential reality of human existence: we are all on a journey we did not entirely choose, heading toward a destination we cannot fully see, with limited ability to change course.

Yet we did make decisions that brought us here. We chose, at various junctions, to take paths that committed us to certain ways of living, loving, and believing. The spiritual task is not to regret these choices or to spend our energy looking for escape routes, but to honor the decisions we have made and to trust that they were made with wisdom, even if that wisdom is not always clear to us now. Sometimes the lack of wisdom in earlier decisions, informs future wisdom.

In the end, perhaps the most important realization is that we are not alone on this narrow road. Others have traveled here before us, leaving behind the stone walls that guide our way. Others will come after us, needing the path to be maintained and clear. And sometimes, if we are lucky, we encounter fellow travelers heading in the same direction, and we discover that what seemed like isolation was actually participation in an ancient and ongoing journey.

The single track road asks us to trust—trust the path, trust our original decision to take it, trust that it leads somewhere worth going, even if we cannot yet see where that might be. In this trust, we find not the freedom of endless options, but the deeper freedom of commitment honored, of choices respected, of paths walked with integrity and faith.

Sometimes the most spiritual thing we can do is simply to keep driving on the road we have chosen, hoping not for the absence of oncoming traffic, but for the grace to handle whatever encounters await us with wisdom, patience, and love.

Copyright 2025 Michael J. Cunningham OFS

The Forgotten Art of Seeing Each Other

I was at the coffee shop while on vacation in Europe yesterday when I overheard it again—that familiar refrain about “those people” taking what “we” deserve. The speaker wasn’t wealthy, and wasn’t particularly privileged in any visible way. Just someone who had learned to see scarcity where there might be abundance, competition where there could be community.

It made me think of a friend’s mother’s attitude. No matter how little she had, there was always room for one more. “We make the soup stretch,” she’d say, adding water and finding another vegetable. Not because she was a saint, but because she remembered what it meant to need that seat at someone’s table.

Somewhere along the way, many of us have forgotten this simple truth: we’re all just walking each other home. Every single one of us is vulnerable in our own ways, carrying invisible wounds, hoping for kindness when we stumble.

I think about the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of struggle. How much easier it is to point at someone else—someone who looks different, speaks differently, arrived here differently—and say, “There’s the reason things are hard.” It’s the oldest sleight of hand: making us look at each other with suspicion instead of looking up at systems that benefit from our division.

Last month, I watched a man at the grocery store counting change for milk and bread. The woman behind him shifted impatiently, muttering about “people who don’t work.” She couldn’t see his construction worker’s boots, worn down at the heels. Couldn’t know he might have been laid off three weeks ago. We see what we expect to see, what we’ve been taught to see.

But here’s what breaks my heart: the woman muttering was buying the store brand everything, clipping coupons with worried fingers. She and the man with the change were in the same boat, just sitting in different seats, each convinced the other was somehow capsizing them.

When did we start believing that compassion was a limited resource? That helping someone else somehow diminishes us? My Irish mother would have called it “the stranger’s blessing”—the idea that what we offer to others returns to us in ways we can’t predict or control. Not karma exactly, but an understanding that we’re all part of the same fabric. Pull one thread, and eventually, you feel the tug.

I remember volunteering at a food bank where a well-dressed woman came in, tears streaming. “I never thought I’d be here,” she whispered. The volunteer next to me—who I knew had been a client himself two years earlier—simply said, “None of us did. But here we are, taking care of each other.” That’s the truth we keep forgetting: we’re all just one illness, one layoff, one unexpected crisis from needing that outstretched hand.

The real privilege isn’t wealth—though that helps. It’s the privilege of forgetting our shared vulnerability. Of believing we’ve earned our safety through merit alone, rather than recognizing the thousand graces and helping hands that brought us to this moment.

There’s a poem by Rumi that says, “Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.” What if we traded our certainty about who deserves what for curiosity about each other’s stories? What if we replaced judgment with wonder at how anyone manages to keep going in this difficult world?

I don’t mean to sound naive. The fears are real—costs keep rising, and the future feels uncertain. But when has turning against each other ever made any of us safer? When has closing our hearts actually protected them?

Sometimes I practice a simple exercise: when I catch myself thinking “those people,” I pause and substitute “us.” Those people struggling to find work become us struggling to find work. Those people seeking safety become us seeking safety. It’s a small shift, but it changes everything. Suddenly, I’m not defending some fortress of deservedness. I’m simply recognizing fellow travelers on a difficult road.

The mystics knew something we’ve forgotten: we are each other. Not metaphorically, but actually. Your suffering is mine, your joy is mine, because we’re all notes in the same song. When we refuse to care for each other, we’re not protecting ourselves—we’re diminishing the very thing that makes us human.

So maybe today, when we hear that familiar chorus about who deserves what, we can remember my friend’s mother’s kitchen table. How there was always room for one more, not because resources were infinite, but because isolation was the real poverty. How the soup got thinner but the laughter got richer. How everyone who sat there knew they might be the one needing that seat tomorrow.

We’re all more fragile than we pretend. We’re all more connected than we admit. And in the end, as someone wise once said, we have nothing if we don’t have love. Not the greeting card kind, but the tough, daily choice to see each other as worth protecting, worth helping, worth believing in.

The stranger at the gate isn’t stealing your bread. They’re reminding you that we’re all strangers somewhere, all guests at tables we didn’t set, all dependent on kindness we didn’t earn.

That’s not weakness. That’s the beginning of wisdom. It’s belonging.

Reflection Copyright 2025 Michael J. Cunningham