Almost every morning I read the daily meditation from the Center for Action and Contemplation; each year there is a theme, and each week there is a sub-theme revealing a part of the bigger idea for the year. It’s definitely Christian, it’s very ecumenical, and I think it’s accessible to everyone as long as you are willing to learn from teachers outside your own tradition. Anyway, a former colleague introduced me to it and so for the last five years or so I have been a daily reader. I recommend it.

This is not really a review of the CAC Daily Meditations, just some context for the serendipitous ways God can break through and remind us of what we need, what we need to be focused on, how to pack for the journey. You have to be willing to sit quietly, you have to practice those things that help you to see and listen in different ways, and somehow this allows God to speak, or maybe more correctly, it allows us to hear and to see what is already being spoken or done. We have to shut up for long enough to hear, we have to slow down long enough to notice.

There is a rainbow on my desk just now, cast by the small crystal that belonged to my mother. I hung in my office window after she died, and after I stopped being so angry about a lot of things. The crystal hadn’t done a whole lot for a long time and then a couple of years ago as I found myself sobbing, missing, needing, longing for my mom I paused to take a breath and opened my eyes to see a room full of rainbows. I knew she was there in the way she could be. Interestingly the crystal and the light should work consistently but in this place it’s more random than regular, I have to pay attention to see the rainbows, they are not predictable.

Back to the CAC: this morning in the reading there was a line that I read and then realize I had read incorrectly so went back. I had to go back a few times to get it because the phrasing is a little odd: “how we get there determines where we will arrive (emphasis added)*.” My brain read “when” the first few times I went over it. “When” makes sense. The road you choose, the route you pick impacts your arrival time, this is easy. But the route you pick impacts ‘where’ you end up? Don’t you pick the destination to begin with and then pick the best route to get there?

Many years ago (I’ve told this story before) I was in a distant city for work. The shuttle driver took me from the hotel to the office in the morning, and on this particular morning the gentleman driving said, “do you want to go the fast way, or the scenic way?” I said I needed to get to the office so we had better go the fast way. He replied, “they are both the same way, just how you choose to ride.” You see he was saying the same thing, and I was struck by it then as I am now. I can arrive at the office hurried and stressed and pressured, or I can arrive having taken the time to notice the flowers in bloom, the snow still on the ground in the shadows, the feeling of missing my home. I can arrive striving, or I can arrive as the full being that I am. I can arrive at a place that is demanding, or I can arrive at a place full of other people, doing what they can to contribute, being people holding all kinds of feelings and experiences.

More often now I am on the scenic route, I pause enough to see the rainbows, but not always and I need these reminders. I need to ask myself every morning, “how am I going to get there today?” It changes not just the experience of travel, but the quality of the destination quit deeply. What road are you going to take today?

* CAC Daily Meditation 1/28/2026, adapted from Richard Rohr, Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality (Franciscan Media, 2022)