I have a new phrase that serves both to startle me and to slow me down. It is also potent theology. So I want to share it with you, for the same reasons.

It’s “ADL.” Not ADD! But ADL, as in “Activities of Daily Living.” I learned this shorthand while observing many of the Occupational Therapy and Physical Therapy sessions my father was undergoing as part of his rehabilitation for a brain injury. (He is doing much better thanks, in part, to these sessions.)

For people in rehab, ADL is about the small yet crucial motions we can take for granted: Pants on. Shirt buttoned. The right sequence of motions when you stand up to move. Swallowing safely. It takes the normal blur of life and makes it, well, granular. Bit by bit. Movement by movement.

I would suggest that for all of us, “Activities of Daily Living” has an accompanying invitation: “Activities of Daily Noticing.” Watching my father learn these things anew has slowed me down, but has also brought on a flood of sheer noticing: This melon I am cutting, this slant of light, this person’s face.

Is this not one of the things that prayer does? And worship? It takes us from our default mode (mine is “Activities of Daily Blur, Speed and Cluelessness”), and moves us into a space of reverence and receptivity to God’s grace all around us, and to the call within that grace.

There is also a slightly mystical quality to truly noticing what is going on around you. When you slow down enough, look around enough, so many things become icons, portals for the divine. Reverberations are everywhere.

This is a land I would like to stay in, this land of noticing. I know that so much of life is situational: in a rehab class, everything is slowed down, and so am I. Back in “normal” life, the temptation is to rush around, to forget. Just one reason we return to church each week, to literally be re-minded.

In OT and PT, the “Activities of Daily Life” are a necessary, ongoing test for patients undergoing care. But each day, all of us face the test of paying attention, a “test” with sweet, holy rewards. Mary Oliver captures this call to see in her poem:

Praying
It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch
a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway
into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.

As we move toward Advent, the season of watching and waiting—and noticing—may you all have moments of silence, daily even!, when another voice may speak.