It’s a kind of hobby, perhaps a pastime, maybe even a game of mine: noticing. It began when I was a girl, walking to school, a journey of just over a mile. I walked the half closest to home on my own, and there were several possible route permutations.

The streets were leafy and suburban, the houses had front gardens, often with low walls, and the architecture ranged from Victorian to pre-war. There were three churches. All of this is still true.

At some point, I set myself a challenge: to notice something new on each of those solo journeys. Something I’d never noticed before that had always been there — brick patterns around windows, perhaps — or something that hadn’t been there, like a newly painted door or a newly opened rose. It became a habit, or maybe a hobby, pastime or game, as I said.

This is a good time of year for noticing. I still walk habitual routes, now with the dogs. It’s January, so snowdrops are afoot, in the vanguard of spring as the days grow ever so slightly longer. The white ovals have slipped free of their protective buds and are nodding to the leaf mould; by the time you read this, they will be open bells.Catkins, too: some still tight, like grubs squirming from bare twigs; others already long, open streamers catching the wind. The stream runs clear. I hope for a kingfisher.

When I first invented this noticing challenge, there was no such thing as mindfulness, which seems to be a modern invention, but the cap fits. Increasingly, it feels to me like God-space. Invite God in and there is more to notice. Notice more, and there is more of God. God is in the noticing. Creation rewards attention.

“God made the earth as his dwelling place, a place for God’s life to move and communicate itself. Since God is eternal, he established a permanent dwelling place.” (Wesley Vander Lugt on Psalm 104.2–4, quoted in the Visual Commentary on Scripture, January 12, 2026).