NeuroDivine

A roadside moment where noticing becomes prayer.

It was one of those early autumn afternoons when the air felt like a hymn—cool, golden, and quietly insistent. Andrew and I were walking side by side through Monasterevin, the main road humming with traffic and the occasional burst of birdsong from the hedgerows. We weren’t in a rush. I was pacing myself carefully, as I often do—partly for comfort, partly because my autistic brain likes rhythm and noticing.

And that’s when I saw them.

Scattered across the pavement like forgotten offerings: acorns. Smooth, brown, and unapologetically ordinary. I paused, bent slightly, and picked one up. It fit neatly in my palm, a small weight of possibility. I looked up—and there it was. The oak tree. Towering beside the roadside, half-hidden behind a stone wall and a tangle of ivy, its branches heavy with fruit. A quiet abundance.

Andrew followed my gaze. “Didn’t even notice it,” he said, with a kind of reverent surprise.

I smiled. “It’s been here longer than either of us.”

We stood for a moment, the two of us and the tree, in a kind of roadside liturgy. Cars passed, dogs barked, someone shouted from a shopfront—but the oak held its own silence. It had seen generations walk this road. It had dropped acorns in famine and in feast, in rain and in revolution. And now, in 2025, it was still giving.

I didn’t pocket the acorn. Instead, I took out my phone and snapped a photo—just enough to remember the moment, the tree, the noticing. A digital seed, waiting to be planted in words.

Later, I’d write about it. Not just the tree, but the grace of pausing. The way autistic perception sometimes catches what others miss—not because we’re distracted, but because we’re tuned differently. And sometimes, that difference is a gift.

Prayer

God of quiet abundance, thank you for the grace of noticing and the beauty of being wired for wonder.