Are you ready to do only one thing at a time?

Contemplation is a "long, loving look at the real" -- as opposed to a multi-tasked, distracted look at the surface. For this program that means that "we begin slowly, so that gradually...we can slow down." For someone like me with a proclivity towards efficiency coupled with an impatience with inefficiency, a slow pace can be frustrating. But, I feel the promise of great freedom and delight (and lack of stress!) in being "wonderfully unhurried, gloriously unharried." And achieving that end requires that I start by slowing down now -- because as old Ray Moss said (my college Health and Exercise Science professor), "If you don't start today, what makes you think you're going to start tomorrow?"

Speaking of tomorrow, I love this dialogue:

Daughter: When will it be tomorrow?

Mother: Go to bed, and when you wake up, it will be tomorrow.

Daughter [the next morning]: Is it tomorrow yet?

Mother: No, it is today.

Daughter: When will it be tomorrow?

Mother: When you wake up in the morning, it will be tomorrow.

Daughter [the next morning]: Is it tomorrow yet?
Mother: No, it is today.

Daughter: When will it be tomorrow?
Mother: When you wake up in the morning, it will be tomorrow.
Daughter [the next morning]: Is it tomorrow yet?

Mother: No, it is today.

Daughter: Oh, I get it. There is no tomorrow.

Are you ready to do one thing at a time? Multi-tasking is always a temptation, but, with God's help, I'm willing to try. I'm starting with "just eating" at breakfast...no reading.