Listening and attending to one thing at a time

To move slowly and deliberately through the world, listening and attending to one thing at a time, strikes us as radically subversive, even un-American. We cringe from the idea of relinquishing in any moment, all but one of infinite possibilities offered us by our culture. Plagued by a highly diffused attention, we give ourselves to everything lightly. This is our poverty. In saying yes to everything, we attend to nothing. One can only love what one stops to observe. "Nothing is more essential to prayer," said Evagrius, "than attentiveness."