Receiving the Day: Christian Practices for Opening the Gift of Time (A Jossey Bass title) - Hardcover

"With wisdom, clarity, and sacred practicality, Dorothy Bass changes our relationship with time. It needn't control us. Rather, the day, the week, and the year are each an opportunity for us to shape our lives in the peace and kindness of God. God's story becomes our story. This is a book of genuine insight and gentle leadership. Let it turn your calendar from a taskmaster into a gift from the Creator for creation and for you." (Walter Wangerin, Jr., author, The Book of God) "Those who struggle with the pressures and limits of time-that is, all of us!-will find this book a rich resource to be tasted and tried. This deeply spiritual book dramatically reorients the heart of the reader . . . challenging our time-obsessed society and teaching the wisdom of religious practices. Through careful exploration of the rhythm of the day and its promise, the week and its sabbath, and the year and its liturgical movements, Dorothy Bass calls us to attention and makes us more mindful of the many ways life may be renewed." (Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore, author, And Also a Mother: Work and Family As Theological Dilemma) "A profoundly useful book. . . . It reminds us forcibly that we are embodied creatures gifted by God with time too precious to fritter or work away. In its recommAndations for the healing of our relationship to time it is often unsettlingly revolutionary, frequently subversive of our secular culture, and always full of Dorothy Bass' honest and generous reflections on her own life. It is a pleasure to recommend it." (Roberta Bondi, author, A Place to Pray: Reflections on the Lord's Prayer and Memories of God) "This book is, quite simply, a gift. There is no other way to explain how, in the midst of an impossible schedule, taking time to read about the gift of time could be so completely renewing. Like a much needed rest or sabbath, Receiving the Day breaks into our daily priorities and invites us into a more whole and holy understanding of time. By opening to us the Christian tradition's wisdom about time and by recognizing the powerful social and economic forces that shape our days, Dorothy Bass has given us a grace-filled account of time that offers hope and resources for living our days more wisely." (Christine Pohl, professor, Asbury Theological Seminary; author of Making Room: Recovering Hospitality As a Christian Tradition)

In this examination of the spirituality of time, Dorothy Bass invites readers into a way of living in time that is alert to both contemporary pressures and rooted in ancient wisdom. She asks hard questions about how our injurious attitude toward time has distorted our relationships with our innermost selves, with other people, with the natural world, and with God. As an alternative to the rhetoric of management and mastery, this volume offers a language of attention, poetry, and celebration. Bass encourages us to re-evaluate our understanding of the temporal and thereby to participate fully in the Christian practice of knowing time as God's gift. Embraced in this way, time need not be wrestled with each day. Instead, time becomes the habitation of blessing.