Receiving the Day: Christian Practices for Opening the Gift of Time (The Practices of Faith Series) - Softcover

"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 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." (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 recommendations for healing our relationship to time it is often unsettlingly revolutionary, frequently subversive of our secular culture, and always full of Dorothy Bass's 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 title invites readers into a way of living in time that is alert to both contemporary pressures and rooted ancient wisdom. It 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, "Receiving the Day" 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.