Receiving the Day: A Guide for Conversation (The Practices of Faith Series) - Softcover

Bass, Dorothy C.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0787958786 ISBN 13: 9780787958787

Publisher: Jossey-Bass, 2001

Synopsis

For busy people who see time as something to be managed, manipulated, and measured, comes a refreshing alternative vision of time as a gift waiting to be unwrapped. This study guide accompanies the book Receiving the Day: Christian Practices for Opening the Gift of Time, also by Dorothy C. Bass.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

For busy people, time is not just something to be managed, but a problem, a constraint, even an enemy to be battled every day. Though we are tempted to think that better "time management" can solve our problem with time, this approach barely scratches the surface of our need, and it can even perpetuate the illusion that we find grace through mastering our schedules. Relying on our datebooks, we fail to plumb the depths of time's significance in our lives. We miss the opportunity to embrace time as the gift of God.

In this spirituality of time, Dorothy Bass invites readers into a way of living in time that is alert to both contemporary pressures and rooted ancient wisdom. The celebrated editor of Practicing Our Faith 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 reevaluate 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.

Receiving the Day identifies specific practices for ordering the day, the week, the year, and the lifetime-practices that enable us to live more richly and rightly in time. These practices, Bass reveals, both restore a sense of wonder in our relationship with the larger order in the universe and make a difference in the simplest acts of daily living. They prompt Christians to develop life patterns that get us through our days not only with more gratifying practical rewards, but also with greater authenticity as human beings created in God's image.

Grounding her approach in historical and liturgical conceptions of time, Bass offers her own deeply personal experiences as models for understanding the challenges this invitation presents. Her honesty and compassion speak to readers anxious to change their relationship with time, and her wisdom offers welcome guidance for embracing time's rhythms as opportunities to recognize the presence of God within the ordinary days, weeks, and years of our lives.

Embrace time as an opportunity-not an adversary

A spiritual reconsideration of our frantic approach to time, Receiving the Day invites readers to embrace the temporal landmarks of our lives as opportunities for deeper relationship with God and one another.

"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 recommendations 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

About the Author:

DOROTHY C. BASS, editor of Practicing Our Faith and a historian of American religion, is director of the Valparaiso University Project on the Education and Formation of People in Faith.

About this edition

• Publisher: Jossey-Bass
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0787958786
• ISBN 13: 9780787958787
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 48