Receiving the Day: Christian Practices for Opening the Gift of Time [Paperback]

Dorothy C. Bass (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 12, 2001

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Bass, a historian of the Christian tradition and editor of Practicing Our Faith: A Way of Life for Searching People, dissects the elusive concept of time within the realm of Christian theology and practices. Using rich personal stories, she shares how time is truly a gift to be savored, not a tempest to be tamed. Bass understands the societal stress men and women feel to produce and provide within ever-decreasing time slots. She also knows how liberating these daily 24 hours can become when we practice living in the now. Bass's eight chapters outline her basic premise in time management: receiving each day as a gift from God. She encourages readers to open their hearts every morning in quiet thanks to God for life, to learn to structure their lives with flexible regularity, to use their time for things that matter and to live today confidently, without fear. She also discusses the benefits of keeping the Sabbath (on the actual Sabbath day or not), observing the Christian year with all its special holidays and religious celebrations, and counting days and moments with an eye on eternity. Bass's perspective and message are indeed timeless. (Oct.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"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)

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Jossey-Bass; 1 edition (February 12, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0787956473
• ISBN-13: 978-0787956479
• Product Dimensions: 0.5 x 5.9 x 8.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #246,250 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

36 of 36 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Bass's spirituality of time is changing my life December 31, 1999

By A Customer

Format:Hardcover

As a mother with a full-time job outside the home, I too often view time as a problem, an enemy to do battle with every day in order to get my work done and care for my family. Dorothy Bass's book has been a revelation to me--she shows me that I can inhabit time differently, more graciously. There is so much practical wisdom in this book. I have been particularly helped by thinking about my days, weeks, months and years not as made up of blocks on the calendar, but as part of the rhythms of work and rest, feast days and ordinary days. I've been trying to follow some of Bass's suggestions for giving shape to each week, by observing a sabbath day of rest. I am finding out two things: that by preparing for a sabbath day I am more productive on my work days and that on the day of rest, time seems to open up, get larger somehow. Bass draws on the best wisdom religious traditions (Christianity primarily, but also Judaism) have to offer about how to give shape to our days and offers it to the reader in a form and a language that resonates with busy, contemporary people. I am so grateful for this book.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A reevaluation of how we think about time June 24, 2000

By M. J. Smith VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

The most striking point made in this book, from my perspective, was the notion that the Jewish concept of day from sundown to sundown reflected the creation story of Genesis in the sense that first God acts, later people are drawn into the equation. If insights such as that excite you, you will enjoy this book.

The book is written in a very personal style - how Dorothy C. Bass has come to see and use time. This results occassionally in some reader disconnects e.g. her assumption that a church could not refrain from Christmas carols during Advent - I come from a church that does not use Christmas carols until the Christmas vigil. But these "disconnects" also are a strength for the book - she is not giving you a list of how-to's, but rather inviting you to reevaluate time in your life ... with a recognition that that will have similarities and differences from what it means in her life.

This book is recommended for everyone - and especially needed by individuals planning liturgical season.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars What a wonderful, soulful book! February 3, 2000

By A Customer

Format:Hardcover

Bass doesn't preach at us from on high, but rather bears witness to her own struggles to keep sabbath and receive time as a blessing and gift instead of as a problem or enemy. Bass describes how "receiving the day" can become a way-of-life practice, and she relates this activity to other core practices that give life character and integrity (see "Practicing Our Faith: A Way of Life for a Searching People," which Bass edited.) Bass grounds her analysis of time in contemporary research from a social scientific perspective, such as A.R. Hochschild's "The Time Bind" and R. Levine's "A Geography of Time." Bass's deeper grounding, however, is in the practical wisdom of the Jewish and Christian traditions for living faithfully in the rhythms of days, weeks, and years. Drawing on the biblical story of the creation of time (Genesis 1), Bass invites us to consider what difference it would make in our lives if we viewed dusk instead of dawn as the beginning of each new day. Observing how digital clocks now synchronize our global economy, Bass notes with irony how Benedictine monks invented the clock to call the community to prayer at set hours during the course of the day. The challenge for us today is not to "turn back the clock," of course, but to learn how to live freely and humanly within a 24x7 society. I enthusiastically recommend "Receiving the Day" to anyone who cares to ponder how we dwell together as creatures within time. This book prompted deep personal reflection about the ways I spend my time, and it also inspired the design of a playful worship service for our congregation's annual Family Camp. A great book for adult study groups and sermon ideas. To open "Receiving the Day" is to open a thoughtfully chosen, carefully crafted gift.