"Honoring our bodies day by day, offering attention, praying with regularity--no matter how appealing these activities sound, they are also costly. They take time. The question is, which time? Time from sleep, time from work, time from what? Discerning renewed and renewing patterns for our days will cause us to look at them with fresh eyes, asking not only what we need to add but also what we need to take away.
Indeed, it may be that choosing what not to do will disclose the radical implications of this practice most vividly. The point is not simply to clear the decks for honor, attention, and prayer; the point is to identify the impediments, even the idols, that have shut them out of each particular life in the past. When you know what these are, you know what renunciations may open you to encounter each day's rhythms of grace and blessing."
(Dorothy C. Bass, Receiving the Day: Christian Practices for Opening the Gift of Time)
