Shifting Culture
Shifting Culture invites you into transformative conversations at the intersection of faith, culture, justice, and the way of Jesus. Each episode, host Joshua Johnson engages guests who challenge conventional thinking and inspire fresh perspectives for embodying faith in today's complex world. If you're curious about how cultural shifts impact your faith journey and passionate about living purposefully, join us as we explore deeper ways to follow Jesus in everyday life.
Subscribe now and shift your perspective.
Shifting Culture
Ep. 343 Andrew & Kara Root - A Pilgrimage Into Letting Go
In this episode I sit down with Andrew and Kara Root to talk about their new book, A Pilgrimage Into Letting Go. Written out of their journey walking St. Cuthbert’s Way with their children, the book reflects on parenting, pastoring, and the hard but necessary work of releasing control. Together we explore why modern life pushes us to manage every detail, how uncontrollability can actually be a gift, and what it looks like to see parenting as a pilgrimage. Along the way, we talk about prayer as listening, the difference between being a tourist and a pilgrim, and the ways God encounters us when we surrender to presence. This is a conversation about trust, family, and faith that invites us to walk with open hands and open hearts.
Andrew Root is the Carrie Olson Baalson Professor of Youth and Family Ministry at Luther Seminary, USA. He writes and researches in areas of theology, ministry, culture and younger generations. His most recent books are Evangelism in an Age of Despair (Baker, 2025), The Church in an Age of Secular Mysticisms (Baker, 2023), Churches and the Crisis of Decline (Baker, 2022), The Congregation in a Secular Age (Baker, 2021), and The Pastor in a Secular Age: Ministry to People Who No Longer Need God (Baker, 2019). In addition, he serves as theologian in residence for Youthfront.
Rev. Kara K. Root is the author of The Deepest Belonging (2021) and Receiving This Life: (2023). Pastor of Lake Nokomis Presbyterian Church in Minneapolis, MN, a Christian community that shapes its life around worship, hospitality and Sabbath rest, she is a trained Spiritual Director and Certified Educator in the PCUSA. Being mom to two intriguing teenagers (and a sweet dog), and wife and proofreader to a wily theologian, spices up her vocational calling and keeps her fully immersed in life. She has written for Sparkhouse, Working Preacher, Christian Century, Christianity Today, Faith and Leadership, Patheos and more. Kara leads retreats and workshops on sabbath rest, prayer practices, and church leadership and transformation.
Andy & Kara's Book:
Kara's Recommendation:
How to Inhabit Time
Subscribe to Our Substack: Shifting Culture
Connect with Joshua: jjohnson@allnations.us
Go to www.shiftingculturepodcast.com to interact and donate. Every donation helps to produce more podcasts for you to enjoy.
Follow on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Threads, Bluesky or
Faith That Challenges. Conversations that Matter. Laughs included. Subscribe Now!
Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify
The Balance of GrayFaith That Challenges. Conversations that Matter. Laughs included. Subscribe Now!
Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify
And what does it mean to be on this path with these kids, with this congregation saying goodbye and saying hello and meeting people along the way, but always aim towards this the holy towards you know, God's very presence. You Joshua,
Joshua Johnson:hello and welcome to the shifting culture podcast in which we have conversations about the culture we create and the impact we can make. We long to see the body of Christ look like Jesus. I'm your host. Joshua Johnson, you know, life has a way of confronting us with the limits of our control. Parenting, pastoring and pilgrimage all press us into the reality that we can't manage or script our way into transformation in this episode of shifting culture, I sit down with Andrew and Kara root to explore what it means to let go of our children, of our congregations, of our expectations, and Discover the Gift of uncontrollability along the way. Their new book, a pilgrimage into letting go, is born out of walking st Cuthbert way through the Scottish Highlands with her kids on the trail. Every step became a prayer, every argument and invitation to surrender, and every surprise a lesson and presence together, we talk about how parenting and pastoring can be a pilgrimage, why our culture's obsession with control steals resonance, and how the way of Jesus opens us up to encounter God in the mess and beauty of the journey. This is a conversation about release and trust, about walking the path together, even when it winds through uncertainty, and about how the spirit meets us when we loosen our grip. So join us. Here is my conversation with Andrew and Kara root. Andy Kara, welcome to shifting culture. Excited to have you both on at the same time. Andy, it's been four or five times now. Kara, the first time you've been on I'm really excited that you get to join us. We'll see what the dynamic is with you. And Andy be great.
Andrew Root:You might watch this podcast. Might be watched, who married people fight, and we'll see how that goes.
Joshua Johnson:Well, we're going to dive into a pilgrimage, into letting go your new book you've wrote together taking a pilgrimage on st Cuthbert sway with your with your kids, and you just informed me that you have now just come back from Europe as empty nesters. You've already sent your daughter off to college, so now you have literally let go. So I want to know just briefly. How does it, how does it feel at the moment of the actual letting go of things, the
Kara Root:feelings haven't let go. I mean, we physically let go, but it's, it's a tough transition, yeah? I mean, it's a journey,
Andrew Root:yeah, I don't know. I mean, I really it hit me hard when our son went two years ago, and our daughter's a little closer, so that maybe feels better, or maybe because we went to Europe, and then I came back with this terrible head cold. It's like I can only really think about myself anyhow, so I don't know, but yeah, it is. It's really ironic that this book comes out. This was not planned as any kind of great. You know, I don't know Steven Spielberg like movie press release, you know, it's not an Andy Kaufman like live promotional kind of wrestling on Letterman or something, kind of experience. But we're actually, yeah, letting the book is about letting go, and we're in the middle of doing it even more directly than when we wrote the book.
Joshua Johnson:So Kara, this pilgrimage itself was your idea of going on st Cuthbert sway, take me into that for you, what were you trying to seek? What were you looking for to just go on pilgrimage?
Kara Root:I've spent many years working with the idea of Sabbath, both just personally, but in practice, in my congregation, as well as a way of practicing presence and pilgrimage, is another way of doing that, and one that I really wanted to experience. I knew a lot of people who had gone on the Camino, but that sounded really hot to me, and also kind of crowded, frankly. So there was something about the highlands, the Scottish Highlands, that appealed to me. And just realizing how much walking is a part of the Christian story is a part of, sort of my sense of feeling present. So wanted to give that a try.
Joshua Johnson:Where did it come in that it was going to be a family trip, set us up into you saying, Let's go on a family trip, and scheduling it for the best time in the world to go on this trip.
Andrew Root:Yeah, the best time in the world to plan anything, yeah. So Cara said she wanted to do this, and we've had this. We're introverts. Everyone. Our family. So it's sometimes it's hard for us to talk to each other like we love being home and we love being home because we are in our own spaces. So we have to be really deliberate. I think about spending time together, and what that's always been for us is traveling. So because I've just had the real privilege of being, well, it's not always a privilege to be on airplanes, but the privilege of going around and talking to people about other books and things that I've just like, the one thing I'm absolutely dogmatic about is I have to fly just one airline, and I don't think they're a sponsor of this fine podcast, so I won't mention their name, but like you, you can get me to come and do you know anything? Basically, I mean, I'm not going to sleep on anyone's couch anymore, but I will not come if I can't be on this airline. And that all started when my kids were young, because it was both like so hard to be away from them, and also a sense of being away to pay it forward. So we could travel together, but then we would get we get places with miles, and have really no money to do anything else but walk, you know. So, like, we could maybe do one or two things. I could get them to Sydney, Australia, but, you know, we could go to the aquarium, and that was about all we could do, and maybe some ice cream along the way. And then as we just walk these cities, so kind of walking and traveling had been part of this, and we had some of our best family moments, some of our worst family moments on these walks. And so Cara said she wanted to do this. It just made sense to me that we try to do it together as an excuse to go to that part of the world and be in Scotland and be in the Borderlands and have that experience.
Joshua Johnson:So as you got up there, how did you start to realize that this was a pilgrimage into letting go, that there was something to do with control and uncontrollability that was happening on this walk, this pilgrimage.
Kara Root:Yeah, I mean, I had booked everything and tried to plan down to the smallest detail, sort of how this was going to go, except I hadn't planned, you know, the relationships or dynamics between us. And so being being in a situation where, you know, you've got all your stuff in suitcases, and you're, you know, eating at restaurants and showering in different places along the way, um, all of a sudden, I'm bumping up against these kids who we've, you know, raised, and now already know how to do things like eat and shower, but I'm finding myself over functioning in asserting control over things that I'm like if they haven't learned this by now, you know, I'm not me telling them this at this age isn't going to help. And so it really is, in a sense, confronted just what is the stage of parenting where you know you've you've finished some of the steps, and yet you're still relating to this person, and you're not necessarily appreciating their choices about showering or eating. But the real crux of it was that when we had been walking the first couple of days, our daughter had come off of a injury from a school bike trip, and so she was walking pretty slow, and I was walking along with her, and Andy said to me one night after we got to our our location, you know, I'm surprised by how slow you're walking, because you're usually kind of out in front. You're usually a fast walker. And I said, I'm just pacing myself to amazing. He said, Well, I'll walk with her tomorrow. You go your pace. So we started the next day, and all of a sudden I was like, my pace. What is my pace like? I've spent, you know, 18 years matching my pace to the pace of these little ones that need me, and now all of a sudden, I'm trying to figure that piece out. So it became a prayer. It became a mantra. Every step was, God, help me. Let them go. Help me. Let them go. That that's where, at least on my part, where it really became that emphasis and the sense of image, Andy had been deep diving into Cuthbert, so his was a little bit of a
Andrew Root:different path there. Well, yeah, and the other piece of that, which we didn't reference, that you set us up for, was that we planned this for summer 2020, and then it got it got canceled, and so we replanned the whole trip again. So Cara planned it once, then Cara planned it twice, and we were going to do it summer 21 and Europe opened, and we thought we were going to do this, but Scotland never opened, not without, like a 14 day quarantine or something. So it got pushed off until August 22 and that became a blessing. Like we didn't go into this thinking, you know, when we planned this in 2020 that this was some kind of ritual of letting our kids move into adulthood, or realizing that we're kind of, you know, firstborn kids. Both Kara and I are firstborn, and, you know, our control freaks. It wasn't a kind of spiritual walk of giving up control. But it just so happened now that here in 22 our son was a rising senior, and our daughter would be in the middle of high school. And it really did become an experience of kind of walking every step and letting letting our kids go and our son, when we planned this originally, in 2020 we were kind of worried about him. He was kind of class. Like, for his generation of spending a lot of time on the computer, and we're like, gosh, can he walk this? And through the end of the pandemic, he became a major Walker, like he, he, kind of, the way he, he coped with just the stresses of the pandemic was eventually, towards the end of it, after a very sedentary kind of situation for half of it, the second half of it was to walk and to move. And so he became our leader, you know, ironically, but that meant he was out ahead. And for Cara, firstborn, I'm a firstborn, our firstborn who will refuse to be controlled as a firstborn, would be out ahead. And the first few days were like, slow down, stop. And then he always had an earbud in his ear, and I wanted to strangle him, and like, you know, wanted to control the experience he was having, like, be here, be present. You know, don't be listening to music or a podcast or whatever you're doing. And it did really become a spiritual practice for us of just letting him go, like, literally go out ahead of us and watch him stop and then wait for us. And you know, we've known this since he was small. The more we tried to control him, the more he rebelled, and the more we gave him freedom, the more he kind of came back to us. But it really became embodied in in The walk itself, watching him do that. But it took a good two days for us to to do that.
Joshua Johnson:Tell me about Cuthbert. You go on, st, Cuthbert sway, who is Cuthbert? He's a this crazy mystic man. There's some crazy stories around him. So, crazy, yeah,
Andrew Root:so, like, the crazy thing about Cuthbert, so, you know, you're talking about a kind of North Umbrian, kind of mystic seventh century, becomes a bishop, doesn't want to be a bishop. The interesting thing about him is we have nothing from his own head. Like, you know, we don't have any sermons, we have no disputations. We have nothing from his own hand that's left with us. The only thing we have is the Venerable Bede, who was a generation after him, never really knew Cuthbert, but knew people who knew Cuthbert wrote about him, and he kind of has become the Saint of the North, for people in the North of England and in the borderlands in Scotland, he's become this kind of Saint and and this kind of representation of that. And so, yeah, so he's, he's, I think he's born 635 and and becomes a monk after kind of having a military career, they think. But does all these kind of crazy miracles. And what he's really known for is miracles that He did after he died. Where the this, this pilgrimage ends is on the holy island of Lindisfarne, which you walk across on the mud flats. And he died on an island off of that because that wasn't remote enough. So he had to go to another kind of remote island. Because, you know, all the mystics of the Christian tradition go out into the desert since, since, since Anthony. But the poor British Isles monks, they didn't have any deserts to go to. But then they looked at the oceans and realized, Oh, hey, that's basically a desert. So they try to get as far out into the ocean as they as they could. And so he dies there, but then the monks bring him back to the holy island of Linda's farm, and then exhume his body. I don't know. I think it's 13 years later or something, which is kind of tradition, and there's no, no decomposing of his body. So the monks realize that this means there's a holiness running through him. But then even more so be reports that his his corpse essentially starts doing miracles. You know, people are sick, are touched by his corpse. There's a really super gross story about a kid drinking the water that his like, after 13 year body was washed in, drank it and was healed. So, you know, like, there's some crazy stuff in the Christian tradition that for us moderns is hard to even contemplate. And once you have germ theory, it's really super hard to kind of think about this stuff. But yeah, that's the idea of it. And then it was eventually buried in with Bede, actually, in the Durham Cathedral, in, in in in England. So interesting guy, and interesting that we don't have any any sermons. It's just kind of reports of the miracles his dead body did, and then, of course, his during his own ministry, the miracles he did as well.
Joshua Johnson:So then why do you take partment Rosa and the uncontrollability of the world and use that as a conversation partner within your book, talking about resonance and really uncontrollability all the way through this pilgrimage. What was it about Rosa and that book specifically that really resonated, resonated, of course, with with what you were trying to do.
Andrew Root:It's impossible to talk about Rosa and not use puns. I don't know. I don't know if you want to start with that Cara, start
Kara Root:by saying Andy has was like immersed in rose at the time, and he couldn't help but, you know, start applying these theories to our to what we were experiencing.
Andrew Root:Yeah, yeah. And in that book, rose even talks about raising children around kind of controllability. And he does this. It's a very small chapter in the in this, in the little book The uncontrollability of the world, where he just talks even about life cycles and. In control, and now how we're even trying, as late modern people, to control death, you know, like we're trying to the last stage of our lives and how we die. We're trying to control that. And, you know, I don't know, we made some kind of comment at some point as we planned this trip, like maybe we could write a book off of this car. Has written two books, and I sit in this monastic cell in my basement, and, you know, peck away at the keyboard trying to write books. And we thought, well, maybe there could be a book here. But I remember sitting on the plane going home and thinking, you know, it would be really interesting, essentially, to give a commentary of Rose's little book with the through line of this trip, and kind of thinking about leadership and parenting as an invitation into uncontrollability, because I just do think this is the dynamic of of both, that it feels like we're managing for control, and it ends up doing the opposite of what we want.
Kara Root:But here's how that goes. Is like four months later, I'm sitting in the dining room and I get an email from my basement from Andy, saying, Hey, we're writing a book together. Here's my 40,000 words. Add your own and change whatever you want. And I was like, Andy, I mean, he just kind of went with it to see, I think, could this work? And then thought, oh, maybe it could. And then kind of batted it over to me. So it wasn't even like we sat down together and plotted out, you know, here's how this book is going to go. And actually was a gift to me, because I usually write just like a pile of things that have to find the through line. And he just sort of handed me the skeleton and said, Okay, you want with it. So it was really fun.
Joshua Johnson:Yeah, you had to let control go when it comes to the writing of this book as well. So take us into this, this modern age we live in. And why are we control freaks? Like, why do we want to control everything? Why do we want to make sure that we can move and shake everything so that it bends to our own will?
Andrew Root:Yeah, I think this is one of the really interesting pieces about Rosa, because one reaction would be, we're control freaks because we're just as modern people. We're just awful people, like, you know, like modernity has made us terrible people. We're just consumeristic. We're just, you know, willing to just kind of destroy the earth for our own sakes. We're, you know, we're, this is, this is what makes us so bad. But actually rose this great lover of humanity, and doesn't think that we want to control the world because we hate the world, or we have any kind of diabolical response to it, that we actually really want to love the world, that we have experiences that speak to us in such a deep way. But one of the kind of curses, I guess, of being modern is that we then are kind of propelled to try to control those experiences and get more of those experiences. So it's actually out of a love of being spoken to by the world, being connected, say even to nature, or in this context of this book, connected to our children. I mean, we love our children so much and have such deep, resonant experiences with them, and feel such deep responsibility for them because of the deep experiences we've had with them, that we think that the only response, and this is the tragic element of being modern. We think the only response is then to control them, you know, or control the the environment in which they live, so nothing bad would happen. Or, I mean, even that's a little bit too pejorative. So nothing would disconnect us from them. And then it's tragic, because we end up destroying the very thing that we we desire. And yet, you know, and it would be, it would be complete folly. I mean, it would be utterly complete folly. For, you know, a fairy tale, if us late modern people weren't so good at it. You know, we're actually really good at controlling stuff. You know, like, we can control, Well, depends on who you talk to. We can control the weather, or some people control the weather, but, you know, like, we can at least control the temperature in our buildings. We can control air travel. I mean, we're we can get around the earth so quickly. I mean, there's a lot of dynamics where we've, as modern people, been able to control a lot of contingencies, and so, you know, it would be utter folly for us if we weren't so good at it. But the reality is is both leading a congregation and Cara can talk more about this, but being a parent out of the impulse to be so connected with them, we actually kind of are pulled into the illusion that we need to control them, and it actually destroys the very thing we want the most, which is to have these encounters, these conversations.
Kara Root:Yeah, it's it's not always negative or preventative. It's even like we're going to make good memories now. So you all need to show up and care about this, like, I care about it. Or, I mean,
Joshua Johnson:I tried to do that in Europe this summer too, you know, it didn't, didn't work.
Andrew Root:Yeah, you almost guarantee it won't happen. When you're like, today, we're gonna have three great memories that you're gonna remember the rest of your life. You know, like on
Kara Root:you're gonna. Love this as much as I do, or as much as I think you should. I mean, we do that in in in congregations as well as with our
Joshua Johnson:families. What? How do you do that in congregations like, what? What is it that we control, as you know, congregational leaders?
Kara Root:Well, um, I mean, I think we, we try to control, sort of, the message people receive the experience that people have. We definitely have expectations going into things as far as what we want people to take away from experiences. But I also think we're afraid, very afraid of the uncontrollable elements. I can remember some visitors to our congregation many years ago who had been in church leadership and were a little upset that in our prayer practice, we were kind of open mic about letting people share. Somebody shared something that was kind of uncomfortable for them, and came up afterwards and said to me, you know, when we lead, we don't let just anybody say anything, and because you're you're also like thinking when that's happening, it is a moment that's completely uncontrollable. And, you know, is this reflecting poorly on me or on the congregation, or on what I want people to take away from this? And what will people think instead of, you know, the Holy Spirit meets us when we're human alongside of each other, and being human is messy, and all things happen. And that's not the end of the story. There's always follow up, and God meets us in that as well.
Joshua Johnson:Uncontrollability is counter to all of us, modern people like I feel very uncomfortable with uncontrollability. And why is that? Why is uncontrollability actually good? What is it? What makes it good for
Andrew Root:us? Yeah, well, I think what potentially makes it good, or the kind of through line, I think in this book, Rosa develops that we want to develop here and relate to parenting and pastoral work is actually, I mean, underneath this, and I guess maybe why I like Rosa so much, he's he's working a kind of philosophical school of kind of Jewish philosophy that goes back to Martin Buber. And in Buber kind of point, of course, everyone who hears the name Martin Buber knows the difference between the I it and in the i thou. But buber's basic point is, like in a modern society, you actually do have to have I it relationships. You know you have to relate to people, some people as it's, for instance, the telemarketer that calls you, or, you know, the clerk at the at the at the supermarket, or something like, you know, there's certain you just have to, there's just too many people. We're not living in kind of small villages or something. So there has to be I it, relationships. But the problem is, is that our kind of muscles get built for I it, and we lose the I thou, and we lose. And what he really means by I thou is the conversation, this kind of conversational dynamic. And so why uncontrollability is so important is not because we should ever glorify chaos. Because I think that's one way to look at it. Is like, and we say this in the book, like, the last thing we want is our children. I mean, we're a little bit probably more okay with this than even two three years ago, like setting the menu, you know, like we would just have chicken fingers every night if they were in control the menu. And I'm surely, you know, even now, I'm not ready for them to take I will never be ready for them to take control of the family budget. You know what? I mean, like, so it's, it's, it's not like an invitation into chaos, but the uncontrollability is there, much like a conversation where, when you are in a deep conversation with another human being, you do have to be in a stance of the uncontrollable, like where you're actually listening to what they say, not controlling what they say. And we've all had those conversations with people where we know they're not listening to us, they're just waiting for us to stop talking so they can talk, and that ends up being kind of devoid of relationship.
Kara Root:And just to clarify the I it dynamic is more like transactional relationships. I mean, we have transactional relationships all the time, but the problem is that then we turn those close relationships that we're that are meant to be this sort of differentiation and connection into transactional relationships, because that's an easy way to feel in control and to try to get the other person to be like how we think it should be, so that we feel more secure. It's a modern sort of gut response, I think, to choose that we're not going to do that, rather than, like, acknowledging, oh, this is a transactional moment. No, like we're that's kind of the default setting. It feels like, yeah.
Andrew Root:And then there is the dynamic that we just work with an imagination of a certain kind of economic kind of category in our minds. So we do think, like, I don't know if you felt this way in Europe, Joshua this this summer, but you're like, we paid a lot of money for this. Like, we, we need to have an experience like, I, you know this will be completely, completely wasted. And I think even pastors can feel that way. Like, you know, no one would say people paid to be here, but you do feel like, if this is pure. Chaos, or there's an openness for the uncontrollable people. Yeah, that that people didn't pay for that. You know, people paid. They have have have a good experience. And again, we probably, crassly wouldn't say it that way, but it's amazing how we function that way with our kids, you know, like, you know, I I paid not to have my flight be delayed for God's sakes and and now you're ruining our experience, or, or, you know, or whatever,
Kara Root:or the one time you go to the all inclusive, and you've paid, you've paid ahead, but then you get the stomach flu, and you're like, I have to eat. I have to money's worth
Joshua Johnson:exactly, exactly. Yes, I think we, yeah, we had delays on every single plane and train ride in Europe this summer. And you know, that's just how it goes. You also talk a little bit about aggressiveness and how us modern people are just aggressive to start. And one of the things you talk about, like slowing down is not going to help us move towards something or take vacations and get rid of some of this aggression that we all have. Where does the aggressiveness come into play with this control that we want to have in this world?
Andrew Root:Yeah, well, I mean, this is how Rosa actually starts the book, which I think is fascinating in some ways how our pilgrimage started, too, is he says, when we have this kind of drive to control things again, because we want the goods out of them, we want to extract the goods we think we've paid for the goods, so we want the goods back. What it ends up doing is creating in us not a point of connection with the people we're with, but a point of aggression, where we feel like everyone we encounter? Well, I mean, I don't know you. You're probably better in your airport delays than I am, but I, you know, like when I'm in a major delay, every other human being becomes a point of aggression for me. You know, it's like, Get out of my way. Why are you walking so slow? Hasn't anyone ever taught you people not to walk four people across because I got a place I got to be somewhere which I have nowhere to be, but I feel like I have somewhere to go, like I'm being I'm being blocked from living well and living in the way I want to. So everything I encounter is this kind of point of aggression. And so there is a sense of what it means to be human is to live at points that we're always living at points in the sense that we're living at the points of encounter with one another, and those points can be filled with connection, or they can be can filled with conflict. But it also means that we live for a point like, you know, what's the point of your life? What's what's the point of this, this trip? And when we do kind of get control, to seep in, then those points all become very aggressive. The point is to maximize my kids. You know, you see, think of this with like youth sports. The point of this is so my kid can get the most things out of this, and so all the other kids who are getting more playing time than my kid. I hate those people, you know, like you start to feel like this is a, you know, you end up in conflict. This is one of the reasons why we can see so many social media videos of parents behaving badly at sporting events. Is because they their kids enjoyment of the sport gets overtaken for some kind of form of acceleration or from extracting some goods out of it, and so it just becomes a point of aggression, you know, and ultimately, they want their kid just to have a good experience, but the next thing they know, they're taking a swing at an umpire or, you know, yelling at another parent, and they just feel like the whole the point of what they're supposed to get out of this is their kid is supposed to receive some goods from it that can build and keep them from falling behind, and it leads to this deep sense of kind of aggression, so you lose the conversation. The kid doesn't even get to have a conversation with the sport anymore, if we kind of can push the analogy now it's like it's not about the love of the game, it's about what this coach can get for us, and this coach doesn't see my kid the way they are. So someone needs to take control this situation, and as the parent, I'm going to take control the situation, and then you get all the terrible videos.
Kara Root:And if we can't control other people, I mean, we CO we go into it with our own goals and aims and objectives and expectations, and then they clash up against somebody else's, and then they are just a barrier to our our drive, and then become a point of aggression, rather than a sense of of security, and something deeper than this moment we have to make happen the way we think it should happen, bumping up against them, having the same exact feelings and attempts to meet their needs.
Joshua Johnson:So what's happening with the and you Kara when you're bumping up against others and your expectations of others. How do you move yourself back into saying, Okay, we could, I could let that go and let go of my expectations of them. What's happening inside of you to be able to let go?
Kara Root:Well, I mean, sometimes nothing until later. I. I mean, sometimes I'm just, I'm the jerk in the point of aggression. And it isn't until, you know, I've vented to Andy and processed and, you know, sort of stepped back and rethought situation, but, um, but the moments that it breaks through, I think, is when we see each other as human beings, and, you know, recognize that at our core we we all need and want the same things. We all want connection and belonging and security and groundedness and meaning and purpose and all of these, these things that are really beautiful. We just have differing approaches or strategies in the moment. And so when I can recognize the humanity of someone else that will, that will break open for me that moment, and call me back to the i thou, instead of the I it, you know, instead of this person being this barrier to my desires to see them in their humanity, which also gives me some compassion for my own humanity in the moment. And like, oh, I jumped to aggression here. And really it's because I this longing I have is so deep and I care about it, so that there's some mutual empathy that can emerge when we can recognize one another's personhood.
Joshua Johnson:You know, because we want connection, belonging, resonance, we want to like, be steeped in this, one of the things that you talk about is slowing down is not going to help us. And you say it in a way where your vacation or your weekends, isn't just going to, you know, have some time off and then you're going to be okay. Because what we're trying to do with our vacation, whether you, you know, you have the stomach flu and all inclusive, and you want to optimize what you get out of it, and we want to optimize our vacations. We want to optimize our weekends. What does then help us move towards more connection and belonging and a different way of being, rather than just taking breaks from who we are?
Andrew Root:Yeah, I mean, this is the, I think the, you know, the revolutionary thing that that Rose is trying to get at and we're trying to develop here, is that it is, how do we put ourselves in constant conversation? And it's not just, you know, conversation with other human beings, but conversations with the world, like, how do we live in this, this kind of conversational way? And in his point is, is, you know, slowing down could help. You know, like that, that could help. There's, there's no reason to try to not slow down, but that the system is so insidious that it's going to take another form of being than just kind of taking a break from from this. And that is the kind of point that there is a real difference between a pilgrimage and a tourist event. And in some ways it's late modern people, they get really blurred together, you know, like we flew on that airline that should not be named, you know, with all sorts of people who are, you know, we're going on a pilgrimage. But it, it has every it looks like it has all the accouterments of being a tourist experience. And in many ways, you know, like there's a very kind of Seinfeld esque kind of dynamic to this, for those of the age where car and I are just, well, I'll own this for myself a bit immature. She's not. She's a very mature person. But we do have this kind of Seinfeld esque where we just name, like, I can't remember anyone's name, so I just named them, you know, weird things. So throughout the book, the people we meet on the trail end up getting these names, like ponytail and the three maidens, which we cannot remember these people's names, yeah, but, but that's what we called them. But the first time we met them, we were walking up to them, and one of these women says, Where are you coming from? And I responded like a tourist. I said, we're coming from Minneapolis. And she she was a British woman, and she was like, she kind of rolled her eyes, like, no, no, like she did not care where I was coming from. She wanted to know where I was on this walk, like where I was in this journey, not how I how was I using these experiences to add to my experiences and therefore give me value or lower my stress or help my wellness? That wasn't the point. All there is on a pilgrimage. Is this trail, this path? And that is a kind of analogy of life. You know, that we keep this is part of the modern problem, is we keep on. We're on the path of life. We're on the pilgrimage of life. We keep on thinking like, Okay, what do I need to maximize it? What do I need to get more out of it? And really, the question is, where are you? You know, like, where are you in sorrow? Are you in celebration? Is God distant? Is God near? All that matters is the trail and that which you're aimed towards. You know, like the the holy place that you're aimed towards. So you're always, you know, doing this towards God, but also saying goodbye and moving forward and being on, being on the trail, and so I think part of our issue, and why we want control so much and then there therefore lose resonance, or our weekends become optimized, is because they become more tourist experiences. Of, how do I leave home? Harvest More experiences? They. That add to my I don't know my sense of my life being good. They add to my Instagram feed, and then then I go home. How do I optimize that? Instead of thinking, what does it really mean to be on this path, and what does it mean to be on this path with these kids, with this congregation saying goodbye and saying hello and meeting people along the way, but I always aim towards this, the holy towards, you know, God's very presence.
Kara Root:I mean, to say slowing down isn't the answer. If you don't slow down, you're also not going to have the experience. I mean, slowing down is a component of it, but it kind of reminds me of Brueggemann saying, you know, God gives the Israelites, takes them out of slavery with the other nine Commandments, but with the Sabbath command, he takes the slavery out of the Israelites. And there's that, that sense that what Sabbath or rest or pilgrimage or slowing down offers is, uh, is the opportunity to be present in a different way. But if we take, like Rose is saying, if we take all of that sort of internal stuff with us, and then we just try to slow down correctly and Sabbath well, and measure our pilgrimage against the perfect pilgrimage, and make it all this sort of competitive thing, not even against other people, but necessarily, but against some ideal or some internal drive. All we're doing is just taking these tools and turning them into tools for acceleration and measuring, instead of allowing ourselves to actually be human beings in in our frailty and in our beauty and in our connection and receiving the experiences that come to us,
Andrew Root:right? Which is also the performative contradiction of us writing a book out of this too, you know, because you can see this is Rose's point about the weekend is, we go on this pilgrimage, we have this great experience with our kids, then we write a book, really, which is just a testimony of that experience. But now, how about how will it sell? What will people think you know? What you know? What doors will this open? What doors will it not open? Like you know, all you see, all this, the whole system just starts to pull that in. And so, yeah. I mean, part I think Rose's point that's really helpful, and we experience on the pilgrimage is that no one is no one can perform their way out of this, or can somehow come up with the right idea to escape it. Like our pilgrimage starts with a fight over ice cream and my desire to control it, and it ends that way. I mean, it ends with the very last experiences, realizing that our our daughter has lost her retainer somewhere in Durham, like we just had this incredible experience, and right be the day before we find out there's going to be a train strike. So now I'm freaking out, like the trains are uncontrollable. This doesn't feel like a good uncontrollability, like I'm freaked out about how are we going to get back to Edinburgh? We find out our train is going, it's like, oh my gosh, yes, we're going to make it. Has this beautiful kind of sense of the story coming full circle, and we've learned something. And then our daughter's like, I don't know where my $400 retainer is. And you I mean, you just think of the retainer as just an objective, you know, just an instrument of control, like we're controlling our teeth so they come in the right way. And then you lose this thing. And, you know, like this. This is the the monstrousness of control, all of a sudden, this thing that really helps her have a beautiful smile and control her teeth. Now you lose it. You're out 400 bucks, and your parents are screaming at you. We have everything of her bag out on the you know, on the platform of the train. I'm freaking out, and that's how we get on the train, you know. So this is this book, is not the confessions of people who have it figured out, but who can feel this tension of even when you think you are aware, aware of it, want to opt out of being control freaks. Man, this world, particularly in the West, really does just push us back into trying to control.
Kara Root:And I love, there's a there's James Finley says it beautifully in a talk he gives about Meister Eckhart, because he says, you know, the poet can't make the poem happen, but the poet can assume an inner stance of least resistance to having the poem come. You know, the lovers cannot make their moment of oceanic oneness happen, but they can assume this inner stance of least resistance. And I found myself trying to be. I mean, you can't make these moments happen. You can't make yourself appreciate your kids or appreciate the experiences you're having, but you can be aware that I can't control any of this. I can sort of surrender to the uncontrollability of it and let myself be encountered. And I may be encountered and I may not be, you know, I might have a resonant moment with these people I care about, or we might just argue and fight the whole time, but at least I can. I can try to approach it with that sense of availability to the presence of God in the presence of one another,
Joshua Johnson:practically. How do I control uncontrollability? Like? What does that look like? But, but. Yeah, really what I wanted? Oh, it's like, what is pilgrimage as parenting really look like or and what is pilgrimage as you know, leading congregations really look like? How can we do this?
Kara Root:Well, I love the metaphor of pilgrimage because it's that sense of walking alongside. I mean that it is not there is sort of the further horizon that as Christians, we're drawn to, to say that, you know, God holds this story, this bigger picture, we don't. So if we're held on this journey by a loving God and given these people to journey alongside with, what does it look like, not to try to shape the path, but to be on the path with each other, knowing that God is going to encounter us through things that we can't necessarily see coming, and when they come. How do we maintain that view of one another's personhood in this sort of mutual sense of journeying together and in suffering and in joy and sharing those moments, knowing that that's how Christ encounters us concretely, is by, by being alongside with and for each other?
Andrew Root:Yeah, I do think that there's, you know, this is a, probably a through line of my work too. Is there? There's a necessity of confession. So there is something we can do. And what we do is create semi controlled experiences, you know. So like, for instance, this podcast, no one can guarantee. I mean, you know, you have an incredible track record, Joshua, but no one can guarantee that listening to this will be a resonant experience. But you know, if, if we try to do it well and it's available, and people you know, have it up, there's a kind of semi controlled experience, experience to it. So, you know, worship, Sunday, worship, certain practices families put in, they are good in their semi controlled experiences. But the problem becomes the temptation, the modern temptation, to actually make the semi controlled experience the whole thing. And you know, so what, what you look at on Instagram is not a kind of way to be formed to create semi controlled experiences, so a deep sense of conversation and togetherness can happen with our children or with our congregations. It's like this becomes the thing, and now I have to control that we get this out of it. So I think that the real practicality is, how do we take steps in the Christian tradition, like, we've thought of this as practices. Like, what practices do we take on that are semi controlled experiences, but theologically, they, in and of themselves, are not magical acts that can guarantee God's presence. So you know, even you know prayer and and the liturgy, these are all semi controlled experiences. And if you think, because you do this liturgy, then God has to show up. Then the god you're talking about is not the God of Israel, and is not the God who is, is God. And so to kind of take a step back and think about, then, how do we think about the way we raise our kids? And that really what our kids need is not us to manage their lives, which is the great temptation of this control is we actually think the best pastor, the best parent, is a manager. Your job is to go out ahead and manage everything for everyone. I don't think they need managers. I think that congregations and parents, they need persons to be in conversation with, and you're going to have to create some semi controlled experiences for those conversations to happen, like going to Europe and sitting in a cafe in Paris and having a conversation. But the minute you say, if we don't get eight conversations out of our time in Europe, and if I equate that, that means we're paying 350 euro per encounter, if I don't get that. This is, you know, this is, this is terrible. And I'm going to write a very angry letter to someone at the Tourist Board of France, you know, like that. It just promises it, it won't happen.
Kara Root:Or, or even, I mean, I jump to going to Europe, or taking a pilgrimage, even, you know, going to the dog park, or gardening together, whatever, as soon as we turn it into, you know, a semi controllable experience, but it's for the purpose of control. We've lost it. And I think it's fascinating that Rosa, as a sociologist, holds up, like in his book, names prayer as kind of the ultimate example of a semi controllable experience that opens you up to something that you can't control that might encounter you.
Joshua Johnson:How do I open up myself to an uncontrollable experience with God and have God encounter me and not just try to get God to do what I want God to do? And because I think we all pray some prayers like that, like some controlling prayers, we're trying to control God, which doesn't work, but
Andrew Root:there's best selling books from the 90s that would tell you how to control God with your prayers. Yeah, yes,
Joshua Johnson:yeah. So what does it look like to lift these things up to God and say, Okay, God, yeah, your will be done.
Kara Root:Well, one thing that I think Andy's been talking about about conversation is listening and. And through the Christian tradition, listening is a is a more of a form of prayer talked about then, then telling God things. So that's that's a piece. I think our in our modernity, we don't practice prayer that way. We we we're always sort of talking and moving, and so we just love going to sit down and tell God a bunch of stuff. There's a woman in my congregation who brought this form of prayer to us, like, when there's stuff going on and you just, you've people in your heart you want to pray, and we want to tell God what to do, like my three year old telling me, you know, Mom, I want the toast with the butter all the way to the edges, and I want, you know, like that, as though God needs to know, you know, like guide the surgeon's hands and make sure that they do a good job. Like God knows what needs to be done here, but she has this lovely form of prayer where she just says, here now with you, for Gaza, here now with you for my son. And you're not telling God to do, but you're what to do, but you're letting yourself actually be present. I'm here now. I'm here now, God's always here, but I do a bad job of showing up. So now here I am in the presence of God, and I'm with you for your purposes, whatever those may be, in relation to this person. And it's just, it's such a gentle way of praying. So that's kind of one example. I think that's been helpful for me, is like sometimes you have too many words, or you don't have any words and to be able to just say, you know, in either case, the spirit prays with groans too deep, you know. So how do I align myself with the Spirit's prayer?
Joshua Johnson:I need you to help me and my wife out. You know, we are a good 10 years behind you in raising our son, but we are also 90s youth group kids that said we could go and change the world. We're first born achievers, like we want to go and achieve this parenting thing and we want to control it. What have you learned? Help me out. Help me and my wife out. My son is eight. What is a pilgrimage with him start to look like how? What is it shifting? What have you learned that would help me in my shift towards letting go, even in a place where he's too young to really let go?
Andrew Root:But yeah, and this, you know, obviously it's, it's unique with each kid, but with with with our firstborn, one of the things that's been really powerful for us, and obviously he's he's almost 21 now, and we're still dealing with with battles of control all the time. But is to say, and this may sound a bit harsh, but is to say, it's his life, like it's his life, and that can seem flippant like, well, it's his life. Whatever the bleep happens with it is his responsibility. We don't mean it like that. For us, it's a mantra of a prayer of like, we can't, can we can't control it. And so what you know, what does it mean to parent in a way that we're aware that these people have their own lives to live, and that they need us to be with them as again, you know, I'm reiterating what I said earlier as a conversation partner about what is meaningful about what's the purpose of life. They don't need me to control everything. And yet we fall into this trap like incredibly like we are the parents who survey our kids all the time, like you know the find on the iPhone. We know where our kids are at all the time. And we had an experience in Europe this summer where Maisie was, our daughter was with some friends, and they were not going to make their train. They were going to take a train out of Heidelberg, and they had to make a connection another German city, so they could get to Leon, where we had friends that were going to see them for the night, and they were not going to make it. So we're, like, getting a cab. And then it was like a situation room. We were in a hotel room in Berlin, and it was like a situation where we had three computers up an iPad. We were, we were seeing them. We were, we were, you know, like, analyzing, is that train? Is the next train going to go on time? You know, we're like, basically had the miles per hour of the cab driver, and we're doing equations on I mean, it was, it was it was nuts, like, so we're always in the midst of having to confess that we want to control every piece of it. Like we we think we know better. I mean, we're first born youth group stars. We know better than everyone what to do. So for us, the mantra that, like it is his life has been a power. It's a prayer, really. It's it's not. It could be seen as a kind of fatalistic, kind of grumpy like, you know, well, to hell, to hell with it. Just, it's your life. But for us, it's a prayer of letting go so we can be put in a disposition to be in a conversation with him. And the more we say that that like it's it's your life, it's his life, it's interesting, the more he becomes in a position to actually talk to us.
Kara Root:And I think that we haven't said much here about trust, but that's such a huge piece of it. Like we we actually. Act like God's not real. I mean, we believe God's real so much so that that's what we formed our careers and our lives and our vocations around, but, but then we act like God's not real, and and there's some trust and entrusting those we love into God's hands, but also it means that God is speaking to them just as much as God's speaking to us and ministering through them, as much as God's ministering through us. And so seeing our children as ministers and as you know, capable of participating in this life in ways unexpected and unplanned by us is is such a gift. I mean, it makes each moment when they're young, especially this like what might happen. Where's that moment of encounter that might occur where God meets us and through them and meets them through us, and, you know, or some beauty or experience in the world that we together share and then get to process. So I think it's to journey alongside kids in a pilgrimage mentality is is just to also have to adopt their wonder and to have that sense of exploration. You know, it's old hat for us. We've been in this world a long time, but everything's new when you're little and you know to be able to take on sort of their ethos of of pilgrimage, that we've maybe lost the pilgrim and become kind of the worker and the manager, but they still have this sense of encountering things for the first time and seeing the world through through young eyes.
Joshua Johnson:Yeah, so try and control your readers experience. What? What would you like them to get? But what? What hope do you have for readers? What would you hope that they would would get from your book?
Andrew Root:Yeah, I think at the end of it, I think we want them just to breathe. Just breathe a bit and and just be, just be with these people that you've been blessed to be within this church and be with your children. We really hope that anyone who reads this book realizes this is not a parenting book of people who have it figured out in any way, this is a kind of anti parent parenting book, and that there's this, there's a lot of struggle and a lot of confession, and just be,
Kara Root:yeah, I mean, I was gonna say the same thing about this. Is not a how to, this is not how to, how to parent better. So now you add pilgrimage onto your list of things to accomplish as a good parent. Like, Oh, great. Now I gotta do that too. It's asking you to step back and receive what's already there alongside each other, and this gift of a life that it all comes from God, and it all returns to God. And we are not on this journey alone. We're accompanied by by the the presence of Christ in the presence of one another. And so how do we just walk that and receive that?
Joshua Johnson:Well, that's beautiful. I'd love to get a couple recommendations from from each of you. So anything you've been reading or watching lately you could recommend for us.
Andrew Root:Yeah, I mean, we've been in the midst of of traveling and being a little under the weather, so we've been watching some major garbage TV that we were raised on. So we've been watching MTV. Is the challenge, the 40th anniversary of that, which just the the 40th season. So where I think, I think they're actually on a 41 now, so that just everyone who had any respect for us listening to this has just lost it right now, because it's absolute, absolute garbage. So I'll try to go a bit more sophisticated. I've been back reading a lot of Bonhoeffer of late, and so trying to kind of think about a new project on Bonhoeffer, and reading some letters and some engagements he had with his twin sister in thinking about about that dynamic.
Kara Root:Yep, I just had to look on my Kindle, because I never know the titles of books, because I never see the cover. But I'm reading how to inhabit time by James K A Smith, which is really interesting part of kind of this conversation a bit as well. That's what I'm reading at the moment, and I've been enjoying it.
Joshua Johnson:Good recommendations. Yeah, a pilgrimage into letting go is available now anywhere books are sold, anywhere that you would like to point people to, how could they connect with you guys,
Andrew Root:just anywhere where it gives us more control of the profit margin? No, I wherever you can find it. Find it. You know it's on. It's always easiest for us on that, that big mammoth called Amazon. You can, you can get it there, but wherever you feel comfortable getting it, hopefully you'll, you'll check it out. And we would be honored if you take a look at this kind of very non parenting, parenting book of a confession of failed parents, more than expert
Kara Root:parents, non church leadership, church leadership book, too. Take a load off. That's you know, to stop thinking this is yours to manage and control and find the joy in it. Amen.
Joshua Johnson:Well. Andy Kara, thank you for this conversation. Thank you for giving us this pilgrimage into letting go so that we could actually embrace some uncontrollability of the world and that we. Can let go and trust and say that God can actually encounter us and our kids and our congregations, and so we could actually have a beautiful life on the trail, on the path, as we go on pilgrimage to him. So thank you. It was fantastic. Thanks for having us. You
Unknown:you.
