Andrew Root's Blog, page 12
March 15, 2018
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February 17, 2018
August 16, 2017
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February 22, 2017
THE GRACE OF DOGS
I’m excited to announce the pending release of my newest book, The Grace of Dogs.My search for the canine soul began the day my eight-year-old son led our family in a moving Christian ritual at the burial service for Kirby, our beloved black lab. In the coming weeks, I found myself wondering: What was this thing we’d experienced with this animal? Why did the loss hurt so poignantly? Why did my son’s act seem so right in its sacramental feel?
In The Grace of Dogs, I draw on biology, history, theology, cognitive ethology (the study of animal minds), and paleontology to trace how in our mutual evolution, humans and dogs have so often helped each other to become more fully ourselves. I explore questions like: Do dogs have souls? Is it accurate to say that dogs “love” us? What do psychology and physiology say about why we react to dogs in the way that we do? The Grace of Dogs paints a vivid picture of how, beyond sentimentality, the dog-human connection can legitimately be described as “spiritual”–as existing not for the sake of gain, but for the unselfish desire to be with and for the other, and to remind us that we are persons worthy of love and able to share love. This book is for any parent whose kids have asked if they’ll see Fido in Heaven, or who has looked their beloved dog in the face and wondered what’s going on in there. I hope you find it to be an illuminating and heartfelt read that will change how you understand man’s best friend.
You can pre-order The Grace of Dogs at these fine retailers:
Amazon:
http://links.penguinrandomhouse.com/type/affiliate/isbn/9780451497598/siteID/8001/retailerid/7/trackingcode/randohouseinc36695-20Barnes and Noble:
http://links.penguinrandomhouse.com/type/affiliate/isbn/9780451497598/siteID/8001/retailerid/2/trackingcode/PRHDB6CDDFB82
Hudson Booksellers
:
http://links.penguinrandomhouse.com/type/affiliate/isbn/9780451497598/siteID/8001/retailerid/25/trackingcode/PRHDB6CDDFB82
January 10, 2017
Adolescence and the Creation of the Secular Age of Unbelief
Like an erratic rash that seems to clear up to only return, an old debate has resurfaced once again in discussions of Protestant youth ministry. This debate surrounds the very nature of adolescence. What is it? And where did it come from? The tension is between those that assert that adolescence is a social construction of Western modern societies and those that see it as a universal biological reality. In other words, to put it crudely, the questions of debate consist in these, “Are adolescents created from the forces of culture or the powers of natural biological determinism? Is it industrialization, secondary education, and consumer society that make adolescence? Or is adolescence just the natural stage of an organism that everyone, across time and space, has moved through?” read more
October 13, 2015
Teaching at the Intersection of Faith and Science
Sometimes our jobs in youth ministry seem close to impossible. Most of us assume we’re given these young people with fragile faith. Someone, somehow, has communicated to us in some indirect way that it is our job to project these delicate balloons. The good youth worker is the person who is able to get young people through high school (and then college) with their balloons of faith intact.
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