Andrew Root / Time, Acceleration, and Waiting / Patience Part 1

For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & Culture

Modern life presents a crisis of time, bringing the value of patience into question. Andrew Root joins Ryan McAnnally-Linz to provide some context for our modern patience predicament. As a professor of youth ministry at Luther Seminary, he has years of both experience and careful thinking about what it means for kids, families, churches, and communities to flourish in an impatient world, cultivating the mindset, the virtues, and the community we need to wait well. Part 1 of a 6-episode series on Patience hosted by Ryan McAnnally-Linz.

Show Notes

• Doubling down and the temptation to make up for lost time
• Hartmut Rosa and Modernity as Acceleration
• Acceleration across three categories: technology, social change, and pace of life
• "Decay rate” is accelerating—we can sense that things get old and obsolete much faster (e.g., phones, computers)
• Riding the wave of accelerated social change
• "We’ve become enamored with gadgets and time-saving technologies."
• “Getting more actions within units of time"
• Multi-tasking
• Expectations and waiting as an attack on the self
• "Waiting feels like a moral failure."
• Give yourself a break; people are under a huge amount of guilt that they’re not using their time or curating the self they could have.
• "You’re screwing up my flow here, man."
• When I’m feeling the acceleration of time: “Get the bleep out of my way. My humanity is worn down through the acceleration."
• Busyness as an indicator of a good life
• “To say that I’m busy is to indicate that I’m in demand."
• "Stripping time of its sacred weight."
• Mid-life crises and the hollowness of time
• Patience is not just "go slower”
• Eric Fromm's "having mode" vs "being mode" of action
• Waiting doesn’t become the absence of something
• Pixar’s Soul, rushing to find purpose, failing to see the gift of connectedness to others
• Not all resonance is good (e.g., the raging resonance of Capitol rioters)
• How would the church offer truly good opportunities for resonance
• Bonhoeffer and the community of resonant reality
• Luther's theology of the cross—being with and being for—sharing in the moment
• Receiving the act of being with and being for
• Instrumentalization vs resonance
• Bearing with one another in weakness, pain, and suffering
• Encountering each other by putting down accelerated goals to be with and for the other
• Flow or resonance in one’s relationship to time
• Artists, mystics, and a correlation with psychological flow

About Andrew Root

Andrew Root is the Olson Baalson Associate Professor of Youth and Family Ministry at Luther Seminary. He teaches classes on youth ministry, young adults, family, church, and culture; he has lately been writing about issues surrounding the intersection of faith and science, including a project called Science for Youth Ministry. He is author of several books, including The End of Youth Ministry?, The Congregation in a Secular Age, The Pastor in a Secular Age, and Faith Formation in a Secular Age.

Production Notes

• This podcast featured theologians Andrew Root and Ryan McAnnally-Linz
• Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
• Hosted by Evan Rosa
• Production Assistance by Martin Chan & Nathan Jowers
• A Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/about
• Support For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give