Amid a frantic pace of life that often leaves us feeling disconnected and ungrounded, Receiving This Life helps the reader engage with life and become attuned to their belonging to God and each other. Kara K. Root empowers the reader to embrace life as sacred and receive it as a gift. The book offers reflections on living a life of presence and receptivity that seeks meaning and responds to God's promptings. It invites and models a stance of attunement that orients us toward receiving life's ordinary, holy moments as a gift, returning us to our deepest belonging. It includes prayers and liturgies that can be used by individuals, families, or congregations over and over again. Receiving This Life is a natural follow-up to Root's first book, The Deepest Belonging--pairing prayers and liturgies with further devotional essays on many of the topics covered there, such as death, disillusionment, sabbath, hope, and connections between human beings.
Kara K. Root has served the church in various leadership capacities for over twenty-five years. As the pastor of Lake Nokomis Presbyterian Church in Minneapolis for fifteen years, she has led a community shaped around noticing God together, then helping one another participate in God's love in the world. A trained spiritual director and certified educator in the PCUSA, she leads workshops and retreats on sabbath, prayer practices, and church leadership and transformation.
I loved this book! Being with Kara Root in these pages is a pure gift. Part spiritual director, part kitchen-table friend, Root gently unzipped every article of anxious faith I own and left my "worry time" self on the floor. Every chapter was a flood of relief. Don't reach for this book. Receive it. --Kenda Creasy Dean, Mary D. Synnott Professor of Youth, Church, and Culture, Princeton Theological Seminary, and author of Innovating for Love: Joining God's Expedition Through Christian Social Innovation and Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers Is Telling the American Church Receiving This Life is a blessing. Kara Root's honesty, relentless hope, and fearless imagination empower me as a pastor to accompany my community of faith courageously in uncertain times. Root is a cheerleader, guide, and companion along the way of God. Through stories, practices, and prayers, she shares her thoughtful exposition on life lived in faithful rebellion against the way of fear. Her voice is just what I need as a follower of Jesus in order to retune my heart and rediscover my belonging in this noisy, busy world. --Rev. Jessica Daum, senior pastor, First Lutheran Church, Brookings, South Dakota Reading Receiving This Life is like coming up for air. Kara Root's words are comfort to those of us who are still reconciling ourselves to the lives we have rather than ones we want. She reminds us that it is in the disillusionment of our own ability to be extraordinary that we find God's gifts of grace and hope. The book reminds us that extraordinary glory can be found in the everyday. In the knowledge that we can only come as we actually are, Root shares her practical guidance to draw us back to the God who is waiting for us to stop and take notice. --Becca Dean, senior lecturer in youth ministry, Ridley Hall, University of Cambridge Receiving This Life is a true gift of a book. Root is an inspired storyteller, and the wisdom and care shared in these pages will be life-giving and faith-shaping for pastors and lay readers alike. I will be quoting from this book and drawing from it as a resource for my own ministry for years and years to come. Again, what a gift. --Austin Carty, author of The Pastor's Bookshelf: Why Reading Matters for Ministry As a parent and a pastor, I'm constantly on the lookout for multisensory, intergenerational, interactive rhythms and postures that will ground and guide the imaginations and daily experiences of my children and my congregation in the way, truth, and life of Jesus. Receiving This Life checks all those boxes. The reflections, prayers, and practices provided by Kara Root are simple without being simplistic. Whether you are young or old, inexperienced or seasoned, you will be guided into a deepening awareness of the always-everywhere presence of God, and you will be inspired with practical ways in which to play your part in the "deeper, truer story" in which we are "saved by God acting through our smallness to achieve remarkable things." Because Root provides examples of "kid-friendly contemplative," grassroots-y ways in which we become fully alive human beings who bear the image of God in the likeness of Christ, this book has already become a go-to resource for me. --Jonathan Janzen, pastoral elder, Highland Community Church, Abbotsford, British Columbia
