How to Human: An Incomplete Manual for Living in a Messed-Up World

by Alice Connor

Overview

Being human is hard. Being a good human is even harder. Practicing kindness, honesty, and self—awareness in the face of doubt, failure, ambiguity, and vulnerability can feel insurmountable.

How to Human is here to help. Alice Connor draws on nearly a decade of experience as a college chaplain to provide a tender and irreverent take on one of life's most fundamental questions: how to be a better human in a world dead set against it.

Connor offers sage wisdom and no—nonsense realism through real—life examples that strike right at the rashes and rubs of the human experience. She'll take you by the hand, tell you what you need to hear, and encourage you to embrace the chaos. How to Human will help you see life as an experiment—not a quest for the right answers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781506449104
Publisher:	Augsburg Fortress, Publishers
Publication date:	07/16/2019
Pages:	150
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 8.60(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Alice Connor is an Episcopal priest and college chaplain. She is the author of Fierce: Women of the Bible and Their Stories of Violence, Mercy, Bravery, Wisdom, Sex, and Salvation and How to Human: An Incomplete Manual for Living in a Messed—Up World. Alice is a certified enneagram teacher and a stellar pie—maker. She lives for challenging conversations and has a high tolerance for awkwardness. She lives in Cincinnati with her husband, two kids, a dog, and no cats.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Try it, you'll like it.
1. Take people seriously.
2. Do shit on purpose.
3. Sucking at something is the first step to being sorta good at something.
4. Take off the costume.
5. If it's not okay, it's not the end.
6. It's okay to feel your feelings.
7. Say the thing.
8. Ask for what you need.
9. You're involved, not in control.
10. If we eat together, we will not betray one another.
11. Consider the lilies, dammit.
12. Ambiguity is neither good nor bad. 13. Everything's awkward. Lean into it. Conclusion: So what?

Editorial Reviews

"If you like your spirituality books laced equally with wisdom, memoir, and snarky humor . . .If you have enjoyed authors like Nadia Bolz-Weber, Rachel Held Evans, and Peter Enns . . .Then let me commend to you Alice Connor's How to Human: An Incomplete Manual for Living in a Messed-up World. It's a smart and playful take on theological adulting, basically." —Jana Riess, Religion News Service

"We need Alice Connor's calm, vulnerable wisdom to help us cross the deep chasms that are tearing our world apart—to learn to be curious about those we disagree with, to take them seriously, to listen intently." —Debbie Blue, author of Consider the Women, Consider the Birds, and Sensual Orthodoxy

"Connor's provocative recipe book for life is relevant to anyone trying to figure out how to be a human being who makes mistakes but is still abundantly loved and transformed by our experiences together." —Aaron Billard, Unvirtuous Abbey

"How to Human challenges us to address the uncomfortable dimensions of our life. The payoff is well worth it." —Seamus Carey, president, Transylvania University

"How to Human is a true gift to anyone wise enough to take in the goodness poured out on these pages." —Bart Campolo, humanist chaplain at the University of Cincinnati and host of the Humanize Me podcast

From the Publisher