I just finished reading Alice Connor’s delightful new book How to Human: An Incomplete Manual for Living in a Messed Up World (Fortress Press, 2019).
Meet Alice Connor
Connor, an Episcopal priest who leads a campus ministry at the University of Cincinnati called Edge House, is a master storyteller and a skilled discipler. She also has a gift for saying the things that others often leave unsaid.
A New Spiritual Practice
In the chapter titled “Ambiguity is Neither Good Nor Bad,” Connor invites her readers to embrace an intentional form of ambiguity. She also recommends a new spiritual practice: I don’t know.
Being able to answer “I don’t know” is freeing. Connor explains, “It’s a spiritual practice in a world where we seem to be expected to have an opinion on everything that happens, whether or not we know anything about it.”
So What?
If you are anything like me, you are asked to weigh in on all sorts of topics on any given day. In most contexts those asking for insight expect a thoughtful response. In reality, “I don’t know” or the longer “I don’t know much at all about _____” will often be the most thoughtful, honest and helpful reply of all.
I invite you to join me in giving this new spiritual practice a try. Will you make an effort to increase the number of times you reply “I don’t know” between now and the start of the new school year?