What If Hope Doesn’t Require a Happy Ending? | Jack Holloway, Part 2

Anna McBride (0:00)

Welcome back to SHE Asked, Tools for Practical Hope. I'm your host, Anna McBride. I am a storyteller, therapist, life coach, and a lifelong observer of the human experience. Through SHE Asked, I invite us to explore the stories that shape us, the questions that challenge us, and the possibilities that emerge when we live our lives with curiosity, courage, and compassion. Today, I'm continuing my fascinating conversation with minister, writer, musician, and creator of Despair Sanctuary, Jack Holloway. We're recording from the beautiful Old First Reformed Church in Brooklyn, New York, where Jack has created a rather extraordinary gathering that invites people to experience grief, despair, and other difficult emotions without the expectation that they must immediately feel better. If you haven't listened to our first conversation, I strongly encourage you to go listen to that one first. We explored how the Despair Sanctuary began, why our culture is uncomfortable with suffering, and what it means to witness another person's pain without trying to fix it, change it, or create meaning from it. And today, I want to explore something that Jack and I discovered in our preliminary conversation, our passion for ancient wisdom. The Bhagavad Gita, the Tao Te Ching, the Upanishads, where some things that we talked about in other texts, that have been asking humanity the biggest questions for thousands of years.

Questions about suffering, responsibility, mortality, meaning, and what it means to live a good life. But while we share an appreciation for these teachings, Jack and I don't necessarily interpret them the same way. And that's what makes this conversation so interesting. Because what happens when the beliefs that once sustained us no longer provide the answers that we need. What remains when certainty falls away? And can we continue to live a life with purpose, courage, and even hope when we have absolutely no guarantee of a happy ending? Jack, welcome back. And I'm excited to explore this next chapter with you.

As I mentioned, you know, we always like to begin our episodes with a story.

In our previous conversation, we explored the circumstances that led to creating the Despair Sanctuary. But today I'd rather go back a little bit further with you. You grew up in an evangelical Christian tradition, studied theology and eventually became a minister. And yet you've written openly about questioning your faith, your beliefs, and even the existence of God.

Can you tell me a story of a time when something you had been taught to believe no longer felt true? What happened and how did it change you?

Jack Holloway (3:33)

Oh man, where do I choose from? This has kind of been my hobby my whole life is finding such things. Like, but I think, yeah, I'll go with this one.

So I grew up evangelical, as you said, but it was sort of an unusual kind of concentric circles combination of evangelicalism. Because you usually get one of two kinds of evangelicals. The kind that is very fundamentalist and biblically-based. Like, you have to believe the Bible about everything. Or you get the ones that are more spiritual and kind of more open about interpreting texts. But there's more of a sense of, of it's about the inner experience.

I kind of had both. It was a very strict biblical upbringing that was also very spiritual in a way that defined even day-to-day existence. By the way that we prayed and by the way that we sort of lived life expecting God to, expecting that God was constantly responding to our every need. And part of this was this language about speaking to God or hearing from God.

You kind of didn't really make any big decision without trying to find a sign from God to go in a specific direction. And people would say all the time, like, I got a word from the Lord, or God revealed to me something, and God spoke to me, God said to me. And I always heard that and was like, wow, like, I want to hear from God, like, I want to speak to God. And I was a very serious Christian kid. Like, I was very devoted at a young age. I remember sitting in church as a kid one day. My little brother was sitting in the seat next to me, and he had his fingers in his ears, and he was going, blah, blah, blah, blah. During worship, and I was so shocked and appalled. I was so scandalized by his behavior, because I took it very seriously. But I never heard from God. I never had any kind of spiritual experience. I never felt like God was revealing anything to me or that God was even there. So really, like on a weekly basis for years, I was disturbed emotionally by this alienation that I had from God. Why God are you not talking to me? Like, I want to hear from you. Why are you silent? So that I think was probably like the defining crisis of my coming of age religiously was like this. Why is God silent? Why is God hidden?