# Hope Podcast: Featuring Rob Anderson, MDiv Candidate On this episode of the Hope Podcast, we hear from Rob Anderson, a first-year MDiv candidate, about falling apart and coming back together again, about a multitude of ways to offer ministry, and about trying to be curious before we get furious. November 06, 2025 HIATT O'CONNOR: Welcome to the Hope Podcast. I'm Hiatt O'Connor. JORDAN AHMED: And I'm Jordan Ahmed. HIATT O'CONNOR: This podcast is offered by the Harvard Divinity School Office of Religious and Spiritual Life-- JORDAN AHMED: Where we talk to HDS students about their spiritual lives, what hope means to them, and how they practice hope daily. HIATT O'CONNOR: Today we're joined by Rob Anderson, a first-year Master of Divinity candidate. We talked about falling apart and coming back together again, about a multitude of ways to offer ministry, and about trying to be curious before we get furious, and a lot more. Hey, Rob. Harvard Divinity School · Hope Podcast: Featuring Rob Anderson, MDiv Candidate ROB ANDERSON: How's it going? HIATT O'CONNOR: Pretty good. How are you? ROB ANDERSON: I'm doing great. Thanks for having me. HIATT O'CONNOR: Of course. So I think we're just going to start today with a little introduction. You can tell us a little bit about where home is for you and maybe a little bit of your spiritual autobiography, whatever you're comfortable with. ROB ANDERSON: Sure. So I have called Cape Cod home for the last 15 years of my life. I live in Provincetown, Massachusetts, which is at the very, very edge of the world. If you look at Massachusetts, there's a little curl, and I'm at the very end at the tip. So it's this really thin strip of land surrounded by water on three sides. And it's a magical place in a lot of ways. It was formed by a glacier in the last Ice Age. It was the home of the Wampanoags. It's the first place that the pilgrims landed in the United—or not the United States—but here on this land. And it is a fishing village. An old fishing village, that— HIATT O'CONNOR: Portuguese, right? ROB ANDERSON: Yeah. So it started as English, and then attracted a lot of Portuguese immigrants. And ultimately became known as this haven for outsiders, for bohemians, for artists. And then these days, it's known very much for being a queer utopia, a place where a lot of gay people live. And that's what brought me there in the first place. HIATT O'CONNOR: I love Provincetown. I've been three times. First for a fine arts work center workshop, week-long, and then just to go because there's, what is it? Tim's Used Books, or is it Tom's or Tim's? ROB ANDERSON: Tim's. HIATT O'CONNOR: I love that, it's a great book. They have a fantastic selection, if anyone's listening, who wants to go to P-town for a good bookstore. And the food scene is good too. ROB ANDERSON: It is. HIATT O'CONNOR: But anyway, continue. ROB ANDERSON: Yeah, so I went there for the first time—I had moved to Boston. I was a journalist, and I had moved to Boston to work for The Boston Globe. And I went to Provincetown on vacation, my third week in Boston, and that's the night that I met my now partner. And so I traveled back and forth for a while, and then we decided to open a restaurant together. HIATT O'CONNOR: Wow. ROB ANDERSON: So I left my job at The Globe and went to culinary school. And I've been running a restaurant as the chef and owner of my restaurant for the last 12, 13 years. HIATT O'CONNOR: No kidding. What's it called? ROB ANDERSON: It's called the canteen. HIATT O'CONNOR: And what do you serve. \[LAUGHS\] ROB ANDERSON: It's like modern seafood. Lobster, a lot of lobster rolls, fish and chips, sandwiches, salads. HIATT O'CONNOR: I'll add it to my list for the next time I go. ROB ANDERSON: Yeah. So yeah. As a spiritual biography, I grew up in the suburbs of Detroit. I had two sides of my family spiritually. I had one side that was Ashkenazi Jew, and the other side that was Catholic. And in my life, the Catholic side won over. So inside of me, there's this one half of spirituality that hasn't really had a vehicle. But I was raised Catholic, and on the one hand, Catholicism taught me about God. It taught me about ritual, and ceremony, and mystery. And then on the other hand, growing up as a queer person, and then also having the experience of being sexually abused as a kid, growing up in the Catholic Church was actually very difficult because there was a lot of messages I was given about shame, about silence, about queerness that really affected me in negative ways. So it was real. It was this struggle inside of me for a long time. Yeah, so that's one half of my spiritual. The beginning of my spirituality started there, for better and for worse. HIATT O'CONNOR: From there did it shift—and it seems like it shifted knowing you now. But can you just say a little more, if you would like to, about maybe what caused some new growth? ROB ANDERSON: Yeah, it definitely shifted. So I was already struggling with my religious identity when I went off to college, and I went to Georgetown. And when I went to Georgetown, I came out of the closet officially and started doing a lot of activism around LGBTQ issues. And at Georgetown, I really experienced a lot of mixed messages and hypocrisy. As I was doing this activism, a bunch of priests reached out to me. And it turned out that there were so many closeted priests who were willing to give me support, but not willing to say it publicly. And who were struggling so much as individuals, but couldn't articulate that. And they were so happy and proud of what I and others were doing to raise the issues of queer rights in the church, but they couldn't say it themselves. There was also a lot of homophobia among the administration and a lot of saying one thing, but then doing another. HIATT O'CONNOR: A doublespeak? ROB ANDERSON: Yeah, a double speak. And that didn't sit right to me. This was also the time when the pedophilia scandal was really roiling the Catholic Church. So I walked away from that side of my faith after college, that I walked away from my Catholicism, and I didn't really look back. So I would say for the next 15 years, I didn't really think of myself as being overtly religious, but the energy I had around spirituality, around social justice, around those issues of silence and shame that I had felt, sort of transformed and became part of my professional life. I became a journalist. But I wasn't just a journalist, I was an opinion writer. So my job was to make arguments, to advocate for social justice, to say things that other people couldn't. To basically make the world a better place through writing. I didn't know that's why I was doing that at the time, but I can look back and I can see that now. Eventually I got sort of disillusioned with that job. And as I said, left my job and opened a restaurant. But very quickly, my restaurant wasn't just a restaurant to me. It really became my ministry. The restaurant, of course, is a restaurant. We serve food. But it really became a vehicle through which I was able to become a community organizer, basically. So for my staff, it's about treating my staff properly, paying people well. It's about treating the food properly. It's about treating guests properly. It's about using the restaurant to uplift all the lives around me. So we offer housing to all of our employees, which is very difficult. HIATT O'CONNOR: Wow! Yeah. ROB ANDERSON: Where we live, housing is incredibly expensive. HIATT O'CONNOR: Yeah, it is. ROB ANDERSON: We employ a lot of immigrants. So I basically became an immigration lawyer. I'm a therapist, I was a banker, I was a mom. And so I took on all these roles, a housing advocate. Yeah, I took on all these roles and was basically turned, yeah, like I said, my restaurant into my ministry. HIATT O'CONNOR: That's a lot to carry. ROB ANDERSON: Well, here we go. Now then, \[LAUGHS\] that was a lot to carry. It ultimately led to, yeah, like a spiritual, physical, mental crisis. Around 2022 after the pandemic, I was just exhausted. And I had achieved all this success to the outward world, that I had the successful business. I was helping a lot of people. I made money. I have a house. I have a dog. I have a partner. My life really seemed, on paper perfect, and I was so, so unhappy. I was so lonely. I felt trapped. I felt alone. I felt like nothing I was doing was satisfying, or filling this deep pain, or hole in my heart. So that's when I decided to leave my job at the restaurant, and I went to a trauma rehabilitation center in Kentucky called The Bridge to Recovery. And so that was about two and a half years ago. And that started a whole journey for me about healing, about recovery, about spirituality, about reclaiming who that little boy was before all this stuff sort of happened to me. Connecting with that essence of who I really am. And that's what led me ultimately here to HDS. HIATT O'CONNOR: That sounds like such a, it's difficult to put words to any of that, really, but it just sounds like such a painful, but also such a potent-- I don't even what you would call it. A sort of cracking open, but also a collapse, but also a churning up of all this new ground. But it's not new, because like you said, it's the little boy that's always been there. It's just such a powerful thing. ROB ANDERSON: Well, I think it's all of those things that you just said. It has been and was incredibly painful and incredibly difficult. And I would also have it; I wouldn't have it any other way. I'm so grateful for the opportunity to build a life that I actually want, and to push against forces that I think weren't just hurting me. But in understanding how they were affecting me and hurt me, in learning how to remove those forces from my own being, I also then now have the opportunity to teach other people how to do it. So in being vulnerable about it and talking about it, part of what I'm doing here is learning how to take what I've learned in my own life, and learn how to help other people do the same thing. HIATT O'CONNOR: It's a really beautiful transformation too to go from, like you said, in loneliness and feeling trapped, this very inward sort of suffering. And then even after this profoundly difficult time, to then turn it back around and go outward with compassion. I think that's pretty rare. ROB ANDERSON: Well, I don't know it it's rare. What I can tell you is that before starting this upheaval \[LAUGHS\] in my life, I would have thought the opposite of depression was happiness, and the opposite of codependency and addiction would be non-codependency or non-addiction. What I've learned is that the opposites, to all of those things is actually connection. Connection to your body and connection to other people. That literally like relationality and embodiment to me, seems like the key to this life, is the key to fulfillment in this life. That without connection to your body and relations with other people, life is meaningless. And with it, it really is all that really matters in the end. HIATT O'CONNOR: That's a pretty radical posture of acceptance. At least, that's what it sounds like to me. Would you agree? ROB ANDERSON: 100%. Yeah. HIATT O'CONNOR: Well, thank you for sharing that. And you said that's what brought you to HDS. And I think you've already touched on it a little bit, do you want to just say a little more about how that directly brought you here? ROB ANDERSON: Yeah. So I actually, in my recovery phase, I moved just a few blocks away from here. So coming to HDS wasn't something that had been on my mind necessarily. I heard that, I knew about the school, and I was always interested in it. And there was an open house for prospective students. So I showed up with my guards raised because I went to Georgetown and had a negative experience. I have grown up in religious institutions and have had a negative experience. And I came here with my armor on. And as I was here and started talking to people and experiencing things, I was like, huh, I don't think I actually have to keep this on here. I can actually let it down. I can let my guard down a little bit. And weirdly enough, one of the more, like what actually sealed the deal for me, was, I went to noon service, and it was the Mormons leading the service. So I went thinking like, OK, I'm going to go. I'm going to keep an open mind, but I'm ready to be attacked. And I'm ready to be put on the margins, like I usually am. And instead I showed up, and the first thing the students who were leading the service said was, we are here. We understand that there's a legacy or an understanding of our church as excluding women, and minorities, and queer people. We're not OK with that, and we're really excited for you to be here. We're happy to share what we have with you, and we are welcoming you here. And we're hoping to change our church in this way. And that blew my mind. If that's the type of place HDS is, that was a place that I knew that I could find a home at, and could use the experience, not only as a way to find a professional path or vocation, but do some healing personally as well. HIATT O'CONNOR: And in community, by the sound of it. You came in with your guard up, expecting to be like you said, put on the margins, again, as you had been for decades before. A lot of my friends helped run that service. And I remember talking with them before they put it on about what their intentions were and what they were going to try and do. And at the time, I knew it was a powerful thing to do, and it was a powerful statement to make. And those sorts of statements aren't exactly unfamiliar at a place like HDS. But to then hear what it was like from your perspective, it just ran so much deeper than I had the capacity at that time to really know. And my experience sort of precluded me from knowing it in that way. But it really is a beautiful testimony to just how you can be surprised here. ROB ANDERSON: 100%. HIATT O'CONNOR: So you came to HDS looking for a sort of a vocational rediscernment? A new path forward, maybe? ROB ANDERSON: Yeah. So before coming here, I've already had a few different roles or vocations. I had a whole career as a writer. I have worked at a lot of really cool places like The Washington Post, the New Republic, The Boston Globe. I was on this path of being a journalist, and I always will consider myself a writer. I love writing. HIATT O'CONNOR: Yeah, as do I. ROB ANDERSON: Yeah, I will never not be a writer. It's what I am. But I have also had this career as a chef and a business owner. And then I've also alluded to the fact that I've been sort of an activist and an organizer in my life, too. So I came here thinking, how can I turn all of this into one vocation? Or is there a way to collapse it all into one path? HIATT O'CONNOR: That's part of the reason why I came here too. I did a lot of work in nonprofits before I came here. I also worked in youth education. And I was a writer myself. I still am. Like you said, always a writer, but maybe it's not the professional thing. And I came here looking to see if I could get all of those braids into one rope. As of now, TBD, I'm in my third and final year, and like I said earlier, just get surprised by so many things here. So many new opportunities, and so many different chances to discern different things that you would have never—opportunities you never would have expected to have. Or even really been able to comprehend that those opportunities would be something you would think worthwhile. And this is I'm speaking in the abstract because, well, we don't have that much time for us to get into the nitty gritty of it, really, but it sounds like you're also open to those surprises. Which I think is a really fruitful way to come into HDS. And also just to be-- I'm in my third year, and I still have to be open to surprises, because there's something new here every day. And I think it's really important to stay plastic in that way. I don't like that word, plastic. I don't like the connotations. But receptive, maybe it's a better word. ROB ANDERSON: I like porous maybe. HIATT O'CONNOR: Porous? ROB ANDERSON: Yeah. HIATT O'CONNOR: That's better. That's better. It's more organic. So just to pivot a little bit, but are there any insights or any practices, whether from a religious tradition, or from your activism, or from any other source, that you engage with regularly, that support you or give you hope that you would want to share with the listeners? ROB ANDERSON: Yeah. I think the most important, life-changing practice that I have learned, and I learned it first as a business owner from my mentor, Ari Weinzweig, who owns a restaurant in Ann Arbor, Michigan, called Zingerman's. And he teaches courses and writes books. He taught me this phrase. Before you get furious, get curious. Or, get curious before you get furious. And it also sort of dovetails with my own Buddhist practice at this point too. So they go hand in hand. In the context of owning a business or running a business, he was saying, notice when you're starting to get angry about something. And once you have that awareness, try to take a breath, take a pause and ask, what's coming up for me? Why am I feeling angry before acting? And so that move has been probably the most radical move that I've been able to make in my life. Practicing that first taught me how to become aware of what's happening in my body, and noticing from an outsider's perspective, when I feel something uncomfortable or going wrong in my emotional life inside. I had to learn how to take that pause and then start to face that with curiosity. Let it happen. Don't be judgmental about it. Don't push it away. Hold it, and think about it, and ask yourself, where is this coming from? In doing that, I have learned that emotions like anger, sadness, discomfort, are actually the quickest windows into your soul, into discerning for yourself what's actually bugging you. Because what I learned was that when I was feeling anger towards somebody or judging someone else, oftentimes, it has nothing to do with that person. And it has everything to do with something inside of me. What that person is doing, or saying, or what they represent, is touching something inside of me that is unattended to or needs a change. And sometimes in recognizing that issue, it might change how I act today. Or I might notice that theme coming up over and over again. And it might make me change something in five years. But it's this sort of like guidepost for me to understand what's going on inside of me. So what I find supremely hopeful about that, connecting it to your question of how is that hope. To me, it transforms our most uncomfortable moments in life into actually an opportunity. So those moments when you're most angry, and you're most upset, and you're most sad, when you're most filled with grief, it actually points to something incredibly deep inside of you. And like, I don't know, I find a lot of comfort in that. HIATT O'CONNOR: Yeah. Well, it sounds to me like part of what you're saying is, in those moments where everything seems so predetermined, you're so activated, you're so angry, you're so upset, that it seems like there's only one outcome, That either you snap on somebody, or you are cruel to yourself with your own voice, or you just impinge these judgments. You feel sort of trapped. But that little clue that you were pointing to helps you sidestep the current. So you're not actually locked in. You're free. There is a choice, and it's workable, even when it doesn't seem workable at all. ROB ANDERSON: Exactly. HIATT O'CONNOR: If that's not hopeful, I don't know what is. ROB ANDERSON: Yeah. At the moment that you think you're trapped, that's actually the moment when you're closest to liberation. HIATT O'CONNOR: Wow. You know, I believe that. So much easier said than done. ROB ANDERSON: 100%. \[LAUGHTER\] HIATT O'CONNOR: It's a life's work. It's multiple lifetimes worth of work. ROB ANDERSON: Yeah. No, I mean, one of the amazing things about developing a Buddhist practice later in life. I'm 43 now, so it didn't start until a couple of years ago. The idea of reincarnation was really uncomfortable for me at the beginning, and I didn't think I would buy into it. But the idea that I don't have to accomplish everything in this lifetime, that I actually just need to move the ball forward a little bit, and I can figure out the rest of my next incarnation. Or that someone else can pick it up after me, that's been an amazingly liberating concept in my life. You just have to do a little bit. To move the ball a little bit, you'll figure out the next step in the next life or someone else will. Don't worry about it. Just do what you can today in this little moment, and everything else will take care of itself. HIATT O'CONNOR: Right now is enough. ROB ANDERSON: Yeah, exactly. HIATT O'CONNOR: And that, again, is another act of profound compassion. I'm in a class on the Lotus Sutra right now. We were talking about this before we started to record. Brook Ziporyn is a scholar at the University of Chicago, has this book called Emptiness and Omnipresence. And in that book, he breaks down the traditional understanding of reincarnation and looks at it again through the Tiantai, a Chinese school of Buddhism. Looks at it through the Tiantai lens, and there's this little remark, he sort of off hands it. That one way to understand reincarnation, or rebirth, or whatever similar word you want to use for it, is that it is, compassion that extends lifetimes. Or a compassion that goes across lifetimes. And that's hard for me to make sense of exactly what that means. But when I read it, it felt right. It's compassion that extends from before you were born. It's compassion that extends till after you're born. And right now to everything that is currently being born in your life, and is yet to be born in your life. Now we are in the weeds a little bit. JORDAN AHMED: No, that's fine. ROB ANDERSON: Oh, it reminds me too one of the other traditions that I've been able to touch over the last year, was I was invited to a few gatherings of Lakota people. So I've been able to learn and understand Indigenous American spiritual practices a little bit. And central to their belief system is this idea that every decision you make, everything you do, you have to think about-- I forget if it's six or seven-- six or seven generations after you, six or seven generations before you. HIATT O'CONNOR: Wow. ROB ANDERSON: You're just the link right now that happens to be in this body, incarnated. But what you do reaches back into the past, and reaches forward into the future. And those people are with you at all times in your life, that you are just a representation of them. On the one hand, that's incredibly daunting because it's like a lot of responsibility in the way you live your life. On the other hand, I think it's very comforting because even when you're feeling alone, there's these people rooting for you from the grave and who are there to pick up whatever pieces you don't get to in your life. HIATT O'CONNOR: Unborn on both edges of life. ROB ANDERSON: Yeah, exactly. HIATT O'CONNOR: It seems daunting, like you said. But another way to think about it is that you're always accompanied, and that everything you do rings sympathetically out with all of those other things that you might not even be able to hear, but it's still ringing. Well, thank you for that. So before I let you go, do you have a podcast, or a book, or a movie, or anything, that you want to recommend to the listeners that you've been enjoying lately, or that might give them some hope? ROB ANDERSON: I do. So I love this question, and I appreciate it. I have a podcast recommendation and a poem, if that's OK. HIATT O'CONNOR: Please. ROB ANDERSON: Well, so the podcast, Poetry Unbound. HIATT O'CONNOR: Yeah, it's good. ROB ANDERSON: Yeah, so a lot of people might have already heard of it. But for me-- so Poetry Unbound is part of-- HIATT O'CONNOR: On Being. ROB ANDERSON: --On Being community of businesses or podcasts. And the host Pádraig Ó Tuama, every episode takes one poem. He is just-- he reads poetry in the most accessible, beautiful way that I've ever heard. It takes on new life in the way that he reads it. But then he also explains the poem and adds in his own interpretation. And it just makes poetry so accessible. It really opened up-- I've always wanted to love poetry. I've always tried to love poetry. But it wasn't until I came in contact with Poetry Unbound that I really threw myself into it, and found such comfort and joy in it. And yeah, that is really what-- it opened up a whole new world to me so I really would love-- if only one person listens to this, and takes that recommendation, I'd be really happy. I oftentimes read it at the gym on the treadmill, which I think makes me probably one of the only people on the planet who is listening to poetry at the gym. HIATT O'CONNOR: There may be more than you think. You never. ROB ANDERSON: And I oftentimes will end up crying on the treadmill in front of everybody, which makes me feel very silly. But, you know, it is what it is. HIATT O'CONNOR: You're being luminous. ROB ANDERSON: Yeah, exactly. HIATT O'CONNOR: That's the thing. ROB ANDERSON: So I thought, since that was what I was going to recommend, there's a poem that I think ties everything together that we talked about. I anticipated that this poem would do it. So Mary Oliver, whom you all probably know-- HIATT O'CONNOR: Of course. ROB ANDERSON: --lived In Provincetown. So she lived a few doors down from where I live. HIATT O'CONNOR: Wow. ROB ANDERSON: I have fed her. When she was living, she ate at my restaurant. HIATT O'CONNOR: No kidding. ROB ANDERSON: So I feel like I have a little bit of a personal connection with her. HIATT O'CONNOR: Hey, you've graced the gods. ROB ANDERSON: I've graced the gods, yeah. Which is pretty phenomenal and pretty amazing to think about. There's a poem of hers that isn't one of her popular ones, but I thought I would read it today because I think it's great. It's a great message for anybody thinking about coming to HDS or is here at HDS. So if that's OK, I'll read that. HIATT O'CONNOR: Please do. ROB ANDERSON: This is The Journey by Mary Oliver. One day you finally knew what you had to do and began, Though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice, Though the whole house began to tremble, And you felt the old tug at your ankles, Mend my life, each voice cried, But you didn't stop, You knew what you had to do. Though the wind pried with its stiff fingers at the very foundations, Though their melancholy was terrible, It was already late enough, and a wild night, And the road full of fallen branches and stones. But little by little, as you left their voices behind, The stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds, And there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own, That kept you company as you strode deeper, and deeper, into the world, Determined to do the only thing you could do, Determined to save the only life you could save. HIATT O'CONNOR: I think that's a good place to leave off. ROB ANDERSON: That sounds good to me. HIATT O'CONNOR: Thanks, Rob. \[BIRD CALLING\] \[WIND HOWLING\] See also:- [ Student Activities and Interviews ](/discover-stories-about/student-activities-and-interviews)