Hope Podcast: Featuring Julia Jackson, MDiv Candidate

JULIA JACKSON: No, I'm very excited. 

HIATT O'CONNOR: And yeah, when I was thinking about people to invite, I thought that you would have just a very fresh perspective on hope and thinking about all of the work that you do. So I'm very excited to dive into it. 

JULIA JACKSON: Thank you. 

HIATT O'CONNOR: But if you want to get us started, would you like to let the listeners know where home is for you. 

JULIA JACKSON: I'm from Denver, Colorado. I've been thinking, a lot about it, recently. And I've been feeling very homesick. So I'm missing big skies and mountains and my family. So yeah, Denver. 

HIATT O'CONNOR: So did you grow up in Denver? That's always been home for you? 

JULIA JACKSON: I grew up in Denver. I was born there. Both of my parents are from there. And then I moved to DC for undergrad and lived there for six years. So that also has a very geographic sense of home for me, too. 

HIATT O'CONNOR: Yeah, that makes sense. Well, yeah, Boston, and DC. Not the most green by comparison. 

JULIA JACKSON: No, not open space. 

HIATT O'CONNOR: Yeah. Well, thinking about growing up, it would be great to hear a brief spiritual autobiography—however you take that—just letting us know how you would chart your spiritual journey. 

JULIA JACKSON: Yeah. So I was raised Catholic. My mom is Catholic. Her whole family is Catholic. My dad Presbyterian. Not [LAUGHS] super affiliated with anything. And I went to Catholic elementary, basically Catholic school from kindergarten through high school. And that was pretty significant, both in that—my community of friends and the people that we saw were all thinking in the Catholic faith. And I was not. 

Like I so distinctly remember in kindergarten being so mad that we were saying the Our Father, I really was like, I feel like there's a mother somewhere. What's going on? And when I was around 12, I think, I stopped believing in Santa Claus and God about the same time. I think— [LAUGHS] 

HIATT O'CONNOR: That's a telling conflation. 

JULIA JACKSON: Yeah. It was—we were in class and one of the nuns—we were like writing letters to our first grade buddies and the nun was like, well, clearly we're all grown up here and we don't believe in Santa Claus. And I was like, uh, [GIGGLES] excuse me. The magic of Christmas? And I just—I was like, oh, wait, actually, I don't really trust what these adults have been telling me in a lot of ways. Not in like, I believe in the magic of holiday, for sure. But yeah, it was definitely this tumultuous period. 

And a lot was going on in my young childhood life, where I was of sensing that what adults were telling me in terms of, if you pray for this, it will happen, was not necessarily what was actually going on. I think as a child, people often assume that children aren't aware necessarily, of that kind of thing. And I was like, no, I'm seeing what's going on. And it's clear that there are walls being built up around things that maybe shouldn't be there. So that was like definitely a reckoning point for me. 

But I was still confirmed in—I think—seventh—in between seventh and eighth grade. And I chose St.—well, I went by Edith, which was like her name before she converted to Catholicism. But as a St. at St. Teresa. And she had been an atheist. She was Jewish. She had been in concentration camps, converted to Catholicism. Really, just an interesting figure. 

And someone who I've actually still found a lot of meaning in thinking about and with and whenever my family writes a letter to me, it's like Julia and Edith Jackson. So there was like still things happening within Catholicism that had meaning to me. And I love the smell of incense, that still means a lot. And then throughout high school, I was like, arguing in every religion class possible. [LAUGHS] Yeah. 

HIATT O'CONNOR: Having been in class with you, I can't imagine that at all. 

JULIA JACKSON: No, I've never had a bold day, ever in my life. [LAUGHS] No, no. Yeah, I took a bioethics class where I was like, this is why Jesus wanted you to have universal health care. And my very conservative Catholic high school was not a big fan of that. But also, I still got an A. So you know, [LAUGHS] that's something. 

HIATT O'CONNOR: You got to know the material well and then they can't deny your intellectual prowess. [LAUGHS] 

JULIA JACKSON: It's interesting how much I trace my spiritual history to places of study, because then, I went to Georgetown for undergrad, which shocker, Catholic school again. [LAUGHS] But also a Catholic school with a really robust chaplaincy office. And they would host community teas every Tuesday. Sounds familiar? And all of the chaplains would be there. They had an incredibly diverse array of chaplains. 

They were the first—I think, the first Catholic University to hire basically any chaplain of a different faith. And that was like where I found my footing again. And we had required religion classes that could be really anything. And I took a religion of the self class, and that was like, oh, OK, I want to think about religion again. And yeah— 

HIATT O'CONNOR: I like that framing, religion of the self. I feel like there's something very mystical about that. Knowing the self in order to know the other, to know the divine. 

JULIA JACKSON: And these constructions of the self that maybe aren't like, oh, are we individuals? Maybe not. And maybe the way that we create these individual identities is like religious in some nature. 

HIATT O'CONNOR: Wow. Yeah. And that was in undergrad, you said? 

JULIA JACKSON: Yeah. 

HIATT O'CONNOR: Where do you feel like you've landed in this moment, in your spiritual journey? And maybe, also tied with that, how has HDS figured into that? How did you find yourself here? 

JULIA JACKSON: Yeah. I think how I would frame where I am now is I've found the things that resonate a lot for me, which has been connection to the more than human. This like, almost very materialist sense of the world, where I see a lot of value in these traditions and rituals that incorporate material aspects. I love the concept of baptism. That was something I did as a child for fun. I baptized my toys. [LAUGHS] And then has become this really meaningful symbol in my life. 

And so integrating that in a way that has just felt natural to me, and isn't like, oh, I won't absolutely touch. Like there was such a period where I was like, I won't touch anything that's related to Catholicism or anything like that. I've found a little bit more openness through other means of—why is lent at this time of year? What does that mean? There's something clearly going on that's like connecting to the natural world, as well. So that's been where I am. And that ties to why I'm at HDS, as well. 

HIATT O'CONNOR: Do you want to tell us why you're at HDS? 

JULIA JACKSON: Yeah. I'm hiding. [GIGGLES] Yeah. So I did—my undergrad I studied Anthropology and Environmental Studies. And I ended up working at an environmental podcast after I graduated, that was really focused on the spiritual roots of climate crisis, but also just a crisis of how we relate to each other and to the world right now. And I was like, captivated by those questions and really loved the idea that this podcast format—what I was doing was writing questions and I was like, I just want to question, continually. And so Divinity School, actually. 

HIATT O'CONNOR: It's like the school of questions. 

JULIA JACKSON: The school of questions. And weirdly, so many of my favorite teachers have had endives. And I was like, oh, OK. I never would have thought about this, but I think there's something significant in that. So that's how I ended up here. 

HIATT O'CONNOR: Yeah. And just knowing you, you also landed in the world of hospital chaplaincy, thinking about death and dying. How do you see thoughts around death and dying or mortality fitting into some of these questions? 

JULIA JACKSON: Yeah. I mean, I think the question that I came with originally, was if we're sitting with a dying Earth or dying relationship to Earth, what does that mean? How do we think about that in a way that isn't just like, fix it? [LAUGHS] Pay someone to do something, and it'll all work out. 

HIATT O'CONNOR: Yeah. It'll just go away, magically. 

JULIA JACKSON: If we just like, keep getting the right policies. And that's just not the framework that I've worked around. And that to me, translated to there has to be wisdom in how we think about our own individual mortality. All of this is finite. This idea of immortality isn't possible. And I saw a lot of that in the climate movement of oh, we need to preserve this forever. And obviously, so much of climate action is necessary. But also, how are we framing that question in a way that can also understand and put words to where we are now, and the grief and endings that are happening, regardless of any potential future change? 

HIATT O'CONNOR: Absolutely. I mean, what you're saying really makes me think about questions of scale. You've talked about the idea of climate catastrophe as an ending, or as an apocalypse, being so tied to an individual sense of mortality. And one of the ways that we almost project our desire to be immortal onto even maybe like the Earth, the scale in which we think about endings, somehow we can zoom in and zoom out, and sometimes the conversation feels eerily the same. 

And being at Divinity School in particular, I found that death and endings feel present behind almost every conversation in every class. Whether or not the class is explicitly about mortality or death, I feel like religion is one of the spaces where we as humans allow ourselves to ask those questions more openly. Which is maybe why we're talking about Divinity school as the place of questions. 

JULIA JACKSON: And I think that there's also what happens when we don't address the fact that this is an under-girding question. What are the spaces where that's not being talked about? And is that maybe hurting us, to not be able to talk about it? And maybe, I have a bit of, I'm going around talking about that all the time. 

HIATT O'CONNOR: Well, yeah. So for the listeners, Julia and I first met basically by talking about death together. I actually think that our very first conversation was during orientation. We sat next to each other during a session, and my cat had literally died the night before. And I think so many of our conversations, since then have been in some way tied to maybe those seeds that were sown at the very beginning of our journey at the school together, in a really beautiful way. I think, being able to take class together, we're in the same meaning making section, now getting to hear about your experiences in hospitals, it's kind of wild how full circle. 

I mean, one of the things I really admire about what you do is those conversations directly enter the work you do with people. And I feel like you really try to mindfully and meaningfully connect with people around. How do we just talk about death? How can death not be something that we avoid? Because clearly, an avoidance of death, whether on the micro scale or on the global scale, causes a lot of harm. 

JULIA JACKSON: And a lot of yeah, I think, emotional-- all of these harms. And something I appreciate about your work [LAUGHS] is I think that when we also break down these boundaries between this is how—this is my faith community. This is the thing that I'm studying at school. This is this section. And it's like, OK, but actually like these questions, what you're saying, are popping up everywhere and what is this—what are the dimensions that follow us across the wide range of human experience? 

HIATT O'CONNOR: I mean, we're kind of getting at this next question through talking about mortality. But I'm curious, especially given what we've just talked about, how you define or relate to the idea of hope. 

JULIA JACKSON: Honestly, the interactions we had when we were first meeting is maybe a really good example of what I see hope in. Which is, almost these glimmers of moments where you get to see beyond the current circumstance. I think there's something about hope that it has to be embedded in something bigger. These social structures, all of these things. And yet there is this glimmer of something that's like pulling you outside of your context and saying, look at this big picture. There's something here that is like, beyond. [GIGGLES] Which, it means something to me. 

HIATT O'CONNOR: I mean, what you're saying makes me think there's something unseen or just outside of frame that we have—that we get little glimpses of. And that's enough to change our perspective. Hope being this glimmer of something that's like, let's look at this differently. There has to be—there's something more. 

JULIA JACKSON: And it's promise of otherwise. This isn't how things have to be. And that matters a lot to me in orienting towards, OK then, if this isn't what it has to be, how can I work towards any sort of change? What is the thing that I want? 

HIATT O'CONNOR: What can we imagine? 

JULIA JACKSON: What can we imagine? 

HIATT O'CONNOR: How can what can we imagine become real? I like this idea of the promise of otherwise. I really appreciate that framing. I feel like oftentimes, hope gets flattened. And it can become something that's like Pollyanna or overly idealist. And I think that what you're offering is, isn't saying that perfection is promised, but otherwise is promised. So something different, like change. We can still change. And I think hope being tied to that belief rather than tied to a promise of salvation, feels like hope that we can really work with, without setting ourselves up for failure, if that makes sense. 

JULIA JACKSON: Yeah and I mean, setting ourselves up for failure is immortality. It's this belief that we can be this utopian fantasy. Whereas, what does it mean to spiral closer and closer to something else? To me, hope has to be rooted in the material world. I feel like I see this a lot, working in a hospital. Patients will be alone in a hospital room. Most people come in there only to take their vitals, give them medication. 

There's a lot of dehumanization happening there. And yet a nurse at some point, is going to touch your shoulder and make this human connection. There is a materialness to this hope of, there is a different world possible. There is something else acting here. 

HIATT O'CONNOR: And even that—the touch of a nurse—can be that material action that changes something in a very tangible way, rather than it necessarily being that we're relying on some sort of abstraction of love, but instead it's like the act. The act of connecting, the act of relationship that connects us to the end yet. 

JULIA JACKSON: And it opens us up in this beautiful way, I think. Hopefully. 

HIATT O'CONNOR: Hopefully? [LAUGHS] Uh-oh. Thinking about this and thinking about this in terms of action and material quality, are there practices or any sorts of rituals or things that you do, whether tied to your faith, tradition, upbringing or traditions you found over the years, that tie you to this sense of hope or this sense—this promise of otherwise? 

JULIA JACKSON: Yeah. I mean, something pretty simple, and also, I think, common, across a lot of traditions that I find a lot of meaning in, is just the blind flipping to a page in a book. And for me, I did this very intentionally with devotions, which is Mary Oliver's anthology. And in really powerful ways and in oh, wait, something else is operating here. I have found in moments of, I need a poem, the right poem. It will open to the right page. There's a trust that there will be something that comes there. And obviously, you're interpreting it. But that's been something that, just I think, reaffirms for me there's something else here. 

HIATT O'CONNOR: That's so funny you mentioned that. There was somebody who was asking for advice recently. They were wondering if they had access to the truth or they were having a hard time trusting themselves. And I was like, well, you have books. You've surrounded yourself with certain books for certain reasons in your life. What if you went home, went to your bookshelf, chose a random book, maybe it's devotions by Mary Oliver, and opened a page, and treat that as if that is somehow sacred word? 

I mean, you know I love thinking about the nature of language and the power of something like poetry to connect us to that promise, that's just outside the frame. Yeah, but I actually don't know if I ever do that practice in my own life. So now I'm going to be going home this Ramadan and maybe pulling some books off my own shelf. 

JULIA JACKSON: Yeah. I mean, and especially in a season of intensive reading, I think that means something. And we've had this conversation before, the idea that you look at a singular word and almost the entirety of the world can be contained in it. When you like, think of all the connections. Our history gets carried by things other than our own lives. 

HIATT O'CONNOR: Yeah. Wow. I'm curious, building off this. And I know you've mentioned devotions by Mary Oliver, but do you have any other recommendations or words of wisdom you would want to leave our listeners with? 

JULIA JACKSON: I will always recommend a book. Fiction has taken on a meaning to me, in terms of just—my mom, I think, instilled in me, she reads. She's always reading a different book, and it's always fiction. And she's always learning so much. And I think that there's something to that, in terms of, what does it mean to put yourself in another person's story? 

HIATT O'CONNOR: What book would you recommend? Are there any pieces of fiction that are coming to mind, or top of mind? Or is it really just people need to get out there and read, which I know you and I both love to say. [LAUGHS] 

JULIA JACKSON: Let me think. I am currently reading writers and lovers, which is based in Cambridge, which has been sweet. But it's just a sweet story. I mean, it has a lot of depth obviously, but also, I don't know, there's something like escapist about finding a story. Yeah. 

HIATT O'CONNOR: Well, thank you so much, Julia, for coming and talking to me about hope and helping me redefine it in so many ways. And this is one conversation in the midst of what will continue to be more conversations between the two of us. And I'm very grateful for that. 

JULIA JACKSON: As am I. 

[BIRD COOING]