![]() And I’m not saying we should all just like, melt and become indiscriminate and just like shine and everything. My brain is critical, it’s overthinking, but you can find ways to turn it down and realize that’s not who you really are. To invite people as a comedian, someone who is a small part of pop culture, and say, “I don’t think (spirituality) is embarrassing.” I am a comedian. The reason I wrote the book was to try to restore some connection (to religion), but not my belief system. They’re seeing someone else sort of struggle with it. And I think they take solidarity in that. It’s the funnier part of me, and people delight in that. You wouldn’t ask for any comedian to fully detach from their ego. How do you balance those two parts of your personality: your search for meaning and your cynicism? It’s totally possible to lecture passionately and verge on preaching about the nature of reality without ever going, “And now we’re going to plant our flag.”Īt the same time, you say comedians are often cynical. I don’t want people to adopt my belief system and then reflect it back to me so then we can prove that we’re in the group. So I don’t consider myself a preacher or a minister, but like, when I get on a tear and start talking about “the kingdom of heaven is here and men don’t see it” – that’s just preaching. In the literal sense of ministry, like someone bringing soup is ministering to your body, you know. I like saying that hopefully, I’m ministering. You know, a preacher is somebody who preaches with a board of elders and like, has a text and an agenda and a religion and a group. So she was like, you should be a youth pastor.Ī character on your show “Crashing” calls stand-up comedians the new preachers. I think my mom recognized that I liked people to be happy. I was always calming the family down or trying to keep a fight from happening. I think she wanted me to be a youth pastor because I talked about the tumult in my family. Holmes: I sort of joke that they both like public speaking, right? And certainly the type of comedy I’m doing, I would like everyone to leave feeling less afraid and less alone. ![]() When you told her you wanted to become a comedian she said, “close enough.” Sensitive listeners beware: Its language is a bit salty at times.ĬNN: You say in the beginning of “Comedy, Sex, God” that your mother wanted you to be a youth pastor. If you want to hear the whole thing, check out Holmes’ podcast. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. “Finding truth anywhere – what else are we doing?” he told me. He looked a bit bleary from the many media appearances he’s done to promote the book, but as he pulled his long legs underneath himself on the couch – the tall man’s lotus position – he spoke candidly about his religious upbringing and how it informs his comedy.Īt times, talking to Holmes was like shaking a Magic 8 Ball filled with quotes from his spiritual touchstones, the theologian Richard Rohr, New Age-y guru Ram Dass, and even the Upanishads, ancient Hindu texts. I sat down with Holmes, 40, on a recent morning in New York. ![]() Pete Holmes appears onstage at the Vulture Festival on November 17, 2018, in Hollywood, California. When Holmes finally meets his guru, for example, he can think of nothing except, um, pleasuring himself. Like Holmes himself, “Comedy, Sex, God” is full of irrepressible enthusiasm, a contagious curiosity for all things spiritual and healthy doses of self-deprecation. In some ways, Holmes’ memoir seems like an outgrowth of his popular podcast, called “You Made it Weird,” which veers from interviews with well-known comedians to wide-ranging conversations with Christians like Nadia Bolz-Weber and Rob Bell and Buddhist teachers such as Sharon Salzberg and David Nichtern. He toured the country as a stand-up comic and starred and produced the HBO series “Crashing,” which was canceled this year after three seasons. While walking that path, Holmes’ career flourished. “I felt like the Lord hadn’t held up His end of the bargain,” Holmes writes in his new memoir, “Comedy, Sex, God” – “and I was pissed.”īut Holmes’ spiritual search didn’t end there.Īfter diving into atheism (he called himself a “hooraytheist”) Holmes found new spiritual life by taking “magic mushrooms,” aka psychedelic psilocybin, and studying myths and mysticism. His world, and his belief in God, exploded. Then one day, as Holmes was struggling to kick-start his comedy career, his wife left him for another man. He went on mission trips to Africa, played bass on the worship team, even wore pleated khakis. He believed in the Bible – all of it – and said he didn’t smoke, drink or have sex before marriage. Growing up as an evangelical, Pete Holmes thought he was doing everything right.
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