33 - Connective Spirituality—with guest Rev. Dr. Eric Atcheson

Episode Notes
Written By

Anne and Alison talk with Eric Atcheson, ordained pastor in the Christian Church about Millenial faith, social justice, and finding connection through spirituality. We learn about his experience growing up in Kansas with attorney parents and how this shaped his inclusive world view—one that he brings to his ministry. This episode is for anyone searching for meaning and a spiritual practice during these trying times, especially inclusive, open-minded, and connective spirituality.

Guest Bio:

Rev. Dr. Eric Atcheson is an ordained pastor in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and the author of two books: Oregon Trail Theology: The Frontier Millennial Christians Face—And How We’re Ready (Church Publishing, 2018) and On Earth as it is in Heaven: A Faith-Based Toolkit for Economic Justice (Church Publishing, 2020). Eric is a parish minister by training who has dedicated himself through his preaching, speaking, and writing to his calling as a prophetic and pastoral voice rooted in the Scriptures. A wordsmith and storyteller, Eric believes in the grace and truth found in the logos, the Word. His preaching and teaching on God’s Word aims to reflect that grace and truth. And as a descendant of Armenian Genocide survivors, Eric's ethnic identity is woven into his passion for social justice and human rights.
A “basket-to-casket” Disciple of Christ, Eric’s life is a modern-day Oregon Trail story (minus the dysentery and requisite background in banking, farming, or carpentry). Eric was born and raised in Kansas before enrolling at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts in religious studies. He then moved to Berkeley, California, to earn a Master of Divinity from the Pacific School of Religion and a post-baccalaureate certificate in Jewish studies from the Graduate Theological Union. He subsequently returned to the Pacific Northwest and earned a Doctor of Ministry from Seattle University, with his doctoral thesis about the intersection of Christian values and labor union activism in southwest Washington state.
Eric lives in the Birmingham, Alabama area with his family, and he enjoys exploring Birmingham's many parks, trails, and other outdoor spaces with them. As a Jayhawker from Kansas married to a North Carolina Tar Heel, he is an avowed agnostic in the Alabama-Auburn rivalry.

Show Notes:

Intro:

Interview:

Transcript

Alison Cebulla 0:05
Welcome to latchkey urchins and friends Podcast. I'm Alison Cebulla.

Anne Sherry 0:10
And I'm an Cherie. We are healing trauma with humor, humility, authenticity, imperfection, messiness, and compassion.

Alison Cebulla 0:19
Each week we interview someone on a different childhood trauma and neglect topic. Our hope is to reduce the stigma of talking about mental health and offer some tools to heal.

Anne Sherry 0:28
latchkey kids are children who came home to an empty house after school each day and watch themselves. We are the children who fought viciously with our siblings. We set our toasters on fire making cinnamon toast, and aimlessly roam the neighborhood hoping for something to do

Alison Cebulla 0:45
Urchins adapted to not need anyone. Our Spidey prickly parts keep people at a distance.

Anne Sherry 0:51
Sometimes we were the kids, other kids parents warned you about.

Alison Cebulla 0:55
Sometimes we were the kids who held it all together, saved our families and got perfect grades in school.

Anne Sherry 1:00
Sometimes we were the kids who were comforted by drugs and alcohol.

Alison Cebulla 1:04
Sometimes we were the adults who grew up not realizing what we didn't get

Anne Sherry 1:08
whether you're a latchkey, an urchin or a friend you are wanted here

Alison Cebulla 1:24
Hey, man, it's so good to see you after a couple of weeks break.

Anne Sherry 1:28
I know I've missed you. Same. I know. It feels weird. We text and stuff but not seeing you is very strange. Yeah,

Alison Cebulla 1:37
yeah. So what are you what have you been reading? Or watching or listening to lately?

Anne Sherry 1:45
Holy hell in two weeks? Well, why not? I am reading a book about Nicaragua. We're going to Nicaragua. So I tried to read the history of that. So I always do that, too. I read a book about the place right now. Yeah, and really being reminded how effing awful the US when they're wanting to win, they have interests outside. Yeah, it's it's insane. I kind of knew the history, but I was a little on the little on the checked outside. But now that I'm actually reading, I'm like, oh, that's what everybody was protesting. We saw we really suck. Okay, so there's that. But the book that you had said, the truth by Neil Strauss, oh, about three quarters of the way through that. And the the way that he realized how deeply the emotional incest with his mother was, is off the charts, and the fact that he's really just putting it out there. She's gonna be mad at you. And I'm like, buying into mom's emotional incest, you know, whatever. So that is a fascinating read.

Alison Cebulla 2:56
Isn't it amazing what we will do to avoid making our parents feel hypothetically? Like, total weight making them feel uncomfortable?

Anne Sherry 3:04
Yes, yes. Completely. Well, so that's leading me to reading passionate marriage by David Schneider from it was written in 1997. And really, it's the big piece of that, yes, it's all about, you know, having better sex and more intimacy and blah, blah, blah. But he his big claim to fame was merging, that sex therapy and marriage counseling are not they're kind of treated separately, but he's like, you know, we don't need to pull those things need to be together. It's the level of intimacy and yeah, so the big thing there and I'll speak more about it and struggle party is starting reading about the differentiation that like, what a concept to become your own person and how hard that is, you know, to be in a satisfying relationship, any relationship, any of our relationships, that you are an individual being with thoughts, feelings, desires, longings, and being able to, because we were being able to speak for that crucial and boundaries,

Alison Cebulla 4:15
it's, it's having a practice of being able to regulate your own emotions. 100%, I think is the biggest part of differentiation, not that I'm definitely not an expert on it. I, you know, I still have a lot, a lot of work to do. But if you don't have a practice of being able to say I'm feeling X, and I'm going to take a breath, I'm going to go for a run, I'm going to walk I'm going to journal if you don't have that practice of just regulating your own self, you're going to always count on your partner to regulate you and guess what other people cannot do that for you. Like really a boat? Yeah, back and forth. There's no rudder. Oh, yeah. Like they're not done enough for me, but they're You're not doing enough. Yeah, they're not. They're not happy and I need you to be happy right now so I can be happy. Yeah.

Anne Sherry 5:05
Yeah. Yes. So that too and then what are we watching on TV? Geez, got back into Ozark. Do you know do you watch Ozark? So violence? Yeah,

Alison Cebulla 5:15
no, I don't want you to know. I don't know. I don't watch like that.

Anne Sherry 5:19
How do I watch this? Oh, it's terribly violent. Yeah, but it's so good. So that's the other. I think that's the TV that we're watching. Right? Oh, I know. One more TV show everybody. These are HBO. We own this city.

Alison Cebulla 5:35
Huh? What's that one about Baltimore.

Anne Sherry 5:36
It's about the police corruption in Baltimore. It is insane. I mean, we notice that they are doing it is phenomenal. It's so well done. It seems

Alison Cebulla 5:48
super dark. Like just depressing, dark

Anne Sherry 5:51
and super important how what was happening, and they really depth into it, like just just the layers and layers and layers of how corruption gets passed on and how it's sanctioned, and how it's okay, and how they try to root it out. And but there's only three episodes out right now. But it's a total trigger warning, especially for the people that experienced it, or, you know, minority populations that have been devastated by police corruption. And yeah, but it's phenomenally well done. So sounds really good to me over the last two weeks. Yes, yes.

Alison Cebulla 6:31
I just remembered that we have an important piece of business to share with everyone, which is that we're going to switch we're going to now make our podcasts every other week. And we have been hearing from ourselves out I miss you. We Yeah, we need we want your podcast back so sorry. It's disappointing news for people who love our weekly episodes. Yes. We just need to add a little space in for other Yes, I'll get to that in the struggle party, but we're these will now be every other week. So um, okay, so I have been reading or I just finished the book burnout. And I did notice that I kind of get exhausted of that term burnout. So even though I noticed that this book existed, I was like, just so tired of talking about burnout. But then I was listening to Glennon Glennon Doyle's podcast, the we could do hard things, because she interviews Liz Gilbert, and let their buddies, their buddies, but you know, so they both decided that they were actually lesbians at the same time. And I've always been so fascinated by that, because like, they're both married to men. They're both literally married to men. And at the exact same time, they're like, hey, guess what? We're old. We're actually lesbians. And I just met my soulmate. And I'm leaving my husband. And now I'm with this woman. And I was so curious if they would talk about that. And they did. So that episode is amazing.

Anne Sherry 7:54
I gotta put that spirituality away. Because it's all doom and gloom on there. Like, everything's going to shit.

Alison Cebulla 8:02
Yeah. And yeah, so it's the most recent episode. We can do hard things. And then the episode before that was the Nagasaki sisters. And Emily Nagurski had written, come as you are that amazing sex book for women.

Anne Sherry 8:19
I was fine. I was like, we're there. I know this name for him when you sent me the thing.

Alison Cebulla 8:23
Yeah. And so. And so the sister joins in for this one. And they talk about the female experience of burnout includes the fact that she and I love this term so much. It's so healing, she calls it human giver syndrome. And that women are raised to be human givers with human giver syndrome. And that men are the ones that get to be human beings. And we're human givers. And that sounds were so nourishing to just have someone validate. It's like, Yes, that makes yeah, I've given it out. I am exhausted of giving.

Anne Sherry 9:00
Mm hmm.

Alison Cebulla 9:02
And as we've said, On this day, like I

Anne Sherry 9:06
exhaust myself too, with like, personal development sometimes do you know, like, I gotta give I got to what is you know, just forever. There's some I don't know, somehow it's clicking but I don't know if I can speak it, but just this like, just this endless personal development. I'm all for it. But it's kind of it can get to this frantic totally place of like, I've got to get and I think it must tie in a little bit to the burnout. Well, why am I so burned out? Well, because I'm not resting enough. Why am I not resting enough? Well, let me go to therapy and try to fucking figure that out. You know, it's kind of like well, or I could just stop

Alison Cebulla 9:47
I know I'm not gonna

Anne Sherry 9:48
I'm just not gonna do a bunch of shit all the time. Y'all make your own lunch or whatever. Figure it out, or Oh, yeah. Yeah, I knew it. Yeah, yeah, but

Alison Cebulla 9:59
last We get I did some play I made. I cut out like paper stock paper and made group play that

Anne Sherry 10:08
that on the same time we send each other our style.

Alison Cebulla 10:11
We're doing it we put the development side and we just played and we made.

Anne Sherry 10:16
Yeah, that was I loved it. You were like I made an art. I was like I made an art. Doing it the same time. Hey, we're breaks or breaks and the podcasts are good.

Alison Cebulla 10:26
They're good for us. We play. Yeah,

Anne Sherry 10:29
yeah. Yeah. So

Alison Cebulla 10:31
burnout. Check that book out. It's actually amazing. Even if you're tired of hearing about burnout, this is a fresh take. It's a very fresh take to take I needed to be like, I'm not making this up. It's almost like society is gaslighting us, you know? Oh, about the fact that we have to do all the emotional labor for all the genders at all times. It's like yes, like, yeah, of course. You're burned out. That's exhausting. You don't they're telling us to like leaving a legacy? Yeah, it's like, literally N Let me lean out of this one. Okay, yeah. Okay, good. To pick up. And then what I'm watching is the Kanye documentary, I didn't think I was gonna love it as much as I do. And I think it's on Netflix. But basically, even, or, like, as he was, as he was starting to, like, decide that he was on his path to get famous. He had the foresight to, to ask someone to, like, make a documentary about his life. So you're seeing it from the very beginning, like amazing footage. And, and I thought, as soon as I saw him, he's on the spectrum. And I Googled it, and the Internet agrees. And so that was just fascinating to me, because he just has this, like, single pointed focus that, I don't know, I've never had that in my life, you know, and he, but then he's not very good socially. And he kind of avoids eye contact. And he's, you know, so I'm like, okay, he has like a very unique mind, he has a neurodivergent mind that has enabled him to make some of the most beautiful music, and really do this very unique thing at that time in the hip hop world that I think only his mind could do. But then like, right, you know, he is someone who's really battling mental health issues right now and really like struggling and it has really hurt a lot of people. So you know, like, lately he's like, been threatening his his ex wife and her new partner and that, you know, that stuff is very troubling. And just seeing like, just seeing his early days and kind of putting those pieces together of how did he get here? How did he become so famous, but also so challenged? You know, he has bipolar. It's so good. So check out the Kanye, the Kanye documentary.

Okay, so the real struggle party this week is that and had some technical difficulties recording and so yeah, that's the struggle body for both of us. And we both kind of alluded to where we're gonna get to some other some other topics. But struggle party is tech issues. So it's, it's just me here introducing our amazing interview with Eric Acheson, who is a minister, that we, well, I felt inspired to interview him because at the beginning of the year, a lot of people were kind of like, I think I need a spiritual practice, like after two years of the pandemic, which was just so hard on every level. I think a lot of people even like my friends who are, you know, tend to be more secular. Were just like, I need to find meaning. And I think a lot of us are battling depression and anxiety. And so these are things that Eric is intimately acquainted with, and shares really well of how he balanced his mental health with his spiritual practice as a minister. And I think you're just gonna love this interview and we loved talking to Eric, here it is.

Okay, so today Anna and I are here with Eric Atchison. Welcome, Eric. How can me? Yeah, so I'm Reverend Dr. Eric Atchison is an ordained pastor in the Christian church Disciples of Christ. And and that's how I know Eric, we were both going to it was it was I was like a loosely affiliated Disciples of Christ congregation in Berkeley, right. The tapestry ministries Yeah. I'm and the author of two books, Oregon Trail theology, the frontier millennial Christians face and how we're ready. That's was published in 2018. And on earth as it is in heaven, a faith based toolkit for economic justice published in 2020. And he's a parish minister by training. He has dedicated himself through his preaching, speaking and writing to his calling as a prophetic and pastoral voice rooted in the Scriptures. And we will include a link to his longer bio, in the show notes. But Eric, you are from you're from Kansas, right. And, and so we were just commenting he's got his TED lassos shirt on. You said your title, the fictional character Ted Lazarus from your your hometown. Tell us more about that

Anne Sherry 15:46
and went to your high school

Eric Atcheson 15:47
or your elementary school, right? Yeah, so vacas the actor who plays Ted lasso is also from my hometown. So is Paul Rudd, and Eric Stonestreet, Rodney, Pete the NFL quarterback and Janelle manette. Was has what is your Overland Park Kansas? Why

Alison Cebulla 16:12
I don't even know how all these people are going on. What's going on?

Eric Atcheson 16:19
Jason Sudeikis and I went to the same elementary school obviously not at the same time. And when Cade, Ted when Ted last so went from being sort of just that viral commercial to a full blown TV show, he decided to make Ted lasso from Kansas. And so he coached the Wichita State football team, which is where I was born. I was born in Wichita. And there's a reference in the in one of the early episodes to a less a life lesson that Ted last one learns on the mean playgrounds of brokerage Elementary School, which I found hysterical because brokerage elementary school was like

three years of my life of just nothing but tetherball and Foursquare on the imagining the lessons that Ted lessons learned playing tetherball and Foursquare

Anne Sherry 17:21
if you were with me, tetherball there was some lessons for show

Eric Atcheson 17:25
Foursquare Foursquare was Bloodsport we

Anne Sherry 17:29
Yeah, yeah. 100%.

Eric Atcheson 17:33
When you were in the zone, and you were in the one square, you would just get people out. You just shout next. Not yet. Yeah.

Anne Sherry 17:41
I was wrong. Yeah.

Alison Cebulla 17:43
So. Um, so we're, we're super stoked to have you join our podcast. And I've known Eric since since 2008. And we're, we're super I'm super excited to kind of ask you about some very millennial predicaments. In terms of economic.

Anne Sherry 18:03
I'm outnumbered here. I'm a Gen X. So yeah.

Alison Cebulla 18:08
Okay, yes, we, you can make it. Okay.

Anne Sherry 18:12
Yes. We didn't get participation trophies. Yes. Okay. Like you guys really? Earn it?

Alison Cebulla 18:21
Oh, yeah. So, um, so what happened was kind of a, you know, at the start of this year, I had a number of friends reach out to me and say, I think I need a spiritual practice. And just because of how hard 2021 was and 2020 with the pandemic, I mean, my mental health has, I wouldn't say it's never been worse. Because, you know, I, it was bad. It's been bad.

Anne Sherry 18:51
Your bar is

Alison Cebulla 18:52
real low. Yeah. Roll low. Yeah, it's real low. It's lower than and, but it's I'm definitely feeling challenged. I know that a lot of my friends are too and I know that a lot of our listeners are too and I love Eric's spiritual practice is so deeply rooted in social justice. That I just felt like it would just be great to have you join us today, Eric and help us sort through some of these topics. So but first, and you want to ask him our first question.

Anne Sherry 19:26
Yes. What do you identify as a latchkey kid and urchin or a friend?

Eric Atcheson 19:35
Definitely a latchkey kid. Yeah. And

Alison Cebulla 19:39
every single week, it's every person even where I was like, Eric is so grounded. Eric is you know, surely Eric was a kid.

Eric Atcheson 19:49
Every My. My parents are high, high powered attorneys. My dad's now actually a judge and my mom owns her own law firm in Kansas City. Wow. And wow. Before becoming a judge, my dad was an attorney with the Boilermakers labor union for most of my childhood. And my mom is a civil rights and defense attorney and was always chasing down like the next big thing for you know, someone who is in jail for, for being wrongfully convicted for crimes are committed. And that was a huge part of practice. For me growing up, so I had a very uncommon childhood, like not just the latchkey portion, but the conversations around the dinner table. You know, learning about the finer points of habeas corpus and constitutional law and forensic science was a very uncommon childhood. And but before we you get to the dinner table, you know, I get home from from school and if it's not a day that I have, like basketball or soccer, I am a full I was a full on latchkey kid, I'd walk home and I'd have Nickelodeon on between, you know, 330 and four, six o'clock. Yeah. And I was and I was talking about that at church yesterday, actually for Easter. Because when Gilbert Godfried passed away last week, in his honor, I watched the are you afraid of the dark episode that he stars in with of all people Ryan Gosling? Oh, yeah, Billy. And are you afraid of the we'll link to that in the show? Are you afraid of the dark? It's like one of those quintessential like, early 90s latchkey kid television show.

Alison Cebulla 21:43
That was like my favorite.

Anne Sherry 21:44
I don't know that show. I was already out. Whatever.

Alison Cebulla 21:50
Yeah, I'm not sure what that for. Yeah.

Anne Sherry 21:51
Do you what's your like, what do you get up to? And that time? TV? Did you play kickball? Did

Alison Cebulla 22:02
you play? Yeah, we

Anne Sherry 22:02
also asked about right where we are, at some point developing a cookbook. Alaskey cooks. So what was your favorite recipes that you made?

Eric Atcheson 22:12
My grilled cheese? toasties? Yep, yep. toasties. Take a bagel or some a bagel or some bread and maybe spray some. Some of that like bright yellow mustard. Yeah. slabs and some orange cheese on it and shove it into the toaster or the microwave. Yeah. Okay.

Alison Cebulla 22:34
It's toasters. It's toasters. Yes. That was my

Unknown Speaker 22:37
Yeah. That was the crap single where

Anne Sherry 22:39
it's almost impossible to get the plastic off, or did you have

Eric Atcheson 22:43
no, right? I can slice it myself.

Anne Sherry 22:48
I probably shouldn't have done everything. Now.

Eric Atcheson 22:51
We should have been using a

Alison Cebulla 22:52
lawyer. His parents were lawyers they can afford? Oh, yeah. But you know, yeah.

Eric Atcheson 22:57
Yeah, but they had like their hub Scout kid. I was like, Yeah, I know how to use a knife. I'm like, I want to add scouts.

Anne Sherry 23:05
Okay, there's a whole movement of letting kids like use power tools and like, yeah. Service. Oh, there's probably kids EMS.

Eric Atcheson 23:17
School but ready for that yet?

Anne Sherry 23:19
Yeah. Yeah.

Eric Atcheson 23:21
Power Tools.

Anne Sherry 23:22
Do you Eric? I'm so curious. Did you? Was the table talk of all the finer points of habeas corpus? And was was that satisfied? Or did you sometimes I don't know if it was balanced out with just talking about like, so. So did some dumb stuff at school? Or are did once I started doing

Eric Atcheson 23:41
some stuff at school? Yes. Once you started doing some dumb stuff at school? Yes. That did get passed out? Yeah. I learned a lot about race in the criminal justice system as a kid. Yeah. Like, I'm sure not very few of my peers, unless they were of color would have also also learned. And I was too young at the time to kind of put all those pieces together, I really needed to be an adult to understand, like, why my parents did what they did. Like, and I think that was a big difference was like, as a kid, I could see pieces of it, but I didn't fully grasp why my parents why the work that my parents did was so important. I had to be older and more mature, to really understand the depth of that.

Anne Sherry 24:27
Yeah, that is rough. I mean, it's sort of like I don't there's no end of injustices and I wonder, you know, sometimes getting into this work and but that being able to balance it out with joy and pleasure as well. You know, it's a hard it's an I think that's some of what spiritual practices are about that. That's a heavy world that was you were exposed to early.

Eric Atcheson 24:57
Well, I truthfully, I consider it impressive that my Parents have kept with those careers without burning out. Yeah. You know?

Alison Cebulla 25:06
What do they do? Do they? Do they

Anne Sherry 25:08
have good practices or good? Like joyful? How do they not burn out?

Alison Cebulla 25:16
Tell us Yes. What

Anne Sherry 25:17
is the secret? We need this in every house?

Eric Atcheson 25:21
You should have had them on instead of me. Yeah.

Anne Sherry 25:25
You call them like, let's like,

Alison Cebulla 25:29
I know, what are they? What are their names Eric Cheryl.

Eric Atcheson 25:32
They will they would be Gordon. We

Alison Cebulla 25:35
Gordon Cheryl calm.

Eric Atcheson 25:37
Sure, they'd be more than happy with my my dad. I know, it was always food. His dad, my grandfather was a retired professional chef and all of the men in my family cook like that. It's a that's a thing. It took me a while to get the gene I eventually did. But like, I think for my dad, you know, he has to live in his head. You know, for so much of his work life. And being able to, to create, you know, sort of those meals with his hands into he takes a lot of pride in that cooking. And he and I would also purposefully take time out for you know, to enjoy outings together soccer games, basketball games, where like, I wouldn't talk about school, he wouldn't talk about work. It was just being present in sort of in that nice time together. When I look back on it now it's like, oh, yeah, that I can see why that was why that was important. I think my my, my mom, as she puts it is, is a is a big fan of, of taking care of yourself. And she raised my sister and me and the church. And that's always been a really integral part of of, of her taking care of herself has been her faith. My dad on the other hand, I call him a CEO. He's a Christmas and Easter only attended

Alison Cebulla 27:00
the church. actually never heard that.

Eric Atcheson 27:04
Those two days. He's good. He's good. He's got us. Yeah.

Alison Cebulla 27:07
Yeah. My great. My grandparents. As we're recording this, you know, Easter just happened and my grandparents were they went to they always go to church every Sunday, but they were joking that the pastor said that, you know, it's, it's nice to see all I haven't seen some of you since Christmas. Yeah.

Anne Sherry 27:26
So I have to get some sort of day again. Yeah.

Eric Atcheson 27:30
And that's not really my thing as a pastor because I think of like, okay, I only watched the Super Bowl. I don't have pro football players lecturing me on why I'm not coming in every Sunday. Yeah, but my first Sunday, my first Christmas as a maid pastor on the receiving line after the Christmas Eve service, I did have someone shake my hand and say, See you at Easter pasture. And I said, You know what, once for honesty, like you said, that bar where it needs to be set, like don't

Anne Sherry 27:58
set your Yeah, I love that. Yeah.

Alison Cebulla 28:01
So but so feelings, though, in childhood, how were How did feelings happen?

Eric Atcheson 28:08
Um, I definitely had it sort of full disclosure, like I live with a with a couple of mental illness diagnoses. And those really did come to the forefront in childhood, in a way that sort of was pretty deleterious to my health for a while, for for several years. And it took it took some, it took my parents some work to really get me into treatment. And it took some time to figure out what treatment I most needed. And so there were a few years of my life that like I look back on and I think what might have been, but I'm mostly made up of mostly made my peace with with sort of the with that, because, like, if you're a former gifted kid, then you're also a kid with unfulfilled potential. Like that just comes with the job description.

Alison Cebulla 29:08
We did a whole episode on that. I it's called I saved my family. And all I got was this participation trophy about millennial kids, those of us born in the 80s being raised with such high expectations. Yes. And yet none. We talked about those those programs gifted and talented education. And they say

Anne Sherry 29:27
that you can do anything, you can do anything. Yeah, that's my theory about it. And my

Eric Atcheson 29:33
theory about that is because we are the baby, the echo of the baby boom, like we're the kids of the baby boomers. Yeah. And maybe some in some very young Gen X ers might also be you know, if you're born in the late 70s, you might you might be a kid of boomers, but it was really the kids of the 80s that were sort of the echo of the boomers and the boomers really did. You know where that generation that grew up? In what is you know that idyllic Leave It to Beaver nostalgia that of course, of course, it wasn't like that, you know, but like that sort of the, the image that for better or I've probably mostly for worse got carried over through the decades. And so wanting that sort of that particular narrow brand brand of individual personal prosperity. Yeah, no really great, right. So I think that's, I think that was a big contributor, because I could I struggled to make sense as a kid, or I guess I should say, as a teenager sort of coming of age, how I could see so many parents of my peers, personally want the very best for their kids, but then, for instance, support a war in which their kids generation was gonna have to go and fight and die. Like trying to make sense of that. And it's really

Alison Cebulla 31:00
did you? Did you make sense of it?

Eric Atcheson 31:03
No, like, it was a, it was like, an, like an existential like, like it was it was a breaking of covenant. Like it was a breakdown of right relationship, because the people who should have protected us only saw them, they, I think, saw themselves as protecting us on the individual parent to kid level, but not on that societal level of like, we're not going to send, maybe I don't want to send my kid to war, but I shouldn't want to send my kids peers to an unjust war.

Anne Sherry 31:37
Right. Right. Like there was

Alison Cebulla 31:39
that disconnect? Because, and and I always ask, why can't we care? And I do ask myself that a lot with boomers, I, of course, obviously, it's not all boomers or whatever. But I think we can make some generalizations based on the data. But why? What is going on with the world that they created? Well, how did it get like this? You know, with wage income and wealth disparities, the wars?

Eric Atcheson 32:09
Yes. And I tried to answer that question a little bit with my first book, because Oregon Trail theology is sort of two things. First, it's sort of a love letter to the older millennial generation. And I should say, I, if I, if I wrote the book today, as opposed to writing it five years ago, I would have revised my definition of the Oregon Trail generation to include a couple of years of those younger Gen Xers. Because I do believe there is more overlap than I think I was probably giving credit for at the time. Like, that is something I would go back and redo. But it was sort of so that was sort of the first part, or the first real aspect of it was just like, you know, we were raised with these, these impossible expectations. It's okay, that we have withdrawn from some of that, those expectations and the relationships around them. But the second part was like, Okay, well, how did we get there to begin with, you know, and trying to understand within the church, like, the antipathy that that is only growing like, it's only going from millennials, younger, to Gen Z, who have even sort of, I think, a lower view of the church than millennials do. Is how did we get here? Where will our elders wanted us to take this inheritance? But not really, they still, they still want to hold on to it. But at the same time, we don't really want that inheritance. Yeah. And so it's kind of trying to answer that question. Like, we don't want the church that we're being given

Alison Cebulla 33:55
it so it's, what is the church we're being given? It? Yeah, a couple a couple of its

Eric Atcheson 34:01
I joke that question. It's a Cold War relic in two ways. One way is that it against sort of affirms that 1950s Leave it to be for aesthetic, that again, I think has been nuclear family and has been glamorized in ways that are deeply unhealthy. But secondly, it's a Cold War relic, where in a lot of ways the church resembles a sort of centrally planned economy. Where like, people in a small cadre, whether it's a church board or you know, something similar says, Okay, here's the jobs we need filled, and you're going to fill them even if it's not, maybe not what what's best for the church to move forward and even if it doesn't really fit your gifts. We're not interested in creating roles that fit your gifts we're interested in making you fit the role All and so conformity, conformity got rewarded above excellence. And we, yet we are being told to be excellent. Like Bill and Ted be excellent to each other with those high hopes, we had to choose between sort of leaving into our gifts, or accepting the roles that were being prescribed to us that we could not be fully, truly excellent in. And we would never fill those expectations because those roles weren't ours. And so we were forced into that choice. And millennials, by and large have are increasingly saying and again, Gen Z behind us are saying, we'll go be excellent at what will take will, will be excellent elsewhere.

Alison Cebulla 35:52
outside the church, you mean

Eric Atcheson 35:53
outside the additional brick and mortar church? And that's not to say that there's not a faith component to people's lives anymore. Like that's not what's happening. unaffiliated does not automatically equal atheist. It can. It absolutely can. But it doesn't have to. Mm hmm.

Alison Cebulla 36:18
And so, because I feel it feels like is it is the trend that people are becoming less like millennials, I guess less church going, right? Is that the trend?

Anne Sherry 36:34
To keep up a church to like,

Eric Atcheson 36:38
going, they may not be a church every single Sunday without fail. You know, it's especially as millennials, increasingly have children or don't, you know, because economically, it hasn't really been ideal for us to be having kids. But for those of us who do, you know, there are added you know, it's tough to get kids out the door at nine in the morning. On it, you know, if you're doing it the other six days of the week for school and sports like,

Anne Sherry 37:19
that's so true. Yeah.

Eric Atcheson 37:21
So I think you're seeing one of the things that COVID did, for better or for worse, was it forced churches that to this point, had had actively rejected, asynchronous religious experience, it forced them to accept it?

Anne Sherry 37:39
Yeah, yeah. COVID was terrible in so many ways. But I think gifts are being realized. Slowly, yeah.

Eric Atcheson 37:47
And I want to say that it isn't just for the benefit of us. You know, like the congregation and minister, we like many congregations, we have people who are homebound due to age or disparate disability, and they had been excluded from in person worship service, but because COVID forced, this rethinking of worship, they are a we have congregants who had not been able to participate and are participating again. Yeah. So it's not just our

Anne Sherry 38:13
church invested in technology, like so we're back in person with mass, but we It's, uh, I don't think we'll ever not have an online service is my understanding, like it will be simultaneous. So we started getting member or members or people from all over the country, us to start on to

Eric Atcheson 38:35
Yeah, like we just did Holy Week. And we have like, Holy Week devotionals that our members write personally, and we publish. And that mailing list has grown to include people all over the country. Yeah. So we're like, you know, this little ministry that might have been envisioned just for us, has become a ministry that's connected us to people we've never met in person.

Anne Sherry 39:01
Yeah. There's this like, just I even because I did not grow up i My parents were, but they had religious trauma. I'm discovering and we grew up with nothing. And like in the South, in South Carolina, that was weird to me, because the first question was, what church do you go to? And I was like, my friends, church, whoever I spend the night with on Saturday, I mean, I always felt very out of place, going to church and never had the right clothes. I didn't know what they were doing blah, blah. So I went way away from that and got into my religious studies degree. I was much more interested in Buddhism, blah, blah, blah. But as I went, I start going to church.

Alison Cebulla 39:44
I realized a couple years ago, yeah, five six. Yeah, but it was a while I think I'm gonna be a Christian. Yeah, you're like, I remember you texting me and you're like, when I

Anne Sherry 39:55
do apologize when I tell people I go to church. I'm like, it's not it's not that kind of church. I Like, I'm envisioning the churches that I grew up with that felt very judgy. And so it's really still weird to say, I bet that I go to a Christian church. But it's super inclusive. I mean, it's the type. I mean, it's something you I can completely get behind. I mean, it's community inclusive. And so I'm curious I, we've had pastors come from, I think your disciples of Christ, like I've had, we've had a guest pastor, and I was like, that sounds they sound really cool, you know, so I'm curious like your getting away from that message or the Cold War relic? Like I really do want to let people know like, there's a Christianity out there that is, reckon awesome, actually. Really, really amazing. And I think half our congregants might even be atheists, but they're there for community and equity work and togetherness. So yeah,

Eric Atcheson 40:57
I don't know. It's there is certainly there was certainly that expectation. And I think one of the ways that that kind of gets carried over is, you know, asking, like, what church do you attend is a stat. I have dogs, and it's like, this is our equivalent of dogs sniffing each other's behinds. Like. It's more of a question. Yes.

Anne Sherry 41:30
Are you part of wonder it felt like shit as a kid? Yeah. Yeah. And there are churches

Eric Atcheson 41:34
for whom letting go of that club Enos can be very trying and difficult to let go of.

Anne Sherry 41:45
I'm laughing. I just want to say one little thing here. We used it. There's a church in Spartanburg called the Church of the abbot. And I think we nicknamed it the Church of the advantaged. So anyways. Sorry, if y'all go there, whoever's listening, but yeah. Yeah. So the dog sniffing? Yeah. Yeah,

Eric Atcheson 42:05
there is. There's, I think the other byproduct sorry, the the other way in which what you're describing the match, what you're describing is also a byproduct of the sort of segregation of churches on socio economic lines, but also along racial lines, which is true, not just here in the Deep South, but, you know, across, you know, across the country. And so, there is still sort of there's a racial component to that question that I've found very difficult to escape, in part, because, you know, I'm an ethnic Armenian serving in a very non Armenian, denomination and congregation, whereas a lot of, you know, Armenian Christians would congregate in primarily, historically, Armenian congregations. And so it's there are additional layers of explanation that can go into, into into a question that so simple and so wrote, but that is meant to communicate a whole lot of expectation.

Anne Sherry 43:34
Right? Yeah. That's, I mean, it's something I haven't ever been able to really square and never got good answers from prosperity type questions is like, How do you square it? Like, I don't know the Bible at austerity style, but like Jesus was super over and like the meek shall inherit the earth. A couple of quotes that you know, like, the last come first, I was like, How do y'all do what Joel Osteen, explain yourself? Like, yeah, Frick, I never. I'm like, it's so great and hypocrisy. It's so confusing, because it's like, whatever.

Eric Atcheson 44:13
What I, what I tell people is that my respect for prosperity theology knows no bounds in that it could expand infinitely in any direction and never reach a single thing. Yeah. So my wrist, my wrist, that's how little respect I have is expand.

Anne Sherry 44:39
Okay, yep. Yeah.

Eric Atcheson 44:42
That's a very prosperity way of describing it because prosperity is all about that expansion. And that growth, hey, you know, and what I'm saying is just anything.

Anne Sherry 44:53
Yes, I love it. But it is still very cult like prosperity Christianity feels like

Eric Atcheson 45:02
it's very American. It's very America

Anne Sherry 45:04
like exactly. Well, America. Yeah,

Eric Atcheson 45:09
well, the roots of it are in the preachers who were hired in the late 19th and early 20th century, were bankrolled by the tycoons of that day, the Carnegie's and the Vanderbilts.

Alison Cebulla 45:22
Yes, to

Eric Atcheson 45:23
preach anti union. theology to, to their flocks. And so that's where you got sort of the the merging of American Christianity and individual prosperity, the individualism was already there, America was always or let me say, historically, white America was always fiercely individualistic. But then you had the merging of sort of morality and prosperity that has a very specific historical route. And it was in it's in sort of the bankrolling of the church by people who had very specific interests in keeping people from seeing themselves as too much of a community.

Anne Sherry 46:09
Yes, yeah. Yeah. And that's the exact thing that has drawn me. So screw you tycoons. I'd grew up with nothing. And it is this toxic individualism that finally led me like kind of like, oh, okay, I'll go, you know, like, that's the only place that I saw one sort of asking around who are the liberal churches, you know, so I didn't know anything. I was like, United Church of Christ. I was like, Oh, do they have to put Christ in the name? Like, it just sounded like super, like, whatever to Christian for me. But it was like, the only place Yeah, that was like, doing the work in the Christian. That's where my equity stuff like really deepened, I was like, Oh, you have to do it in community, you cannot go it alone, you're not going to make any, you don't get anywhere you will burn yourself out, you know. So

Eric Atcheson 47:00
I think one of the things that's really important that's happening now, and I see it, like I've seen it in the last two years of living in Birmingham, and in my wife's work with, you know, with, with with congregations and synagogues and mosques across Alabama, is that it is entirely possible to have a deep, profound faith in the saving power of Jesus Christ, and at the same time, be in full partnership with non Christians towards a common liberation, anti oppression. Yes. And so I see the, and that's increasingly how, how I see my faith, where can it be deep, but not be where the depths can maybe be more important than the breath? Right, like I think Christianity in especially again, that historically white European Christianity has valued breath at the expense of depth, where if we can get someone to recite the sinners prayer or get them baptized, it's good, even if, especially if there's some advantage to it for us. Right, when we've forgotten sort of the verticality of How deep can we go within ourselves, and really value that over, you know, how many people we've gotten to start thinking like us?

Anne Sherry 48:36
Yeah. Right. I mean, that was that was like, yeah, she was going deep. It was therapeutic work that, like, then I realized, I was like, Ah, I did a lot of therapy solo, you know, in an OB. And then I was like, I gotta be in community, you know, so it was really the depth work that I and that was the community that was here in Nashville. And that led me to it, but that was kind of first. Yeah. And

Eric Atcheson 49:01
I think when you talk about, like, what does this what does the spiritual life look like, right now? That's a huge part of that is the connective tissue. And that's a huge Yes. Difference from self care, which isn't to say that self care isn't important. Check that spirituality is intrinsically meant to be connective. Yeah, it's meant to deepen your connection to yourself, your connection to creation, your create your connection to be create or have that creation, and your connection to everyone else around you. So I would argue that spirituality is fundamentally connective in a way that you know, taking a bubble bath just isn't. I'm not dissing bubble baths but totally Public. Ask but that like, is this a spiritual practice? For me? That's one of the first questions is, is it connective? And the second I would say is like, is it freeing? And that's, I think a huge difference that I've had to learn as a result of the pandemic is i, this is one way in which I've progressed in my career in my faith, is I used to understand spiritual exercises as more about restoration, rather than liberation. Like the spiritual exercises, fill me up. And sure that's important, but it's incomplete. Because if I'm not living freely in a state of liberation, if having been ransomed by God, then I'm never going to be fully restored. You know, I'm always going to be sort of be missing some component to, to who I am, you know? And so is this is your spiritual life, something that is setting you free, as well as restoring you? And I think that's another component that for sort of the latchkey generation, and younger is moving them away from the institutional church. It's not freeing. No. Good. There's that other

Anne Sherry 51:22
piece that I ran up against, you know, and I, because I am curious, because I want to proselytize some of them. I'm like, Look, I didn't go to church. I didn't grow up with anything. But being out of community sucks, you know, so how do you have that? I mean, I just, in the pandemic really did, because I was like, Oh, my church is too hard, or whatever. And we're just coming back. And it feels good to be amongst these people that just like, it's everything I missed and childhood, but good to see you. You don't really expect a whole, you know, like, we just want you here, just whenever you show up and like, oh, can this be true? And parts of me just keep, like, it's a little anxiety producing to be that communal. It's almost like the nourishment barrier to be that like, is this real? You know, it's like, not the American experience. So yeah.

Eric Atcheson 52:17
And I don't there's no paint by numbers way to explain how to produce something like that. It's, it's sort of souI generous. It's a rather, it's, it's kind of like obscenity, you know, it when you feel it, or when you see it, you know, like you're at I guess, like, I don't have a like, a neatly laid out, this is what community must feel like and must be experienced as in part because COVID Sort of, so turn that on its head. But I do, but what hasn't sort of gone away is that whatever you might call it, sort of, of gut or instinct, or I would call it sort of the leading of the Spirit that says, I am where I need to be, in order to grow in a way that makes me more reflective of the Creator. You know, like that's, you know, and I think that's something that, for me, really has been tough there during the pandemic is to is having to keep asking myself, am I as a minister leading a congregation, you know, in a new city in a new region, am I where I need to be to grow alongside this new plug,

Anne Sherry 53:55
you grow? Like your personal and,

Eric Atcheson 53:59
and to help others grow? Because that's part of, of, of being a minister. And that has been a very in that in the pandemic has made that so much tougher. And not just for me, I think for helping professions more broadly.

Anne Sherry 54:16
There was no break. We didn't sit around with sourdough starter, we were on it like next day, it was like, where's it been my practice just,

Eric Atcheson 54:23
I didn't get around to the bread bake. I didn't get around to the bread dough. Well, this year, after almost the pandemic, I finally got around to breadmaking

Anne Sherry 54:32
Wow. Yeah,

Alison Cebulla 54:34
I had to quit my I had to quit my caring job. Yeah, you know, the pandemic started and I worked in, in trauma, the field of trauma, trauma healing, and we just went Go, go, go, go, go go. I produced a series of zoom talks over you know, from 2020 to 2021, where we were just on there supporting, holding space exploring issues, you know, and yeah, just so I just had to stop

Anne Sherry 55:05
when you were like, Hey, watch this. I was like, Are you kidding me? Do you know what I've been doing all this week, I am not watching another thing on.

Eric Atcheson 55:11
Yeah. And I think that's why there's been such a backlash to the rush back to the office, because there's that expectation to return to the office is the assumption underneath is where you guys have just been loafing off at home. And that's been the complete opposite has been the case where our homes have had to become spaces of labor, rather than spaces.

Anne Sherry 55:41
Which is no sanctuary.

Eric Atcheson 55:43
Right? Like, my, my younger sister works as a public health professional for the University of Missouri at Kansas City. And she and part of one of her her jobs is to write, edit, and host a podcast very similar to this one. She lives in a little one bedroom apartment. And for over a year, she was hosting that podcast from her bathroom. Like no, no home space at all. And so there was so to work from home. Yeah, there was a price to be paid. And sort of pretending that that was a multi month or multi year vacation, just so we can go back to work and so that that sort of so socio economic class of managers whose sole job is to physically supervise us can have their jobs back, right. Like that's not

Unknown Speaker 56:42
well set of well. Yes,

Eric Atcheson 56:45
that's Yeah. And that's the same, the same trouble that the church is facing, right. It's like, we may want to go back to business as usual, but that that Rubicon has been crossed. Yeah. And we can,

Alison Cebulla 57:00
and we want to feel seen for what we've sacrificed. Before we are asked to sacrifice again. Yeah, yeah, I think that, that I think it is kind of happening, it feels, you know, like, I'm currently job searching, and it feels like a more hospitable environment to be job searching, you know, as I can, I can have some boundaries, like, No, I'm not going to apply for a job that doesn't have the salary listed. Like, I'm not I'm not gonna do that. You need to respect me. Yeah. As a worker. I saw great, you know, those types of things. A great

Anne Sherry 57:33
headline were Headhunter business. I don't know if you saw this was indeed the the way they net there. network engineers or whatever, tech people, as soon as a company posts that we're going back to the office, they start contacting engineers, and and stealing them to get them to companies that aren't going. Like Yeah, awesome. Yeah. It's almost like yeah, a little bit of labor union ish without being a union is like,

Eric Atcheson 58:03
organizing. Well,

Anne Sherry 58:05
yeah, yes.

Eric Atcheson 58:06
Yeah. Like the Starbucks. Starbucks in downtown here in downtown Birmingham is right now being targeted for anti union, activities by Starbucks Corporation.

Alison Cebulla 58:21
As they are able to unionize, right, and sending positive vibes to Birmingham. Yeah.

Eric Atcheson 58:29
And I think, and I think you're one of the ways you're seeing that in the church is we've swung hard. And for my understand this is across denominations. We've swung hard from a clergy surplus to a clergy shortage. And one of the things that Alice you'd wanted to me you talked about was like us coming into the job market of the great recession.

Alison Cebulla 58:53
And yeah, let me Well, let me let me give a background of how of how Eric and I, you know, originally kind of met a little more background on that. I had moved back to Berkeley from Asheville, where I had known and to finish my degree I had dropped out because I, my depression caught up with me. I was I was using drugs in a way that wasn't sustainable. I went to rehab, I moved to Asheville. And then I was like, I'm ready. Let me go back to Berkeley. But I was very wounded. But also due to taking a break. I had a lot of tools, too. And I was like, I need community. I had been a member of of a great church in Asheville, and I knew that I wanted that when I got to Berkeley. And so I ended up finding tapestry and then Eric, you were leading an interfaith discussion group amongst students. And we would visit different different congregations, different churches, different denominations, and then meet up again and talk about them. Discuss and I still to this day, remember, this was in 2000. ate. I still remember those conversations they were so meaningful about, you know, what did what worked for you about this one we visited, what didn't? What are you relating to? What is your faith look like for you? How are you showing up? And then, and I just think it was such an important mental health tool for me to come back and say, Now I want to succeed in my life, that I'm not doing the drugs anymore. I need to take care of my mental health. And the way that I'm going to do that is by showing up in a spiritual community and actually engaging, you know, actually looking people in the eye and talking about what my face looks like in practice, you know, and listening when people tell me but 2008 2009 You know, and so it's a group of us young folks, you know, we I graduated from my undergrad in 2009. It took me three years to get a full time job that didn't even have benefits. Yeah, so. Yeah. So yeah, if you could,

Eric Atcheson 1:01:10
and I remember some of you could fix

Alison Cebulla 1:01:12
that. Eric, if you could just fix that for

Anne Sherry 1:01:17
the church. is Christianity gonna fix that? Where are they going to stop taking? And what does that look like?

Eric Atcheson 1:01:26
Talking about prosperity theology?

Anne Sherry 1:01:28
Yes, no, I'm taking. Yeah. Yeah.

Eric Atcheson 1:01:34
So you know, I graduated from seminary a couple years later, in 2011, I was profoundly fortunate to get my first call. In a matter of months, I had classmates waiting a year or more for their first congregations.

Alison Cebulla 1:01:46
Well, your sermons are good. That's just luck. Thank you. They're good.

Eric Atcheson 1:01:51
Okay. But we, you know, what, one of the things that sort of the Great Recession kind of punished people who were just starting careers, because it also punished the people who were hoping to conclude their careers. Like, so it was a highlight like the housing was sort of a fundamental component to that great recession. And a paid for house is supposed to be part of that American dream of being able to retire with a paid for house. But if your house has suddenly lost a ton of value, you're hoping to cash in on that to retire? Well, you've got to keep working. And, and that's for clergy who own houses, many do not because we've had to live in percentages. And so you had at least in my field, a whole lot of clergy putting off their retirements. And so you had the surplus of clergy, and I imagine was probably true for a lot of other fields. Because not only were people putting off retirements but people weren't hiring. Yeah. And so it was it was it was a huge sort of double whammy. And you ended up with people graduating into the workforce needing a year or years plural, to find full time jobs. And often those jobs were, you know, with lousy pay or lousy benefits. And the the problem that kind of lingered was a it sort of destroyed our sort of ability to save for retirement. Because that's what you know, every financial adviser says to start as young as possible, we couldn't. But it created a decade of this mentality of employers having all of the leverage to dictate all of the terms. And once that changed, when because this is a very different recession that we've had as a result of COVID. And it's going to impact Gen Z, just like the Great Recession impacted millennials. Like I think you're going to see economic fallout for Gen Z. But But, and one of the reasons for that is because a lot of employers haven't accepted that this is a different, this is a different moment, than 2010 or 2011, or 2012 was, and they don't have all of the leverage, but they're still trying to write. And so that's why you still see postings without salary information or with awful salary information or, you know, like, or trying to, especially in the nonprofit world, we're expecting, like, you know, full work from an office that of course, is you know, if there were another Omicron like surge would just devastate the entire office, you know, like, so there has there's still there's still that level of out if you want to call it denial or just a desire to retain status, but again, to me that is very similar to the church of we want to retain the status of doing things the way we had done them because that had benefited us. Yeah. But that's not the world we live in anymore. And you can't make that you can't force that world into being. And so I don't know exactly how it's all gonna, how that's going to fall out. But I do think, you know, for us coming of age in the Great Recession, and then sort of experiencing this this economic, I don't know what you call it. I know, it was there was a, you know, really sharp downturn. In in just across the board, not just housing. So I'm on what you would call it I'm not. I went to God school not not economic school. But but as devastating when Trent says, As devastating as the great recession was, I don't know for how long we're gonna be measuring the fallout of this. Yeah, of the current moment. Like, it's gonna flake. Like, I think me, do

Anne Sherry 1:06:03
you see upsides that are emerging? Like, you know, I'm noticing I have a Gen Z kid, like, he doesn't really want a whole lot, you know, like, like, it's experience and time. And, you know, I'm wondering what might be what might have been planted in there? Like, we don't want stuff we don't want to like, hopefully, it'll make its way into the legislation. Yeah, I don't,

Alison Cebulla 1:06:30
I don't know. Let me be really quick, though, just because I do think, obviously, I know, you're so mindful this. And so it's not like a call out. But I do think it's a very privileged 100% be able to reject, like to, you have to be all, you have to already have access to the American dream to reject 100%. And I think for the majority of Americans,

Anne Sherry 1:06:52
call me out too, by the way. I like that.

Alison Cebulla 1:06:54
Yeah, no, but no, because I know you didn't mean it. That yeah, I'm just saying that. It's, I think it is like easy for the AUC for the August cherries of the world to say, Oh, I don't need you know, I don't bet for um, you know, like, the way I grew up was in, we didn't have anything, we didn't have any money. You know, my parents struggled to have employment. And some years and we grew up, I grew up in a very poor neighborhood. And the American dream meant safety. For me and my family, I have to do I have to do the thing I'm being told to do so I can finally stop feeling stress and unsafe every day of my life. You know, and I think that that's probably where the majority of Americans are.

Eric Atcheson 1:07:40
So what I think I mean, first of all, we're talking about a redefinition of the American Dream over generations, right? Yeah. Like our parents generations, like, if they had work, they like ground themselves into the dirt, like, working so so much. But they didn't always in order to try to achieve that level of security or safety. And, you know, a lot of that could come about through, you know, through any number of things here in Alabama. The irony is that we're sort of hugely dependent on federal grant money for infrastructure and other projects. And the dream could look like being able to get one of those jobs. But the flip side of that dream is like, for instance, we're trying to build a highway between mobile and Tuscaloosa that's going to displace a lot of people who are overwhelmingly black in impoverished because that's through Alabama's black belt. And so is is the is the American dream, sort of this new gleaming highway, where is it being able to keep your home? Right?

Alison Cebulla 1:08:48
I have seen the I don't know if you know about this in Oakland, Eric, but my brother was just telling me that they're planning or they're, they're trying to plan or I may have just gotten approved to take the 980 out the 980 Highway was put there specifically to separate the the black community in West Oakland from the predominantly white community over on the other side near Lake Merritt. And so Brandt said, My brother said that they're, they're planning to take the highway out and stop this, you know, this historical racial division that had this at the time displaced predominantly African American families from their home. Yeah. So they're so I want to say there is some hope we get out of

Anne Sherry 1:09:30
our cars to should we invest in public transport? More and more more lanes? And yeah, I don't know what anyways, I'm hoping that some of that starts to get reimagined. Yeah, right. But

Eric Atcheson 1:09:42
so if you talk about the American dream as a progression of like, you know, our infrastructure and in sort of technological capacity as a country, which I think was a big part of the American dream of sort of the interstate highway system, it's where Of all of the building and growth in the 50s and 60s. Well, what's the flip side of that is, you know, who is who's displaced? Whose land was it? And who is it for to be? Right? And yeah, I want to know what that's like. But that's

Anne Sherry 1:10:18
foundational questions.

Eric Atcheson 1:10:20
So the American Dream under, yeah, has to get redefined, not just across generational lines, but I think along ethnic and racial lines, and socio economic lines. You know, my family coming like fleeing a genocide in the First World War, my great grandmother arrived in San Francisco, California in 1919. In California, because it had that influx, those influx of Armenian refugees, immediately began passing redlining laws where Armenians weren't allowed to buy houses in certain neighborhoods and can occupy certain occupy professions. Five years later, the United States banned Armenians from immigrating to the US at all, for almost 30 years, that like, last 30 years. And so what does the American Dream look like? Like, my family was able to be safe here and secure here? So that part of the dream was realized? But full acceptance? Right, that took a lot longer. And we're still working towards it.

Alison Cebulla 1:11:19
Yeah. Good till the Kardashians took over America.

Eric Atcheson 1:11:23
I will not answer. All right. This is the gotcha, gotcha part of the interview. I am.

Anne Sherry 1:11:33
Yeah, yeah.

Eric Atcheson 1:11:36
So there are different times to the American dream, that may that like the do change over time, and do change based on your social location?

Alison Cebulla 1:11:49
Absolutely, um, I guess I wanted to make sure that we get to a little bit about what your spiritual practice means to you, or looks like for you. And what that could look like for someone who's wanting to start one or come back to one, and, and maybe end end there. And then we have the feelings game, okay. To play at the end. So just so you know, that's coming,

Anne Sherry 1:12:26
digging down deep, your feelings?

Alison Cebulla 1:12:29
What does it look like to you these days? So what could it look like for others?

Eric Atcheson 1:12:33
Let's put, I want to postulate this first, which is that even before COVID, but especially COVID, one of the ways that sort of the pandemic poured gasoline on the fire was the way in which we have to allocate our time, like having to work from home, did that happen to juggle, you know, if you're a parent, and you didn't have childcare like that? impacted it, school closures, all of that. So across the board, let's postulate that how do you carve aside time for spiritual discipline to begin with? Because, you know, if you look at just you show me your day planner, I'll show you, I'll tell you what your highest priorities are. And that may be by choice or necessity, but they are our highest priority. So how do you carve away that time, and I'll give one example that is super mundane, but ended up making a huge difference for me. You know, we just finished the church season of Lent, a few years ago, for Lent, I gave up eating lunch out, like no going out for a sandwich or a burger like, gave that up. And over the course of the last few years, I've noticed I've went from like, you know, going out to, to pick up a sandwich or a burger to packing my lunch 80 or 90% of the time, which means I'm not driving out to go somewhere and I'm spending less money, I'm contributing less gasoline emissions into the environment. But I also have more time. Yeah. And so how do I use that time, and for me, I've chosen to sort of use it in a number of different ways. Some of it could simply be personal education or trying to keep up a habit of reading for for pleasure. It could be trying to take sort of being more active midday my congregation, my church has like a walking trail that they build kind of around the entire campus. That's really very beautiful. And it could be something as simple as watching videos of my of my silly little kid, like, whatever it is, that's going to set me free from the demands of that morning and set me up to be able to meet the demands of that afternoon. But But I had to create that time Yeah, so that thing that I gave up for lunch. So that's, again, sort of setting me free from from having to sort of do a second commute for a meal. So again, something that seems super mundane, but it has this domino effect of creating time. The other resource that we sort of need is, for lack of a better term presents, like, Am I able to sort of be able to tune out everything else? And again, I think the pandemic really made them

Alison Cebulla 1:15:27
know the answer is no.

Eric Atcheson 1:15:30
If you'd like me, Allison, and you live with mental illness, that makes it tough, you know, yeah. Right, very tough. And so I've had to learn how to accept my mental illness, and realize that some days, I'm able to focus in a state of very little around me, and other days, that's impossible, and I need to be moving, or I need to have some sort of stimulus in order to focus. And I don't always know which day that's going to be like, if I'm gonna wake up and be able to focus with nothing around me, or if I need to have something to route me. And yeah, like, honestly, it changes from day to day.

Anne Sherry 1:16:12
Yeah. And certainly not to be able to plan the days that your mental illness is going to take over.

Eric Atcheson 1:16:16
I know, right?

Alison Cebulla 1:16:18
Well, I just want to pause for one second, and like, recognize how incredible it is to be talking about faith, spirituality, and mental health and mental illness in the same breath, thank you for holding that space area, because this is where the conversation needs to be. And it's incredible to hear you talk about it and normalize that, and I just want to say thank

Eric Atcheson 1:16:41
you, like coming from Kansas, which is, you know, it's not the Deep South, but it is the Bible Belt. And you know, growing up even in the 90s, there was still some of that stigma around as a person of faith seeking psychological or psychiatric treatment. Absolutely thing is like, and what is fundamentally flawed about biblical counseling, for lack of better term is that my mental illness isn't a demon to be exorcised. It's a state of being, to, for lack of a better term, to live as fully as possible in like, I can't get rid of, I can't get rid of depression. I can't send it into a herd of pigs and send the pigs jumping off a cliff like I am, I cannot do that. I cannot do that with my anxiety. Is that is that in the Bible? Mark, Mark five, the the garrison demoniac. Demon into a herd of pigs. Like, and so

Alison Cebulla 1:17:47
I like that visual, though. I do like

Eric Atcheson 1:17:51
that resignation, like I'm not resigning myself, to letting the illness take over. Right? It's, it's that acceptance level, I guess of grief or of processing. I accept that I have this. I have this mental illness diagnosis. How do I build something for myself? Acknowledging that this exists? Yes. And I can't tell it. I can't tell you what that looks like for you. Because what I'm saying is, it looks different for me every day, some day I need. Some days, I need the external stimulus of a devotion or music or something to anchor me. Other times I can't handle it. And I need nothing at all.

Anne Sherry 1:18:36
Right? Yeah, there's no prescription people are looking for prescriptions. What are the steps give me the steps. So I don't feel all this

Eric Atcheson 1:18:43
right. And so but the first is a prescribing? Sorry.

Alison Cebulla 1:18:47
Well, it's just that I mean, this this in and of itself, of like, meet, meet yourself where you are, could be a person's spiritual practice, like that feels very loving. And, you know, and like, maybe that's all you can do today. Yeah. Is just to meet yourself. Exactly. Yeah. Like, that's really,

Eric Atcheson 1:19:10
that's like, yeah, I would say like, you said it much better than I like you found words that I was sort of reaching blindly for, which was like, or I want to say blindly, unknowingly, for which was that like, spiritual spiritual practice, needs to be built on sort of an awareness of, of, of your own needs. And I think that's tough because it's tough because we are told we are told in commercials and advertisements and by other by our peers, what our needs are supposed to be. That's right. But that may not be what your need is.

Alison Cebulla 1:19:54
And it is hard to know. Yeah, I yeah, I just still always joke I've brought it up on this podcast before about that book, the adult children's guide to what's normal. Yeah. And it has like a list of like, if you if you grew up in a dysfunctional family, here's a list of what non dysfunctional families like actual functional families, like, here's a list of what's normal in those families. And I was like, Finally, someone told me lately, like, yeah,

Eric Atcheson 1:20:23
like, if that's your normal, if that's like, if that was what you were conditioned on, especially in formative years, for a long period of time. Like, it's, you know, I see the same thing. You know, and my colleagues see the same things in congregations that have that are that are not functional. It's like, if you've been a part of that family system for so long, your sense of what is normal becomes so skewed, you know, are so?

Alison Cebulla 1:20:56
Absolutely,

Eric Atcheson 1:20:57
absolutely. Like, I don't know, like, Alison, did you grow up with dare? Did they ever give you like the drug goggles? Like, here's what the world looks like, oh, when you Oh, we didn't? Yeah, like, they had us try those on, like these goggles of like, here's what the world looks like to you when you're intoxicated. And it was pretty, it was pretty profound. Because it's like, it was it was like, like, you're still in your surroundings. But it's so so warped, that, you know, it's tough to recognize.

Alison Cebulla 1:21:35
Yes, that is what that's exactly what it's like growing up with a dysfunctional family. Thank you for that. It's like having the drug goggles on.

Eric Atcheson 1:21:44
There any number of things that can kind of influence or impact our outlook like

Alison Cebulla 1:21:49
that. So we actually lost an eye for a minute, she, her power has gone out. So she's going to try and hop on again. But I guess while we're waiting for her to hop on for the feelings game, I just want to say thank you so much, Eric, for joining, and I'm just, I'm already imagining all the social media posts, we can, you're very quotable. So thank you.

Eric Atcheson 1:22:14
That is a double edged sword. But thank

Alison Cebulla 1:22:17
you, I know, but it's like, you have to play the game. You know, like that's like when I'm in my worst depressive moments. I'm like, pick a game and play it. Which is why I love like, you're kind of Oregon Trail from you know, theology because it's like, you like, we can't just change the reality that we're living in. So I'm always like, what, what do you want to play today? You know, do you want to play some capitalism?

Eric Atcheson 1:22:45
Are you going to play you know, some, you know, some ministry or you're going to play? You know, some focus on on yourself, like what? So that you can then do the ministry? Like, are you going to play, you know, a much less, a much less satisfying version of yourself. You know, and it's in though, and every day we wake up and we with those choices, like those choices we make we choose what game you know, not only what game we're gonna play we

Alison Cebulla 1:23:18
I mean, we have to Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I'm, I'm gonna have to play some capitalism soon. Because I gotta I have bills to pay. I quit my job, you know, six weeks ago. And it's been fun, but I we, we just were, we're on a treadmill that we have to just keep

Eric Atcheson 1:23:39
the wheel and where the hamster. Yes, hamster wheel.

Alison Cebulla 1:23:42
So speaking of wheels, feelings, wheel.com. D, I'll just the way we play it is that, like, my finger will just go around and you'll say stop. And when I get to a feeling, you'll get a feeling and you'll just share time recently that you felt that feeling and what it feels like. So go ahead and just say stop, whatever. Okay, stop. Okay, so the feeling that you got is apathetic.

Eric Atcheson 1:24:18
When did I recently feel apathetic? So that's a good one. You know, so we talked, we started by talking about our adventures in homebuying. And our house we knew was going to be a work in progress, and we would need a bunch of repairs and we're ready to do them. One of them was new windows, and after many months of waiting, we finally got our contractor finally got back to us and said the trade the tradespeople finally came back with the windows and I mean, like this was like four or five months, and by that point had been so long. That was like, I don't care put them in whenever put them in. However, or just get them in consequences that was that meant that it was a sermon writing day for me. And so I'm trying to, like, sit here and write well, like, you know, you know, buzzsaws are going off in the background of my own apathy, and not planning this out. Lead led to led to a pretty interesting sensory experience that, hey, we have new windows now.

Alison Cebulla 1:25:26
Got it. So when you think of what apathy feels like in your body, what does it feel like?

Eric Atcheson 1:25:32
Almost resignation, like a sort of like, I don't care, just like, whatever, whatever's going to happen. I clearly like this is so far out of my control. So it's almost like an out of control thing. And so because it's out of my control, I can't invest the spoons and caring about it, if that makes sense. So,

Alison Cebulla 1:25:55
absolutely. I'm okay. And then if you could help me with mine and tell me when to stop and this will be my word.

Eric Atcheson 1:26:05
And stop.

Alison Cebulla 1:26:10
My word is free. That's kind of like apathetic, to be honest. It's just like, a little bit it's like free feels like my body feels very light. And you were talking a lot about this, this kind of like liberal personal or liberation or so it's, it's a lightness in my body. It's like, it's like yellows, and whites is kind of what it looks like and feels like in my body. It's like upper in my chest. I got the word free and, and a time that I felt free

Oh, I went to Bryce Canyon recently, and I would just wake up and think like, where am I going to go trail running today and just go wherever I felt like it and just started running. And that's when I felt free a time recently. I just I went there a couple of weeks ago. So I know Eric has to run and Ann's having technical difficulties. So unfortunately, we're not going to get a feeling game. Which she's loving. But Eric, thank you so so much for playing the game and for inspiring us with all of your wisdom. Thank you so so much.

Eric Atcheson 1:27:31
Thank you so much for Sam yawn and for the conversation like this hour and a half flew by and then all of a sudden a little Alison, tell Allison. Oh, no, I actually need to go.

Alison Cebulla 1:27:42
Yeah, so

Anne Sherry 1:27:43
go get the millennials and the Gen Z years. I just we need to be in community. We can't do this alone. Whatever we're trying to do here. Yeah, it's essential. So whatever that looks like

Alison Cebulla 1:27:57
thank you so much, Eric.

Eric Atcheson 1:27:58
Thank you so much, y'all.

Anne Sherry 1:27:59
Bye Eric.

Alison Cebulla 1:28:03
Okay, and yours is working again. I wanted to let Eric go but we are going to do a feeling okay, so tell me when it's die.

Anne Sherry 1:28:09
All right. Okay, I'm really planning the stop bitter

Oh, better. Better better better. That's what I'm familiar with. I think I noticed you did you say that you did it in your body first and then talk to buy does that what did I say order of operations there. Okay, let me think better I'll do I'm going to do that too. Because sometimes I start thinking the feeling first so I want to just have the feeling of bitterness when you when I got that it's almost like in my chest it went very sharp. Like I can sense like, like just right in the middle and there's all this just like lots of sharp sensations going across the chest like coming out like it's like it's very Get away from me is the sense of it or yeah, don't feel great. But when have I felt better? Oh, when do I not feel? This is always one when do I not? These are more baseline feelings. I would say over this last week, which was Spring Break. And we did August, August demand we did a staycation which we were like Yeah, sounds good. We're just hanging around here. Again that unstructured time just stretching out what to do with a kid all day. So there was it was really up and down like I my I could also I sensed that I really wanted a lot of my own time because I've set my new office up and I just wanted to come down here and play. And I wasn't getting like either unable to ask or we couldn't plan for it but like there was a lot of bitterness over this last week of like, why do we have a kid so late? Why am I married being single? So much easier? I could just do what I want to do. So I kind of lived in a state of like IQ like and then then from there not being able to like Let's go on a hike I know you know, I had to really pull in the strategies of moving my body is always better yeah got to the pool got to the why always always that is one thing that always works and lots of my parts my bitter parts are like no, you deserve more time you know, they they're really a tough voice in there. So So yeah, I was planning a divorce and putting my kid up for adoption this this last week so

Alison Cebulla 1:30:59
bitterness Thank you an bitterness

Anne Sherry 1:31:04
You're welcome. So yeah, fun times. It was a great vacation. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. All

Alison Cebulla 1:31:10
right. Well, it was so great having Aragon oh my gosh,

Anne Sherry 1:31:13
oh my gosh, I am absolutely traveling doing this podcast we get to travel we do and maybe

Alison Cebulla 1:31:22
do that was just wasteful. Feeling. Very nourished. Yes, spiritually. Big title. Alright, see you next time. Okay, bye

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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