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"Breaking Out of the Ordinary" ...Peter Eichten expands on his homily of March 11th, 2001

Does Peter Eichten want us all to become farmers, ride bicycles and give up our remotes, for God’s sake? Well,. . . ., maybe. What he really wants is something that’s even harder, and it’s not for God’s sake, but our own. He’s talking about a kind of spirituality that leads to true transformation.

Peter is a big, good looking guy, with white hair and a bushy mustache to match that resemble icing on a huge cake. His voice booms through the gym at the 9:00am Mass as he talks about spirituality and Jesus and what they both really mean. One wouldn’t be too surprised to see a fiery chariot come swooping down to take him away as he speaks.

He tells us that up until about 5,000 years ago humans held life in all its forms as sacred. A mother goddess and a woman giving birth were the underlying symbols of their belief. Today our guiding religious image is a man hanging on a cross.

“In those days,” Peter says, “partnership between the sexes was the norm. People spent about 2 or 3 hours every day gathering and preparing food, and the rest of their time playing and praying.” Contrast that with the way we live today.

Then cities began to be built and everything changed and not necessarily for the better according to Peter. This was about the time when patriarchy took hold and tossed out the goddess image. That, along with the Industrial Revolution, set us on the course we’re on today. We live in a world where too many children go to bed hungry, where women aren’t treated as equal partners in decisions that affect us all, and where the environment is raped regularly in sacrifice to money and power. Not a pretty course, Peter believes, and one that could lead to our destruction: “our,” in this case meaning the whole human race.

Even Jesus’ message got tainted almost immediately after his death with domination philosophy (patriarchy) and the idea of “power over” others infecting it, according to Peter. Thereby came the subjugation of women, children, and anyone weaker than those in charge.

The Gospel for this Sunday from Luke tells us about Jesus’ transformation on the mountaintop with Peter(the biblical version) and a few other disciples as witnesses. Our Peter tells us that transformation comes only when we, as community, take Jesus’ ideas seriously and try to put them into practice. If we did this, it could change the world, he says.

Peter’s homily ended too soon for me, so I had to go and talk to him to hear more of what he had to say.

First of all, we talked about Jesus and what his message really meant. “We have to understand,” Peter says, “that Jesus’ ministry was all about social justice, compassion and love.” It didn’t have anything to do with establishing a religion. Foundational to his message was the idea of empowering those without power; moving toward partnership as a way of life and away from the patriarchal way of living that was oppressing the people of his day. As such it threatened the status quo, and so he and many of his followers had to go.

Jesus understood why we have to live in harmony with all of creation. It’s because creation is circular in structure, with everything dependent on everything else, not topdown with humans at the pinnacle. That was the belief for thousands of years and fostered by religions for almost that long. This belief, that humanity is the high point of creation, is what has allowed us to exploit nature and continues to do so today. To our peril, it seems.

“Nature will last,” Peter states, “we humans may not.”

Today, people under forty understand that the dominator way of living has to go, he says. It’s this domination theory that fosters most of what’s wrong with our world, including sexism, the foundational ‘ism’, Peter thinks. “Get rid of sexism, and racism and all the other isms will disappear.”

“There is a real hunger for spirituality today,” Peter says. “This is manifested in the rise of small groups in intimate settings where consciousness about our connection with the earth and other people is surfacing. This is a kind of spirituality that is breaking away from organized religion.” To Peter, this is a real plus.

“The staff here at St. Joan’s is trying now to live out these principles in our work and in the rest of our lives. George’s vision has made this a conscious priority with us so that it’s something we struggle with every day. We struggle because, like everyone else, we’ve been saturated with “power over” ideas since we were kids. It’s not easy to change, but we’re trying. Not perfect, but we’re trying. “We’re finding that the spirit can really be nourished in our work, and that’s exciting.”

Peter says we can all do this in our daily lives, whether in families or small communities. The more we practice collaborative ways of living, the more it will spread. This is Peter’s ‘hope’, his ‘dream’; one that he envisions St. Joan’s fostering in the years ahead. He goes on to say that religion is in for transformation. “If we are to survive, it has to change.”

Peter talks about several books that could be helpful for those who want to understand these ideas more fully. One is called From Science to God, by Peter Russell, a scientist whom Peter calls a modern day mystic. Russell believes that there is a shift in consciousness about our connection with creation going on throughout the world today. He calls this the next global evolutionary leap; internal in nature rather than external.

Another book, which looks intimidating from its size, is The Birth of Christianity, by John Crossan, who is one of the theologians involved with the current ‘Jesus’ movement. This is the study of Jesus as a human who lived at a particular point in time; not for the timid, Peter says.

Jo Youngren and her husband,Dave, have been members at SJA for a little over a year now. However, about 20 years ago Jo was a member and worked with Harvey Egan and Cy Speltz for 4 years. Her first husband, Jack Welch, was buried from there, and later Jo and Dave were married in what is now The Itaska, but at the time was a warehouse with a large gathering of SJA folks attending and Fred & Anna supplying the music - the church in a slightly different setting at the time giving us their blessing. Jo and Dave have been married for 19 years and back in Minnesota for the last 13.

“Cultural Creatives” is the subject of a sociological study that divides the population in this country into three parts: the first 25% are those, mostly older people, called traditionalists, who want to keep things just the way they are; the next, and largest group (50%), are the “moderns,” those who are concerned with climbing the corporate ladder and who don’t delve into spiritual matters for the most part; the last 25% are those who are concerned with the environment and the common good. The study concludes that this last 25% are capable of changing how the world works. The trouble is, they aren’t connected. “At St. Joan’s,” Peter says, “these people find that they aren’t alone. We make connections here and beyond our congregation, so the message is getting out into the larger population.”

Still, Peter won’t predict how it all will end, or when. The verdict is still out and it’s up to those of us who “have eyes to see,” it seems, to keep working for change and trusting that it will happen. I leave Peter’s office feeling awash in ideas that send my spirit soaring. It’s too icy to get in the garden or ride my bike, but for tonight I’ll forego the remote for a book, or better, conversation with some other folks who will find Peter’s thoughts exciting too.