The Expansionist Podcast
Shelly Shepherd and Heather Drake invite you to listen in on a continuing conversation about expanding spirituality, the Divine Feminine, and the transforming impact of living attuned to Wisdom, Spirit and Love.
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The Expansionist Podcast
Claiming Our Belovedness: A Journey of Self-Discovery and Sacred Feminine Wisdom
Our latest dialogue shines a light on the anointing power of words and the daily affirmation of our belovedness, providing a compass to navigate through life's trials and tribulations. We delve into the grace that allows us to begin anew, encouraging each listener to hold the truth of their belovedness close, even when faced with criticism and self-doubt. Listen in as we discuss the concept of the divine feminine and its role in restoring our understanding of goodness, and join us in recognizing the wisdom that comes from knowing our true essence. This episode is not just a podcast—it's a sanctuary where wisdom and love meet, inviting you to see yourself and the world through the lens of belovedness.
Welcome to the Expansionist Podcast with Shelly Shepherd and Heather Drake. In each episode, we dive deep into conversations that challenge conventional thinking, amplify diverse voices and foster a community grounded in wisdom, spirit and love. Well, we wanted to begin today's podcast where we left off the last time that we were together and in this really beautiful conversation about belovedness where we begin, how we begin again and how belovedness transforms us, how it empowers us, particularly as women, to rename, co-create, really expand our thinking about ourselves, our relationship to the world, our relationship to God and the power in what it looks like to allow belovedness to really expand our thoughts.
Speaker 2:Yes, these are beautiful thoughts, heather. It sometimes feels like, as women, that our belovedness has been veiled to some degree, and maybe that's part of the Genesis story that we've been told or handed that there's a flaw in us as women, that there's something about it being our fault that the world is the way that it is, and I think one of the opportunities that you and I have in this expansionist space is to take that thought, hold it captive and expand this beautiful gift of belovedness into a new realm, a new dimension that maybe you and I have not fully even experienced ourselves.
Speaker 1:Oh, I would agree with that absolutely. To me, it is such a hopeful thought that there is a path that is different, perhaps, than the one that we have seen before or ever seen. Maybe no one modeled the path for us, but this conversation could allow us to imagine a way that is full of life, full of love, and that resonates with us in our expansionist theory. Where does love actually lead us? What does it actually look like to claim your own belovedness but not stop there, to be a person who empowers someone else to see their belovedness, or who names that again and again in our co-creating this beautiful kingdom of love? The belovedness is actually everywhere. Let's teach each other how to see it. Let's find ways to be able to recognize it, even when it is deeply veiled.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes. My first question for you tonight, today, is this and how do we do it? How do we begin again Once we realize that maybe I need more of the loveless? I need to find ways that I can own that in my life, my practices, the way that I think, the things that I read, the things people tell me about myself. How do?
Speaker 1:we do this. I think that you hit on a really important subject in saying how do I find it, how do I locate it, how do I name it, how do I begin hearing it and how do I look for more. One of the ways you just mentioned it's a really beautiful way is what am I reading that will illuminate belovedness for me? I think that originally, agreeing with belovedness as best as you can, wherever it comes from like if someone were to say to you beloved, can you just sit with that, can you own it, can you make it true and, even deeper, can you recognize that belovedness comes from within, because God lives in us. So the source is actually already within us. Very often we're looking for an affirmation coming from outward, inward, but there is this witness. If we're not mindful, we always look for an outward, audible witness, instead of recognizing the voice within us that affirms our belovedness. I think ultimately, it's really hopeful, because maybe we can become people who do that, not only for ourselves but for others. In the very beginning, we might not be able to have anyone around us who is able to themselves call us into belovedness, but what if, from within yourself, you could recognize the source, this understanding that belovedness is gifted to us by the Creator, then the practice is actually starting from there. If I recognize that I'm beloved, then how do I actually begin a hard conversation? If I recognize that I'm beloved, how do I allow myself during the day to be thought of and then return again and again to belovedness, letting that be our conscious state of rest, this state of where everything begins? This is the practice. That includes changing what we're reading, what we're listening to, maybe even cultivating a friendship or finding someone who we can say to I'm working on owning my belovedness and then maybe allowing them to mirror back to you. What were you thinking when you said this? How are you starting from belovedness in this part of the venture?
Speaker 1:But as we sit in a place of contemplative prayer, that's a really wonderful way to own belovedness. Where to start, where love is, is that we actually begin. Love is hopefully where we're going to end, and this really huge, expansive love that has not only gotten bigger for us, but understanding. This is how we change the world. This is how God's good kingdom comes. This is how what's done in heaven is done here on earth. Love is all there is, and maybe a listener can just trust that you and I believe that they're beloved and maybe that'll be a place where they can hear beloved and then, upon that hearing, maybe they'll have the courage to say yes.
Speaker 1:Sometimes there is this pushback in our brain that says to us, when somebody calls us beloved or we would call ourselves beloved, but if you really knew me, if I was truly seen, if who I was was exposed, then my belovedness may be compromised. But the truth is, no one can remove our belovedness. It's part of our innate being, the way that Creator named us as humanity made in the image of the divine. Belovedness is actually built into us but it has been veiled and, like you said, we're not really taught to look for that in ourselves.
Speaker 2:Wow, what beautiful thoughts. And one of the images that comes to mind is I heard you sharing this deep and wide space of beginning to understand how we get to belovedness and get back to belovedness and practice. It Is this image that you have somewhere in the Midwest that prompted me to start really seeing myself. Differently was the book of wisdom, and particularly chapter 7, around verse 21, that starts with for within her is a spirit, and it is this beautiful poetry of expression and expansion that flows from that text of her, you know of her, that is shared in this ancient text, and these beautiful words of expression of who she is, who wisdom is within us as well, is one of those things that I wish every woman could read, every mother could, you know, could give to their read, to their daughter. And so if you're struggling, you know, to find belovedness anywhere else, then maybe go to the book of wisdom, because it's a beautiful expression and we love it. We've even titled it the wisdom manifesto. In some ways it is like a complete charter for belovedness.
Speaker 1:I love so much even that imagery that you just gave us. What if, as moms, we could speak the wisdom manifesto over our beautiful daughters, or over ourselves even? What a hopeful and generous thought that would be to allow that to be a source not only of inspiration but of truth for us. That within her is a spirit and then this beautiful language that comes out that talks about what kind of purity is already built into us. It's so beautiful.
Speaker 1:One of the practices that you have given us, when we get together at a table is we frequently end with the wisdom manifesto, and to me, the practice of going back over and over and over again allows our imagination to expand and allows us to have bigger thoughts of the belovedness that is innately ours.
Speaker 1:I was thinking, because we've recently done a podcast about belovedness where are other places where I've heard the word or where that word has been gifted to me?
Speaker 1:And I was listening to the text and paying attention to the Gospel of John, where it talks about this deeply, dearly loved, the words of God that comes to Jesus and talks about this dearly, deeply loved, and I'm listening to this intrinsic love that is owed to us in our birthright as humans, and there's a way to say, for us to say not only are we beloved, but the world, the whole cosmos, everything within it Is beloved.
Speaker 1:It's a deep love that's created us. It's a deep love that we are actually gonna return to. It's a deep love that we're invited into in this path of living and creating and flourishing. And I think if we can return to the understanding of these truths, maybe there is real hope, even when there's pushback, even when you know someone else gives us reasons why we can't be beloved, if we can go back to the source of all truth, which is love, and allow love that formed us to be the love that actually shapes us. This is so incredibly hopeful that the patterns of thoughts that we have that are negative or that are self deprecating or that are limiting, if we can remind ourselves that beloved is greater than.
Speaker 2:Wow, if we really really saw ourselves the way that God sees us, heather, I believe that would shift our understanding of belovedness completely. I haven't found anything that capitalizes on belovedness like the book of wisdom In the chapter that we talked about previously, and these words. You know some of the words here in that manifesto. She is so pure that she permeates all things. Nothing in pure can find its way into her. She is the breath of God. She is brighter than the constellations. When was the last time, heather, that you were told that you were brighter than the constellations, that you were brighter than the cosmos, that your belovedness is expansive? We don't use this language, and I'm not sure why we don't. Maybe, just maybe, just because we haven't heard it enough, or maybe, maybe we don't believe it.
Speaker 1:Well, you asked a question when was the last time I heard that? Yes, I heard it the last time that we did the manifesto together, and so for me it is changing. I remember the first time that I read that I was at a group around your table and, though I've read the book of wisdom before Hearing it spoken together from a voice of other wisdoms and other women who were offering this, it was just such a really transcendent moment. There is one particular line that I love. I mean, I would say I love them all, but there is a line that says she makes people into God's friends. And, yes, I for me. That's my hope for the whole world that everyone could know that they are a friend of God, that we could be friends with the whole family, the entire earth, the entire cosmos, that we could recognize that family and belovedness is who we really are. And maybe we haven't had a chance to change our thought or to illuminate the thought or to expand it, to allow ourselves to not only be thought of as ones that God loved, maybe out of pity, but truly out of belovedness. That I just really, really appreciate what you've gifted us there in the thought of going. This is how wisdom speaks of us, and since wisdom is what we are grounding ourselves in, then we ourselves, to be considered wise, should listen to the voice of wisdom calling us beloved. I've not found anyone who's opposed to belovedness. When I offer it, when I name someone else's beloved, no one has ever said to me please don't call me that. And I've been using this term for a while in all kinds of places with all different kinds of people. It's come to my memory or my acknowledgement has ever said no to belovedness. Sometimes there's suspect of why I offer belovedness.
Speaker 1:Recently I had a situation where I was leaving a store and it was pouring rain and a person I didn't know was walking up to me to ask for money. And when this man first called out to me, he he called out and he said, sister, can you help me? And immediately I recognized the sound for family that he was asking to connect to. And this is Florida rain. So it is drenching. It is so unbelievably loud and it's what the Welsh would call a wet rain. You are going to get soaked. It's not a beautiful, pleasant rain, it is drenching.
Speaker 1:So I was not like standing there waiting to open a conversation. I was in a hurry to get into the van, but when this man came to me and said sister, can you help me? I turned to him and said beloved brother, yes, really emphatically returning to him this place of I hear you Call me into family. And so when I said beloved brother, yes, he said to me it has been so long since anyone called me brother. And then he repeated the words and he said beloved. And he looked at me in this pouring rain with my hair now stuck to my whole head, and he said are you beloved? And I thought, yes, I am, I'm beloved brother.
Speaker 1:And all of a sudden there was this really divine connection between us where we weren't just generic family, we were beloved brother and sister. And in any situation the brother that I love, my own brother through you know our immediate family I would get wet for I would do anything for. And so in placing that name of belovedness on him, I removed any kind of like, strangeness or this or disconnect, and I looked in turn and thought what does he mean by? It's been a long time Like? Did he hear that from his family of origin and then no longer hears that? Is he going back to the very source of God who called him beloved? I didn't ask those questions, but that incredible encounter reminded me that belovedness is a doorway to something so much deeper than just the $10 I was giving him at the moment, remembering who we really are and coming back to, or who the whole world is invited into this family of love. What if every person we meet could, we could, illuminate their own belovedness. I feel the cult family belovedness, restoring God's family, restoring our place in the world, restoring our place in the cosmos, even in God's good and beautiful creation. It can transcend places, it can transcend thoughts and can really empower our expansionist theories. We want to pause and take a moment and let you know how glad we are that you've joined us. If you're enjoying this podcast, consider sharing it with a friend, and if you found the conversation intriguing and want to know more about what we're learning or how you can join our online community, visit our website at expansionisttheologycom.
Speaker 1:If you're listening today and you're thinking no one has ever called me beloved brother or sister, I want to tell you today that spirit does, she really does, and we can attune ourselves to the voice that says beloved, beloved, beloved from the song of songs the word beloved.
Speaker 1:I am my beloved and she is mine. Even nature calling to us beloved, the way that a soft breeze feels on our cheek, a beautiful mountain in our sight, a particular sunset or the stars that make us pause, this is to us a call for belovedness from the spirit, the kind that takes a moment to bask it in, to think about it, to pay attention to it and then recognize that whatever we have that pushes back against the idea that we are beloved, that we would recognize that we are made in love and that love is perfect and there is no fault in us. The fault never originated with us. It's really important, in the healing of the feminine image of God and in our own femininity, to allow the expression that God is through the divine feminine for us to be reminded. It is very good. It is very good Whatever we've been told before. Let a bigger word or a bigger truth come to you. Let it speak over you and heal the faults and let that truth tell you beloved. God saw the woman and it said she is very good.
Speaker 2:Wow, I want to take a deep breath of all of that in right now. It is such a powerful rendering of belovedness. Thank you for that and a couple of things that I see as you were sharing about the friend and the brother in the rain. When you answered him with the words beloved brother, he did not say what do you mean by that? Right?
Speaker 1:No, no, he owned it. That's something that he knew, even though it was our very first conversation, but somehow it felt like a shared conversation, that this was a continuation of, not a brand new conversation. No, he owned that belovedness.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the second thing that I hear is that he received this as a total gift before you even gave him the gift Like he received a belovedness. Yeah, like I want that connection.
Speaker 1:I wonder sometimes what spirit is up to, because very often I think sometimes what people ask us for is not really what they want or what they need. Sometimes the asking for something is this doorway is a threshold into something so much more. And so our attunement to the spirit to recognize our own belovedness or their belovedness allows us to hear a deeper question Am I good enough? Am I worthy of love? Am I in connection, Am I in belonging? And I think all of those things can be summed up in the listening to and in the speaking of the word belovedness.
Speaker 1:One of the things that I really love about you, Shelley, is that you understand the power of anointing and that you offer anointing. And I was thinking today, just kind of mulling around this idea, that anointing is not just not only limited to, like the laying on of hands and the pouring of a physical oil, but there is something that when our words are from the spirit of God, it can be as an anointing to someone. It can heal broken or dry places, and I love that you call us to this remembering in this belovedness, even the gift of that can be an anointing.
Speaker 1:Absolutely beautiful One of the things that we're gonna do is spend some time in the next few podcasts around the word beloved, what it looks like, what it sounds like and, I think really, how to hear it, how to decipher what the universe is actually speaking to us when we hear the word beloved.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think that's why spending time around this particular word is just a critical move for our own belovedness, but also to expand that into the hearts and lives of others.
Speaker 1:I really think that it can help us begin to hear the voice of the divine feminine who speaks to us, and then how hopeful it is to think that when we begin from love, when love is what, we return to the practice. Maybe even that we would start in the morning of settling ourselves in belovedness. Maybe by the afternoon you're back to fault and here's my consequence. But the choice is that we can begin again, that we can remember. Wait a second, I'm not responsible for every broken thing that has happened. There is just a part of us being in a natural and broken world. Some of it has been handed to us by our family of origin, some of it we've chosen for ourselves. But when we go back, the source is always divine love, our beginning in love, and we can always, every day, begin again. But coming back to the understanding that love is in us, the wisdom manifesto reminds us that nothing impure can make its way into her. There is this illumination it's beautiful, divine diamond in us of love that cannot be marred by anything.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm sitting here thinking about that announcement that you shared earlier, that this is my beloved son, and I want us to maybe just linger there for a couple of minutes and and maybe invite you to think about was that spirit saying this? Well, spirit is the birther.
Speaker 1:Very possibly the expression may have been spirit, and I think that we are reminded that this community of love, this father spirit and son, this Sophia wisdom, this is where the belovedness source, the language, the invitation comes from.
Speaker 2:And I've always seen this particular passage and heard this as a position that this was God. But if this is the nurturing word and beloved comes from this feminine spirit of God, this speaks to me differently, in an expansionist sort of way that maybe I haven't heard quite like this before. I'm not trying to take away from this particular text and its ancient tradition here, but as I hear your words about belovedness, I feel this opening in my own spirit that this announcement in our lives, this place to begin again, this invitation to welcome belovedness truly comes from spirit.
Speaker 1:I honor what you're asking us to do and really pay attention to that invitation to allow the text to be re-enchanted, to allow the spirit to bring us using our holy imagination. Is there more? Is there a deeper understanding? And I think this is really what Jesus called us to, when Jesus said to those following him you've heard it said, but I say unto you there's a new way of understanding this, and what you're asking me to listen to is the words that nurture that life giver, pain bearer kind of spirit that would say beloved son, before you do anything, you are deeply loved.
Speaker 1:You begin in love and there's an invitation for all of us to stay in that love, to stay in that place and re-center ourselves in belovedness. That is already intrinsic to us, that, even though it might be deeply veiled, it's in us. And very often I think that maybe we want everyone in our lives or it would be hopeful if people in our lives could look at us through the eyes of love and through belovedness. But sometimes that's not possible and sometimes the eyes that we're so desperately wanting to see looking at us is actually us looking out from our very self to that, from that place of love, knowing that we ourselves can claim our own belovedness even if no one else does, we can begin from the place, and that the spirit allows us to and invites us to, expand our ideas about belovedness and about love.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, absolutely. I think we have to be expansive. If we're going to reclaim this opportunity, we have to see it in ways and experience it in ways that maybe we have not ever experienced spirit before. For me it is spirit. For other people it might be something else, it might be God, or it might be Jesus, or it might be the last book that we read, like the Book of Longing, for example, but it expands us to see belovedness in a different vein, in a different light. Maybe there's a lack of belovedness because we don't see our true nature of love towards ourself. Maybe there's a lack of love towards ourself, or the love towards others, or the love of God, the love of neighbor. So these practices that you've shared and that we talk about here in this space are highly important in seeing that we are beloved and allowing ourselves to hear the voice of spirit.
Speaker 1:And maybe there's just clamor, Maybe you're just used to noise and it is possible that there is a beautiful musical word coming for us beloved. And it's possible to learn how to hear the music of the universe Even if you can't stop all the racket around you. We can teach each other to so attune to the voice of the spirit that in every circumstance we can hear her voice saying beloved. And it's the comfort that would be to recenter us and what incredible transformation it could be vocally for us to use our own voice to follow the spirit and, through her frequency and her words, naming belovedness into the world. I listened to the Genesis story and I'm so inspired in what God offers us to name things and how we name ourselves and how we name our world and how we name God among us, and just the invitation to so much more.
Speaker 2:Wow. The question that's like on the tip of my tongue is imagine if we did that, could other people hear her more clearly?
Speaker 1:That's a really hopeful thought, shelley. Maybe we could be the voice of the one in the wilderness calling prepare the way for love. We have this idea at the table that you set for us and we are enamored, kind of, with this idea right now. What a beautiful thought when we consider that in the gospels, the angel comes and John the Baptist is birthed into Elizabeth, this woman who has wanted this baby, and this understanding that his call is to go and make this announcement prepare the way for love. And John's invitation is, although you see me as great, there's one coming that is even greater than I.
Speaker 1:And what if the job for us now, as women, is to hear the voice of the spirit and to be the one saying even greater love is coming. Prepare the way. Love is the way, love is the journey, love is the destination, love is the whole thing. It's always going to be about love, but more love, greater love, expansive love, radical love, love that is big enough for everyone, love that is big enough not just for people but for everything, for every part of creation's flourishing. It all begins and it all ends in love. And what if we could be the ones calling it back?
Speaker 2:Hmm, well, and don't you believe and feel and think and know that this comforter, this nurturer, this pain bearer was what Jesus intended to give us all along? I say absolutely yes and yes. So how have we missed her? How have we missed her?
Speaker 1:I can think of so many ways. One of the truths that I know now is that she's been veiled. I believe that she's been there all along, but she's been veiled by all kinds of systems of oppression. But there is this grace that she is offering us now to practice belovedness, to understand the promise of the presence, of living in belovedness, and if we could encourage anyone listening today. You are beloved, we are all beloved, and we can hold on to that belovedness and practice it as many times as it takes for us to return to it during the day, as many times it takes for us to come back from criticism, from self-deprecation, from negativity, whatever it is that would be there instead of the truth of what we are. We are beloved, calling ourselves back to our source in such a beautiful and creative way, reminding ourselves there is a spirit within her.
Speaker 2:This is pure and I love that. This first part there is pure source comes from purity. There's no fault in pure.
Speaker 1:She is intelligent she is holy she is unique, she is beloved.
Speaker 2:So we remind you, yes, yes, we remind you you are beloved, you are beloved.
Speaker 1:It was joy, absolute joy, to talk about belovedness and to talk about the wisdom manifesto, and may that be the truest things that we know about ourselves, that we know about the world and that we know about God. Within her is a spirit. It was our joy to have you listen to our conversation today. If you would like further information or for more content, visit us at expansionistheologycom.