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
Living In Our Belovedness: How The Feminine Voice Shapes Our Understanding Of God
Have you ever wondered about the power of the stories you tell yourself? Our latest episode guides you through a tapestry of narratives, love, and the spiritual journey of rewriting our life stories. Bathed in the themes of belovedness and innocence, we tap into the wellspring of love and worthiness that can transform our personal tales into beacons of hope and redemption. We draw from the wisdom of Mary Magdalene's journey of grief and resurrection to illustrate the profound impact of the feminine voice in storytelling, and how it can shape our understanding of both the divine and ourselves.
This heart-to-heart conversation embraces the transformative process of death and resurrection within our own experiences. Through the embrace of our inherent belovedness and the power of divine love, we discuss how we can author new chapters in the story of our lives, especially for women and leaders in faith communities seeking guidance. With the biblical tenets of love, justice, mercy, and humility as our compass, we traverse the landscape of storytelling to uncover more inclusive and loving narratives.
In our closing segment, the spirit beckons, inviting each of us to recognize our creation in the divine image and to ignite the creator within. By sharing the divine manifesto of spirit, drawn from the wisdom of ancient texts, we illuminate how the spirit shapes us into friends and prophets of God. Together, let's step into this welcoming space where every Wednesday, stories are shared, spirits are nurtured, and the guiding force of love presides over all. Join us, and let's co-author the transformative stories that define our existence.
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. Good day to you. It's good to be with you. It's great to be with you, shelly. I'm excited about our conversation today. We've had a few of these already and I'm really looking forward to what we uncover in this conversation.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So we are, in our own right, taking a word that you have placed into our community, at our table practically in your entire life the word beloved, and we are expanding it ourselves. And a few podcasts ago we had started this beloved conversation that you and I are having, and today we're going to extend it further into this beloved learning to tell a better story. And what I love even just about that title is that it gives you and I permission to be learners in this context as well, that we are learning in many, many ways to look at the stories that we have been told and also to listen to the stories in new and beautiful ways, expand those stories and then embody them into new ways and new forms in our life. So I'm excited to lean into this conversation with you today and just see where it takes us, so welcome.
Speaker 1:Welcome to you too. I'm grateful to be having this conversation with you when you set us up like that, like this is what we're going to talk about today. So many things flood through my mind, and especially the invitation to write our story. I think very often we forget that we are co-creators in the story that we are telling ourselves, that we are telling the world, and we are not just blank slates, but we are part of the story that love is writing about the human race, but not just about the humanness of what we're experiencing now, but how all of creation is part of this beautiful story that God is telling. And I think what we are asking, or proposing that people do, is maybe examine the story that they're telling about themselves and ask is it possible that spirit could infuse it, that we could look at it with a slant or a different perspective? And perhaps is there a better story or a truer story hidden within the realm of what already exists?
Speaker 2:Yeah, beautiful invitation for us to excavate and, I think, dig around our stories and maybe even stories in the past that we feel that have shaped us in either negative or positive ways, that maybe we still hold on to some of those stories that could inhibit our emotional, relational, spiritual lives in ways that maybe we're just not as familiar with, because we're not revisiting this practice of telling a better story. And I think it is a practice, heather, it's not something that we can just do one time and expect that, okay, we've got this story down now and I've evolved into this mature human being and everything is working on point. I think, as we talked about at table last night, it's an evolution. It's this circular loop that we go through in our life to learn to tell a better story about our own lives, about our relationships, about our spiritual walk, and we have some pieces of that to unpack today. But, yeah, this invitation that you're talking about is it's a special one. This is a special practice. I think that you and I, and hopefully others, are learning to tell.
Speaker 1:I think it's also an invitation into maturity, and when you and I talk about maturing, we understand that the goal would be more love, only more love. Not getting into a more refined or tighter space, but into a more generous, a more open space, a more expanded thinking, so that we could be people filled with more love. And I think that if we're not mindful, we can go through without editing or without going back and looking at the story we're telling, because sometimes the stories we tell are the stories that we told ourselves when we were small children, even about our faith or about how we relate to God or to others. And we need to go back.
Speaker 1:And I'm reminded of the apostle who said when I was a child, I thought as a child, but I put away childish things. And so what is it calling us to? In knowing and owning our belovedness? To put away thoughts or stories that may have been one-sided or may have been immature in their thinking, and to enter, to fully accept and to thrive in a better story. How do we learn to tell a better story? How do we embody that story? How do we learn to listen for the story that Spirit is inviting us into, and I'm not talking about just changing the way that you think, but really allowing yourself to become in sync with the Spirit who whispers the better story. Here's what Jesus has invited us into death and resurrection. And how do we hear that story in our own lives and how do we practice that resurrection, that new beginning, that returning to love and what it calls us to in our thinking, in our praying, in our living and in our relating to the world?
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, those are deep, deep places, and it causes me to think about do we have the right tools to excavate the past, the present right? Do we have the right pick or shovel, you know, to dig around a story that we've been handed and, you know, lay it on the table in front of us and say the story isn't serving me in the way that maybe it used to serve me or the way that I thought it served me in the past. And so I wonder sometimes if we have those tools and understand how to use them. But then I also wonder too, heather, if there are folks that they've been told a story their whole lives, they've believed the story and they don't know that they can change the story. You know, maybe they're a person of faith, maybe they're not.
Speaker 2:I was reading this morning a story about a woman who was full on in depression. She lost her family or marriage or children, finds herself isolated in this apartment that barely had furniture in it, and she goes to the closet and she finds a book that the previous person had left there when they moved out, and it was a book about meditations. And she was, she was beyond even seeing the light of day, you know, in a clear way for herself. But she picks up this story and these stories in this book that led her to these meditations and prayer postures and different ways of seeing light than she had, you know, in the past 10 years of her life. And so it it isn't always that we have this walk of faith, you know, carved out. You know, sometimes we just find ourselves in these stories and we're not sure how to to move, like what are the tools to?
Speaker 1:to to move this story, or we find ourselves in stories that we are looking at, this going, this is just terrible. You know, this is this, is this cannot be all there is. I think one of the things that that is so incredibly helpful, or has been to me, is having a community of trusted people that we can tell our stories to in safe places, because sometimes when we tell stories and someone else hears them, they can look at them with a certain tenderness that perhaps we have overlooked them with. And so telling our stories in safe places, I think, is such a beautiful way to be able to have someone else look at it, to call it a diamond, to call it precious, to call it worthy. Those are some of the things that are helpful. But even if you don't have someone who can listen to it, for you being able to tell a beloved story, to hear the spirit call us beloved, is this an invitation to work with spirit and even restoring our own story. I just believe that there's hope, even if you don't have someone else who can mirror that, for you the spirit is willing to and invites us to even exchange our own story.
Speaker 1:You and I were speaking earlier and reminding ourselves. That Jesus said. You've heard it said, but I say unto you. So Jesus modeled for us this invitation of listening to a story, paying attention to it and then asking is there a higher thought, is there a better thought? Is there a greater meaning? Is there a more true way of living and embodying the story? And I think that what we're asking and inviting people into is more love and more of every good thing that God has given us in the world around us, in the creation, in relationship, in community and in hope for the whole world.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right, there is a beautiful story that you just shared. That's awesome. Yeah, you bring the word listen into this conversation as kind of a first place for us to jump off, and I love that reminder that you just shared about. You've heard it said, but I say to you talk to us a little bit more about what that means in helping us learn to tell a better story, like if this is Jesus 's thought when he is in front of his community of people who are relying on a story from the prophets or a story from the Psalms, or a story from their wilderness time. What is Jesus asking them to do with that story?
Speaker 1:I think it is a call to. What Jesus first offered us is repentance, being able to think a higher thought, expand and pay attention to the origin of the story, pay attention to the foundation, but don't stay in that same story. I mean, Jesus said you've heard it say, you know, you've heard it said an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. You know, meet it out fairly. But I'm saying to you love your enemies. So this story that Jesus tells is so much bigger than vengeance. The story that Jesus tells is so much more than you know. We're all God's children, but you know, this is mine and this is yours and we'll fight over it fairly. It's this idea of belovedness where there is enough for every single person, there is enough love for everyone, enough grace for everyone. And we're being called into further, up and deeper in this story of there's more love, there's more hope. And in our own lives, maybe people handed us roles to play, particularly as women and women in faith circles, and maybe they told us stories that excluded us. And Jesus is, I mean when.
Speaker 1:In thinking about this, I think that well, I know that Jesus tells a woman to tell the story.
Speaker 1:Go tell the story that death is not the end. I mean, he leaves it up to Mary Magdalene and says here's what I want you to do Go tell the boys that there is a better story than the story that we've all been telling. And so she takes the story and she tells them. We don't have to be afraid, we have comfort, even when the physical presence is not here, that we know that there is the presence of love that is still with us. And so this becomes a model, then, of how we can live our lives in belovedness, of how we can remember I am made in the image of love. And so the story that I repeat to myself that I'm worthy because I bear the divine spark, because there's a light already in me, because I'm made in the image of God, these stories that we tell ourselves, the stories that we tell our children, the stories that we tell our community, the stories that we tell the world, need an injection of this hope that Jesus gives us. Where there's more think, a higher thought.
Speaker 2:I love this reminder about the beloved saint to Mary. Yeah Right, like, this story has the feminine voice right in it, and sometimes when I listen to story, one of the things I like to ask is who's missing in the story or who was left out of the story, and why were they left out? And you and I have had these conversations about you know for a while now how women are left out in many ways named or unnamed in the biblical text, and so the fact that Mary is included in this story makes the story even more beloved, right, makes this worth listening to, because she wasn't excluded from the story. I don't have to work the feminine voice of God into the story, it's already there. And so for me to learn to tell a better story, sometimes I have to look for the women that are on the fringe or on the edge or they're in the margin somewhere, and bring them into the story, because I know that they're there, they're present, even though their names or their contributions might have been left out of that particular story.
Speaker 1:So thank you for reminding us that well, our story is worthy to be included and also that Jesus said if my story is going to be told, I want her story told as well, the Magdalene. And then, also, in this idea of who Jesus gave the authority to tell, the better story was to the feminine voice. You go tell the brothers, because maybe it would have been a different story if the boys told it first, you know like maybe there would have been a lot more violence and maybe there would have not been an inclusion of all the grief. I think the women told the story, and the women remind us that there's a lot of grief that has to be parsed through, there's a lot of crying that is essential in our finding the resurrection. And Mary tells them it's not the end, that she's seen the Christ and that they can have hope.
Speaker 1:And I think that's really the invitation for all of us and our belovedness to say that our grief matters, that what we're actually going through is true, but there is a greater truth.
Speaker 1:You know we may be lonely, but there is a greater truth that we will never be alone. We may feel overwhelmed, but there is an even greater truth that says that loves, arms are with us and will not fail us. And so the invitation is not to ignore or to look away, but in fact to witness whatever it is that we are actually walking through and then say invite spirit to say tell me the better story here, tell me the bigger picture, tell me how this becomes the rescue or how I'm part of telling a new way of living, a new way of hearing the voices around me and what I should take as far as meeting from them. 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 2:One of the ways that I think we also learn to tell a better story is through expansion, which is one of our favorite words of late, but this insertion that you've created with Mary Magdalene is a great example of what it means, I believe, to the feminine spirit of God that Mary's story was included in the text, maybe not always taught or preached in this sort of expansive way as it is currently being done since the discovery of the Gospel of Mary, but certainly it is helping me personally to learn to tell a better story about the Gospel message, about the good, about alignment and attunement to what spirit is doing in and through the acts of love and acceptance and diversity and welcoming the stranger and opening our tables. I think part of telling a better story is to make sure that the feminine voice of God is part of the story. And then how do we expand that in all of biblical literature so that those who come behind us might not have to work as hard to see that, heather, and to understand that?
Speaker 1:I think one of the ways that I have learned to tell a better story is to engage other storytellers, ones who have practiced telling a better story. It also helps to be able to look for things like the Ark of Redemption, like how does this character get redeemed? How do I even allow myself to be redeemed? How do I allow my past to be brought into a place of holiness and goodness and mercy, as opposed to just saying it's a place of shame or its baggage, and to be able to say all of it belongs in the story? I think that if I were writing a story for myself, I think I would be a terrible storyteller. In this way.
Speaker 1:I would say there once was a girl who became a woman and everything turned out for the best. What kind of story is that? Where's the grief? Where's the obstacle she had to overcome? No, that's not how I want the story to go. I want the story to be that there was no struggle, and that's ridiculous. It's the stories that we hear of people who overcame incredible odds that are so inspiring to us. It's the stories that we want to yell out the character's name. When we see the story and someone misses the love that's right before them and this idea that there is a better story that's all around us if we can learn to listen to it, learn to tell the better story and learn to look for the details that give us indication. Hope is on the horizon.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think our last two episodes where we talk about beloved, belovedness is the beginning and then the second one was beloved innocence.
Speaker 2:You know, those are two places where you know just to insert a reminder here that the expansion part of learning to tell a better story is the beginning of the story. Right To see yourself as beloved, to see yourself as innocent. Right and not to bring the curse of the past or the curse of our ancestors or, you know, the curse of our families of origin, whatever those might look like, you know, to a place and a posture of expansion to learn to tell a better story of wow, how has love evolved in myself, how has love evolved in you? Through trauma, not through this perfect life, right, but through trauma or grief or loss or death, even dying to ourselves. You know we're in this lint and season and so you know there's things that we're constantly saying about. You know, am I aligned here? Am I attuned there? So it's not like we never have to evaluate ourselves ever again, once we understand that we are beloved. But wow, it makes for such a better story than some of the stories that we are living with.
Speaker 1:And I think what it gives us is hope, because, you know, in all of our lives there is some kind of death. In all of our lives there's, you know, maybe not just physical death, but the death of a relationship or of a dream, or of, you know, a plan that we have. And we can be stuck in that place and recognizing all that I feel, all that I see is the death, the death that is truly there. But to remember the story that Mary Magdalene gave us, that death is not the end, that there will be a day when we will feel the love again, we will, the sun will shine and we will actually smile, and there will be a dream that, you know, surpasses the dream, maybe that died here. And so, just to be able to have that hope, and not just that we're dreamers, but that we can see that dream for what it is a seed for something so much greater.
Speaker 1:And the invitation is to acknowledge the pain, or acknowledge whatever it is that's in front of us, but to also say it doesn't stop here. This is not the end for me or for any person. There is a love that is greater than death, and that is the best story that's ever been told and we get to co-create, co-write, we get to invite ourselves into the story that Jesus is telling, that spirit is telling right now and say me next, I need my story to have a rewrite, I need some lines, not necessarily edited, but this is the character that I'm willing to play and I want to offer myself to the writer and this is the invitation, again, to learn to love what is, to find our character, the person that we're playing, and say what is the story that I've been told and is there a better story?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and how many times, heather, you and I could probably count endlessly for a while about stories that we were told or raised or brought up on that we would like to expand, or that we have expanded ourselves, particularly as women, as people of faith, as pastors, leaders in the church, for our entire lives. Wow, there's so many things that I would say let's expand that story, which you and I we're trying to figure out how to learn to tell a better story than some of the stories that were cast through patriarchy or through the of the past, the past, the past. And we're trying to figure out how to learn through patriarchy or through domination or subjugation that just are not serving women, or through ignorance, ignorance for sure, and not just women, but for all people yeah, for all people to go.
Speaker 1:And when you tell that part, I think there are people who go. That's not how the story's told and they wanna tell the story the same way over and over and over again. And I think this invitation is a rewrite. You know, let's look at what love is actually doing. Let's follow the model that Jesus gave, when Jesus said this is what it looks like.
Speaker 1:And in fact, I believe that Jesus came in human form because we had gotten God wrong. And according to the apostle, he says that Jesus was the perfect image of the invisible God. We had made God in our own image, vengeful, spiteful, wrathful and Jesus had to come and say this is what the father's like. Everything that you've seen me do, that's what the father's doing. Everything that you've heard me say, this is what the father's saying. I'm telling you, all of the law and all of the prophets are summed up on these two things Love your neighbor as yourself and love God.
Speaker 1:And this idea that we need to tell better love stories, firstly of ourselves, but secondly of the world. And no less important. And how do we learn to love our neighbor and ourself, if we have terrible stories that we tell of ourselves, stories of shame, stories of responsibility for things that we were never responsible for, and to be able to offer a better story for the world, even a better story for the bully, even a better story for the person who is oppressing, to be able to say there's more than what you have been handed. There's a greater impact that can come and a profound healing that can come from retelling the story in a place where it can be reshaped and it can be reworked and again, not dismissed, not made light of. But to look at that and go. Death is not the end. The hero doesn't die forever.
Speaker 2:There is a promise of resurrection.
Speaker 2:It's a beautiful reminder of that bookend that you just shared, of love God, love your neighbor as yourself. Right from First Testament, you know we get the similar reminder and I see these as bookends first and second Testament, you know, declaring that Seek justice, love, mercy, while calmly with God. In second Testament we see Love God, love your neighbor as yourself. So there's these bookends that I think frame out what it means often to myself to expand the story. But when I look at these bookends it's pretty clear that it's about love and so everything else that's that's flowing in and out of this ancient story Could literally be expanded on and you still have these two bookends as Guardrails. If we just took these, these two texts first and second Testament and use them as the guardrails of love For telling a better story, wow what what the words of Jesus who said I want to tell you a better story.
Speaker 1:There's a blessing for the brokenhearted blessed Are you humored? For you'll experience comfort. So Jesus continued to model for us this idea of a, a blessing for our brokenheartedness. I mean, that's not the story they're telling. You know, woe is me or this is a sad day. There's a blessing coming because you'll have the comforter. There's a blessing coming to you who seek righteousness, who seek goodness. And Jesus said I mean, I think that the text we often call it the Beatitudes or the Sermon on the Mount is Is so pivotal in the teaching of Jesus into what it means to follow, into what it means to look at our stories as redeemed and and allowed to, to co-create with the spirit in how we're actually living the story that We've been given or that we're writing currently.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, I see those, those particular points in the, in the Sermon on the Mount, is this beautiful meditation of expansion of you know, of his, of his cry to, to get us to see our belovedness right, to get us to see that that we're standing in solidarity with the one right, the gracious one, and this is what that looks like. And, wow, we could talk about this, I think, for a long, long time. There's so much, there's so much wrapped in it. But I wonder, I wonder what it would be to embody this Better story. What would it mean for us to embody these pieces of, of belovedness in order to tell, to tell a better story? What would that? What would that look like if we are actually taking that on and Making this a tangible or some kind of way to express learning to tell a better story? What would it look like to move from expansion into embody?
Speaker 1:a hopeful thought. You ask us to engage this idea that what would it feel like in our body to not have to carry shame, to not have to carry a Feeling of judgment or a feeling of not measuring up, when we understand that we're beloved, that we are never alone and that we do play an essential role in the story, that God ultimately, that love ultimately, is telling, and that we are offered a Place to be at peace in our own bodies, to be at peace in our own mind and our own stories, for us not to have to carry the burden of anxiety. Is it good enough, am I earning my place yet? But to center ourselves in that belovedness gives us an opportunity to rest and and to know that Not only are we loved, but that we are held securely in the hope and in the good news that there is A God who is with us and a God who will never leave us and a God who wants to write the story with us.
Speaker 1:Mmm when you ask me about yeah, when you ask me about embodying it, then that leaves me so much hope that you know my heart, in my mind, will so expand into this radical love that Jesus showed us, that, that that the original love story told us that before the world was formed, god had us in mind and had intended we would be whole and holy by love, that we were Intended to be the object of God's affection, like God had already settled on us.
Speaker 1:I love that verse in that understanding of it's not up to me, it's not whether I'm good enough or whether I've performed enough, but God made it in in in God's own mind that I was gonna be the one that was loved, that you were gonna be the one that was loved, that every person would be so held in this divine love and so embodying that place of Belonging. I Belong in my father's house, I belong in the earth, I belong with my community. This is a place that I am intended to, to own and and to have you know full. And when I say own, not in a place that I would own someone else, but own my own true heart and be able to say this is worthy, I, I recognize the value and I think for me, you know, it's learning to tell a better story.
Speaker 2:Moving through this path of listening and expanding and embodying, is that the piece that that I would expand and offer is that, you know, this beautiful story that I heard in the early 2000s, called the Contessa Chronicles, written by Lori Beth Jones, was a was a complete shift in in how I I saw myself, but also how I saw love engaged in the world and in love in the form of the feminine spirit of God. How love came, you know Jesus leaves the scene, but then love comes. The nurturer comes, the comforter comes. This, this Feminine presence of God fills the whole earth and Suddenly I have a new mother, you know, suddenly I have a new sister, suddenly I have this new, this new friend that walks and, and and. She whispers, and she proclaims and she breathes life in an expanded way. You know, like I've never experienced it before.
Speaker 2:And so sometimes you know, our, our truth comes in somebody else's story and tell it becomes our story. Yeah, right, so I, I just encourage those that are listening to not give up on Learning to tell a better story and and we invite you to to the table that we share on Wednesdays when there is no judgment. I mean, often people say there's no judgment and then they start telling their story and then they get judged about their story. But this is a table of love that we have on Wednesdays and I just invite people that are searching to tell or trying to figure out and learn how to tell a better story that they would join us at our table on Wednesdays, and there's information on our, on our website links For more information about that we can put some things up in the show notes as well, for people to Just pay attention to if that's something that is an interest to them.
Speaker 1:When you were telling the story of what you were engaged in, it was reminding me of the wisdom manifesto of wisdom, the book of wisdom, who talks of spirit that is given to us and that she governs the whole earth, for it's good. She makes people into God's friends and prophets. You know, she is so pure. Yes, she's the breath and the power of God. And this expanded thought even of who spirit is, and Spirit's invitation to us to intuit this life that we have been gifted and to be able to say this is, this is us being made in the image of the divine that calls Creator in all of us, calls artist in all of us, calls writer in all of us and says you are the very image of the divine. Let's do something with it. 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 expansionist theology comm.