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
Mutual Flourishing: Gender and Spirituality with Liz Cooledge Jenkins
Have you ever felt the echo of ancient patriarchal structures within your faith experience? Liz Cooledge Jenkins joins us with a treasure trove of insights from her book "Nice Churchy, Patriarchy," guiding us through the labyrinth of tradition to spotlight the Divine Feminine.
The conversation takes an enlightening turn as we explore the significance of diverse voices in theological discourse. We acknowledge the richness that women and people of color bring to our understanding of the divine, and share a pivotal moment of clarity that came from referring to the Holy Spirit with feminine pronouns. This episode is a journey through history and current impacts of patriarchal structures on spiritual narratives, highlighting the healing power found in embracing both masculine and feminine qualities within our divine explorations. Liz's insights dare us to envision a faith experience that is not just equalitarian but vibrantly holistic.
We wrap our minds and hearts around the multifaceted identity of God, challenging the traditional gender binaries that have long dictated our perceptions. Engaging with the wisdom of womanist theology and figures like Julian of Norwich, our discussion celebrates the fluid and healing vision of God's identity that is both mother and father, neither and both. The transformative power of love is our chorus, humming through the conversation, as we emphasize the importance of the female voice and the divine feminine in shaping a spirituality that is liberating and life-giving. This episode is more than an exchange of ideas; it is an invitation to connect with the profound work of Liz Cooledge Jenkins and to embrace a spirituality that flourishes in the rich soil of love and femininity.
Welcome to the Expansionist Podcast with Shelley 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.
Shelly Shepherd:Welcome Liz Cooledge Jenkins. Welcome Heather Drake. Good to see you both here today in studio. Thank you for being here.
Heather Drake:Nice to be here. Shelley Liz, so nice to have you.
Liz Jenkins Cooledge:Yes, thank you so much for having me here.
Heather Drake:You're our first guest, so consider yourself super important.
Shelly Shepherd:I feel honored, very honored. The first, the first. So thank you, liz, for making time to come as today just to share with us from your recently authored book, december 2023, of Nice Churchy, patriarchy. Wow, that just has like this beautiful ring that I could not resist. When I saw you on Instagram, I'm like, okay, this is a person that we definitely want to be talking to because, wow, there is so much patriarchy around us. Somebody needs to be peeling that layer back, like in a constant stream, in a constant format, constantly.
Shelly Shepherd:And so hopefully today, as we embark on this exchange with you, we will begin to learn from your perspective what that has been like, what it feels like, what it sounds like to you and to those that listen. Prayerfully, they will be encouraged to understand where we're all coming from. So welcome to this expansionist podcast today. Thanks so much. So, heather, I know you're probably just like busting at the seams to ask this first question to get us rolling. Is there one at the top of your mind?
Heather Drake:Well, I have lots of questions and I just want to reiterate something that you had said, like it was such a beautiful an invitation, I think by spirit, that led us to like listen and go.
Heather Drake:Oh, we hear a similar sound in what you are offering and you know, we were, you know, instantly attracted to a few of the posts, but then, as the further on we get, we're like this is exactly what we are saying and how we're saying it.
Heather Drake:One of the things that's important to Shelly and I is certainly the message and the invitation of the Spirit, the Divine Feminine, to expand the way that we're thinking, the way that we're seeing, the way that we're even experiencing church or spiritual growth, spiritual formation, and where we've seen things that are not only dismissive and constricting but also oppressive to people. We want to say you know, this is the hope of spirit, to tear like the hinges off the doors and say everybody gets to come in and everybody gets to come to the table, but in a way that is still honoring and loving. We love the church and saying that there's a better way, there's a bigger way, there's a more expansive way, is hopeful in its essence and that's something that we felt like we connected a lot with the message that you offer as well, so tell us a little bit about how you feel like you have the right to expand theology.
Liz Jenkins Cooledge:Yes, great question oh, that's so good, yeah. And I really like the phrasing of expansion or expanding, because I think, you know, sometimes there are things that aren't working, that we need to leave behind or rethink, and sometimes there are things that are not necessarily bad, but they're not the whole picture, and so that idea of expanding is kind of like what do we want to add? Like what have we been missing? What voices have we not been hearing from? And it doesn't mean that the voices we have been hearing from aren't valid, it just means that they're not everything. So that's been a lot of my journey and kind of what I think about when I think about expanding our theology or our view of God. Yeah, but what have we been missing? What more is there? And I think there's a lot more. I see that question, yeah.
Heather Drake:I was so sometimes, shelly and I talk over each other because we get very excited about things. So I want to be really purposeful not to do that. But so when we're talking about expanding theology and I want to ask you a question, this is not just a new set of beliefs, is it? I mean because I think that there's more. I think it is an invitation into how we actually live and how we can embody practices that actually fuel a relationship with the divine and our connectedness to everything. And so can you talk for a second about what, changing your perspective and maybe even coming out from like the blinders that patriarchy gave us into like our eyes wide open, going, wow, there's a lot of gifts that are already around us, and how do we make use of those? So I don't know if any of that sparked any kind of thing for you to talk about, but I would love to hear what you're learning about that.
Liz Jenkins Cooledge:Like you said, our faith is not just this intellectual, rational thing or a set of beliefs. It's that and it's also how we live and how we engage and what practices we want to embody of God and gender and theology. Oftentimes masculinity has been constructed in terms of rationality and intellect and femininity has been constructed in terms of feelings and intuition, and when we value one of those sides over the other, we get this very lopsided kind of faith or kind of spirituality. So I think that's part of what's been going on, that we have to even say that, like it's not just about belief, it's about who we are and how we live in this much more holistic thing. So I think there's that. And then you also kind of talk about about the blinders that we have and how we work on seeing beyond those blinders or getting rid of those blinders. I think that's huge.
Liz Jenkins Cooledge:I think in the book I reflect a bit on my time in seminary.
Liz Jenkins Cooledge:This was that kind of a somewhat conservative evangelical seminary that's Go ahead, Liz, put them out there.
Liz Jenkins Cooledge:Yeah, we were talking about this, I think, in a lot of ways wanting to be inclusive or affirming of women, of people of color, and yet it's rooted in this very white male dominated history and white, male dominated tradition, and so by the time I got there which was, you know, 2016 to 2019, there was a lot of talk of supporting and affirming women in ministry.
Liz Jenkins Cooledge:And yet you go to these classes and you're assigned readings and almost all of them are written by men. Still, you know, even with well-intentioned professors who don't mean to perpetuate this very male-dominated faith, and yet we're assigned all these readings and it's very clear who they're written by and who they're not written by, and who is considered an expert in things and who is not. So I think that naturally creates a set of blinders when you're only reading the perspectives of white men, not because they don't have good things to offer, but because it's not the whole picture. So, yeah, I think there's been a lot of work to do in seeking out different voices, seeking out women's voices, voices of color, especially voices of women of color, and trying to figure out like, yeah, like, what do we add? And it is really different, right, there's?
Shelly Shepherd:there's so much that all those voices have to add, and yeah, Sometimes I wonder, liz, if, if all these years of patriarchy have caused us not to be able to hear her voice. Like sometimes I wonder that right, Um, yeah, it's, it's a wonderment all the time. Like, how do we, how do we make room for, for the feminine spirit of God to um to get to us, to to penetrate, um, you know our clogged ears or whatever, whatever that looks like, because we have been so entertained by male patriarchy for so many years? There's a there's a place in your book where you talk about this experience that you had on a Wednesday morning where you began to hear the feminine pronouns to the Holy Spirit, and I'm quoting you here. You said it was a visceral, gut level revelation. Can you talk to us about that experience that you had with spirit that day?
Liz Jenkins Cooledge:Yeah, absolutely. So I reflect a bit on the book. On a time in seminary chapel there's like a weekly chapel service and a worship team that kind of led us in songs during that time and I was just kind of totally I'm trying not to say shocked, because I feel like that sounds like it has a negative connotation I'm trying not to say shocked because I feel like that sounds like it has a negative connotation, but totally just like surprised. And it was just a really unexpectedly powerful experience to hear them sing Her Eyes on the Sparrow. And so one of the chapel musicians had actually pretty extensively rewritten the lyrics to His Eyes on the Sparrow, had actually pretty extensively rewritten the lyrics to His Eyes on the Sparrow, which I didn't quite realize fully at the time because I wasn't super familiar with those lyrics, but the singer's name is Megan Moody and they had really yeah, really thought this through in terms of what does the feminine eye of God being on the sparrow look and feel like? And they sang that over us and with us. And that was so powerful Because I think I kind of knew that God is not male or female in the way that humans are right.
Liz Jenkins Cooledge:God created both men and women in God's own image. I kind of knew that God is not a man, right? And yet all of the songs that we usually sing in church have these masculine pronouns. All the prayers we pray are to God, the Father, and all of the ways that we talk about God are very masculine, and so I think to hear it in this very different way just really really hit me on a deep level of like, oh yeah, like this is, this is real, like God is feminine as much as God is masculine, and I, as a woman, am made in the image of God as much as any man is made in the image of God, and I think I could have said like I believe those things. But something about hearing that song and seeing it embodied in the singers in that way was really striking.
Shelly Shepherd:Thank you for that and Heather you and I talk about this. Sometimes, Once you've experienced or tasted that portion of the feminine, it's hard to go back. Maybe is the right word. It's hard to not have it.
Heather Drake:I would almost say impossible. It would be impossible because it is like tasting something more or breathing something more, not just for women, but I think when we're talking about the sacred divine or the divine feminine, it is. What we're attributing to is the nurture, is the kindness, the tenderness, the compassion, all of the things that love is, and so to be able to say that that's how we're experiencing God, I believe that that was always supposed to be how we experienced God, not in a way that was judgmental, wrathful, a lot like Zeus. You know, it was Jesus coming and saying God is like a woman who looks for a coin and does not stop until the coin is found. And so this understanding that ever since Jesus was here telling us what God is like, who God is like, how God acts, god is like the shepherd, but God is like a woman who searches and that was a part of the picture or the image of God that seemed to have been maybe not avoided, but certainly not told a lot in Sunday school. Like God is a woman who will come for you, and I love that.
Heather Drake:And, shelley, you and I have talked about this, that idea that God is like a woman who looks for a coin. The coin has no fault in being lost. The coin does it. And so to me, that's such a beautiful part about God Wherever we find ourselves, in our pain, in our isolation, in our even oppression, not to our fault, but God will still come and look for us. And the beauty of the God that comes to us is this nurturing God, is this loving God, is this God who is full of compassion, the spirit of God who intends to birth. I believe I'm so excited about these kind of talks because I see chaos around us and I'm just reminded of that first Genesis story where it says the spirit of God hovered over, brooded over the chaos, and I'm like, oh look, we've given you another place to build something completely beautiful.
Shelly Shepherd:Here's a place for you to create Spirit of God, beautiful Liz.
Shelly Shepherd:I want to go to another place in the beginning of this section of your book Expanding Theology, and you talk about we've developed spiritually in dangerous and violent ways because of this presence of patriarchy and your words, quoting you.
Shelly Shepherd:We have been poisoned by it really, and when I read that I was like, okay, where is the center for disease control? How do we fix this? How do we find a way to not isolate male from female? Right, this isn't a campaign on just elevating the feminine spirit of God only, but there has definitely been this out of balance-ness, with us being able to hear her in liturgy, in worship, in prayers, in the whole nine yards, and so that particular piece in your book spoke to me very strongly and then like what's the remedy, what's the the, the antidote for, for this space that we're facing? And then speak a little bit about. Were you in seminary, still in seminary, when you wrote the thought or had the thought I can't listen to? I can't read one more male author or listen to one more male pastor, or I am just going to go jump off a cliff in Oregon somewhere. Talk to us a little bit about that.
Liz Jenkins Cooledge:Yeah, oh, there's a lot there and I like that. Sorry about that, I know.
Shelly Shepherd:Poison and male authors and male preachers. I condensed it for you, yeah.
Liz Jenkins Cooledge:I like what you say about balancing, though I feel like that's a good word for it that it's been so out of balance. And I also wanted to say that, yeah, I think the poison metaphor feels very fitting to me, because it's kind of like, heather, what you were saying about the coin not being its fault that it's lost. We have been poisoned by living in this world and this society and often spending a ton of time in churches where things are so lopsided and so off balance, and it's not necessarily our fault that that happened. And yet when you get poisoned, like you figure out what to do about it right, like you take action to heal and make yourself well, and that's like very urgent and very important. So that's yeah, that's just to draw that metaphor out a little bit.
Liz Jenkins Cooledge:But yeah, I think when I so, when you're in seminary, you don't have a ton of control. I didn't feel like I had a ton of control over what I was reading, right, you're assigned all these readings and it's kind of hard to find spare time and energy to do a lot on your own beyond that, and so I think I kind of felt the lopsidedness in seminary but wasn't really sure what to do about it. Um, so kind of went with it and, um, I learned toward the very end of my seminary education that I had at least one classmate who actually made a point to go to a professor at the beginning of the quarter and if the reading list was very male dominated or very white dominated or both to be like, hey, this is what I noticed, like are there some other readings that you could assign me? Like I don't want this to be how I'm formed, right, and I was like, oh, I didn't know you could do that, so put that out there to anybody who might be in that situation that some professors might be open to that and might take notice, if a lot of students are asking for things like that.
Liz Jenkins Cooledge:So, yeah, I think it was kind of when I graduated that I looked back on the experience as a whole and I decided to put kind of full time intentional effort into writing and I feel like reading is very much part of that work of writing, right, it's very much required for it. So I had a ton of time and energy now right, to go back and think what did I miss and to be really intentional about who I was reading and what kind of authors I was seeking out. So I think it was at that point I don't know if it was so much of a like can't read one more male book, but kind of Definitely an effort to skew towards women and then, as time went on, to skew towards women of color as well.
Heather Drake:Something happened, and I don't know how it came about, in whatever the spirit was leading, for Dennis and I was about five years ago. We noticed that, a very similar thing. We are only like all of the books in our repertoire that we would quote to people or we would do. That is typically white people, we, and then most of it, men not all of it, because we are early adapters to Lori Beth Jones and the wisdom that she offers, and some of the other women. But so we just decided for ourselves like what if we, for the next two years, spent all of the time just reading women of color? And we came across bell hooks and my husband was horrified when he said I am over the age of 50. And this is the first time I am reading her. Like, why isn't this something that was gifted to me upon becoming, like you know, a man old enough to be able to? You know, if you can have a family and you're in a job in leadership, you should be reading bell hooks, you know.
Heather Drake:And so and not just bell hooks, I mean, we just found so many beautiful authors who offered a particular sound, who offered an experience, who offered a way of embodying the love of Christ that is so different than what we had heard over and over and over again, and so it really expanded our ability to even find other authors. Expanded our ability to even find other authors because then you know who else is out there that we are trying to discover and what we're hearing and how that changes us. And so one of the things I loved right away about you was like oh, we both love bell hooks and when we both look at this and go and bell hooks, I would say is not necessarily an easy read. For this reason, if you really listen to her, you will have to make some changes or ignore the text all completely and I don't think we can do that. And so difficult to read but so hopeful in the living out of things.
Heather Drake:And again, she doesn't have just one book. There's a beautiful library of all kinds of things we can get in, but we've on a regular basis purchased Bell Hooks books for people, particularly men, and we're like this book is going to help you and your life and your family and how she follows God, but also the honoring of the masculine. It's not to tear anything down, but to listen to the feminine and go if you don't listen to the whole story, you're missing out on all the good bits, you're missing out on the life that God has intended for us to co-create together. So kudos on finding. Do you have a favorite Bell Hooks book?
Liz Jenkins Cooledge:I don't think that I could pick one, although I would say that the Will to Change is very powerful.
Heather Drake:Yeah, and yeah, I think what's powerful yeah, that's a good entry book there.
Liz Jenkins Cooledge:Yeah yeah, and it's so powerful, like you said, how her vision is one of shared power and mutual flourishing, not of women dominating men. Yeah, it's flourishing for everybody, and she really gets into the ways that patriarchy harms women and also harms men and harms our whole society.
Heather Drake:We want to pause and take a men and harms our whole society. 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 expansionistheologycom.
Shelly Shepherd:To join our online community, visit our website at expansionisttheologycom. The introduction not that this is a new introduction, but the womanist theology that we're hearing more and more about that established that took a stand in a time that it was very, very difficult to put their theology up front and to say we're going to look through this lens, through my lens, first as a woman and then as a woman of color, and we're going to look at every single word of this text until you can see it from a different angle, and I think that gift to our time has just been wow, so honoring and so precious to us that and there's a whole litany of those authors that are. You know, just Google womanist theology and you'll get them all. But yeah, like we went to seminary and we didn't even get introduced to one of them. Not one right, which I think is telling of our you know how we're preparing individuals for leadership in the church.
Liz Jenkins Cooledge:Yeah, I think so. And I mean, I think by the time I went to seminary, I feel like I was introduced to some of the names of different womanist scholars or kind of. The general idea of this is what womanist theology is, but were we assigned to read their work Very rarely, right, yeah, yeah, and the the ways that different people read scripture differently depending on their social location is is huge, right, like the things that people see in the texts, the things that people don't notice, especially when we're coming from a privileged place. Yeah, I think that's really huge.
Shelly Shepherd:And I think it gives me, it encouraged me, to look at expanding theology. You know, like what would that look like from where I sit or where Heather and I are trying to stem from? And I think one of the things that I want to hear you talk about a little bit too is the space of the Trinity. You mention it in the book, but talk to us about how we navigate that.
Liz Jenkins Cooledge:The space of the Trinityinity, in terms of of gender.
Shelly Shepherd:Well, um you, you quote julian. I'm assuming that's julian of norwich, right, yeah, yeah, and how and how she uh saw the trinity right yeah and how that messaged and minister, minister to her. But also, if, if we're just looking at a male God, a male spirit and a male Jesus, then the Trinity, the place that we're starting from, or where these these entities are combined or overlapping or touching each other, it's hard to see ourselves as women yeah yeah, talk to us about that.
Liz Jenkins Cooledge:Yeah, um, I mean, I think the, the way that julian of norwich, um, who is a medieval mystic writing about the 14th century, um, the way that she talks about the trinity is really cool and really interesting.
Liz Jenkins Cooledge:She kind of blends and mixes genders together when it comes to God.
Liz Jenkins Cooledge:So she'll say, you know, like Christ is our father and our mother.
Liz Jenkins Cooledge:She'll talk about the Trinity in terms of our father, mother and spirit or different kinds of mixing, which I think is really helpful for those of us who have been raised or spent time in context when it's like it's only father, son and spirit and that's the only way you can talk about it. I think it's really helpful to realize that theologians for many centuries have thought of it in a more expansive way and have used this idea of three in one as this very expansive thing that God can be masculine and feminine, and neither and both all at the same time. Yeah, and I think, yeah, just that, like that fluidity that a lot of theologians would use to talk about God and gender. Not just Julian, but others as well, like male theologians, who you might never expect to talk about God in the feminine, are writing all sorts of things about God as our mother Christ, as our mother Christ breastfeeding us as a mother would Just very beautiful kind of expansive imagery to talk about God that you might never expect.
Shelly Shepherd:You have a thought about that?
Heather Drake:Heather Always. I think that one of the things that is so beautiful about expanding it to include the feminine in the pronouns but not just in the pronouns but in that idea of mother is very often we have need of God to come and reparent us, because our human parents have, you know, probably tried, but maybe not. But they have failed us and they failed the vision of who we are needing them to be and what we need them to be. And allowing God to be father, mother, allowing God to be he, her, it allows us to receive that nurture and that care in ways that, by demanding a masculine, it leaves us not only short-sighted but it leads us with a place of wounding as opposed to healing. And so, for me, the invitation to have God remother us and have God refather us, and have God rebrother us and sister us and family us, is really a beautiful invitation into wholeness in our own life and into the permission to say I may have needed a new vision of what a mother is or what a father is, or what a brother is or what a sister is, because perhaps the poison got deeper into family relationships and I to just talk about a moment ago, when you were talking about the poison that we've taken and hopefully an antidote.
Heather Drake:I think when we've received it as a poison and received an antidote, we cannot be quiet about the fact that it's poisoning others, like we can't watch someone drink it and then go. Well, I hope that works out for you. It made me really sick. We would do something like probably extreme and say don't put that in your mouth. You know like that's going to lead to something that is not only uncomfortable but could be death. You know, and so we would share. This is where I found help. This is what happened when I stopped drinking that and and be able to say I think very often that's why in the imagery, in scripture, it's this water that comes from another source.
Heather Drake:You know, it is always this purification, it is this clean water and I think that probably since humans have been telling the story, we've been telling it, you know, in a way that is misguided. I just see that in Jesus's invitation to us You've heard it said, but I say unto you, jesus expands it. And then even you know in Acts, when you know in many different circumstances, but you know, the Spirit is expanding to Peter on what it's like to belong, what it's like. You know in many different circumstances, but you know the Spirit is expanding to Peter on what it's like to belong, what it's like. You know who's included and who's out, and so I see that New Testament imagery I appreciate very much.
Heather Drake:You're reminding us about Julian of Norwich, but all of these other mystics and these women who bring us weekly to the communion table, to the Eucharist, and go when it's offered to us. This is my body broken for you, this is my body. I think that you'd be hard pressed to find someone other than a woman who could really say that. You know, this Mary, who allowed her body to be broken for the Christ to be born, gets to say this is what it looks like when we're saying this is how love is sustained. So I'm always excited about the idea that allowing different language can not only resonate with us but can bring healing to us in places that we have kind of locked away.
Liz Jenkins Cooledge:Yeah, and I like how you talked about kind of God as mother and kind of reparenting us, because I think I mean I'm very hesitant to say anything like you know, fathers are like this and mothers are like this because everybody's so different and all these attributes that we might associate with femininity do not apply to all women. That's good right, but I do think that we all have these experiences, um, of what we hoped for or experienced in a mother and what we hoped for or experienced in a father, and we all have these imaginations of kind of what love looks like in these different forms, either what it did look like for us or what we wanted it to look like. So I think it's really powerful to imagine God in both of those roles, not because there should be gender roles, but because that's been kind of how our imagination has been shaped, and we're missing something if we don't picture God as both.
Shelly Shepherd:Right, yeah, how do we move away from that binary mindset? How do we yeah, that's a good question, I mean, I think I mean that's, that's expansion in itself, right yeah, right, and I think queer thinkers have been and continue to be really helpful for me.
Liz Jenkins Cooledge:And thinking about that right, I feel like I always have to kind of check these binary notions that are deeply ingrained, that I don't want to have but are still there.
Liz Jenkins Cooledge:But the way that a lot of queer people have experienced and trans people have experienced kind of the gender just in a very different kind of non-binary way than I've experienced it, I think it's been really helpful and really liberating, right, like to realize that these are these categories that we have in our heads but they don't actually match who people are or who people should be actually match who people are or who people should be, cause I think that's that's free, not just for queer folks but also for straight women like me, who don't necessarily fit into all of the feminine descriptions, right, yeah, and kind of realizing that we all embody these different characteristics and that's good, right.
Shelly Shepherd:What a beautiful, what a beautiful image you just gave us. Thank you for that. Yeah, I'm going to jump back to your book real quick, unless you've got something.
Heather Drake:I have a million things. You know that. But no, head back to the book.
Shelly Shepherd:Okay. So in this expansionist section of your book you talk about, I want my theology to expand, and one of the questions that I have is do we have to extract the masculine completely and, if so, for a while or how long? How long does it take for us to come back around and embrace that If there's people that are listening to this that just says, you know, I'm with Liz, I cannot read one more male author or listen to one more male preacher. Like I remember being in that phase too right, that space, and I knew it wasn't, it was a season, it wasn't going to be forever, but I could not go to church if there wasn't a female pastor on staff. I just could not. I couldn't bring it to myself, and so the question is for those that are going to read your book and for those that will listen to this podcast about your book do we have to extract it for a while?
Liz Jenkins Cooledge:I think that's a great question and I feel like it's really personal, the sense that it's different for everybody. So I feel like I want women to be attuned with what our needs are, and if we're in that space where we can't go to a church that doesn't have a female pastor, that's okay, you know, but it's also okay not to be in that space. So I think, yeah, it's kind of a matter of figuring out, like what, what do I need? Like what is feeding me spiritually right now, what is draining me and just not healthy for me, and making movements towards spaces that are healthy and life-giving, not because they're perfect, but I think there should be some sort of basic sense of like this is more life-giving than I'm finding something here that's fruitful for me in some way. And you also mentioned, like you know, what is the place of kind of taking a break from kind of male influences or maybe even male kind of descriptions or pronouns for God, and I mean I think the ultimate goal is to reimagine completely what both femininity and masculinity look like and mean.
Liz Jenkins Cooledge:So for masculinity, I mean, there are ways that we might construct masculinity that are healthy and good, but that's really different, really different from how our culture generally constructs masculinity right. So there might be ways of constructing masculinity that help us move forward, that help us move away from the violence and domination and aggression that's often kind of associated with masculinity. So there's like this kind of toxic aspect of it that we don't want and that we don't want to associate with God. But there might be kind of a healthier version of it that we can move toward. And I'm thinking that male authors are an important part of kind of thinking through like what does that healthy masculinity look like? Of kind of thinking through like what does that healthy?
Shelly Shepherd:masculinity look like there's quite a few people that are in this. Well, I hear more and more, it seems more than maybe five years ago this deconstruction space and reconstructing and finding ways to keep their faith and expand their theology in a way that they're not throwing the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak. And it's one of my hopes, and I think Heather's too, is that people return to love right, that they return to this place where they are to use Heather's word beloved that she has so wonderfully graced to us all and helping us to see ourselves that way. And so if getting people through nice, churchy patriarchy is the goal of your book, what are some of the best ways that we can do that? And how can we tell others? You know, read this and this is. This is where Liz is going to take you.
Liz Jenkins Cooledge:Oh yeah, I think. Oh yeah, I think that's an interesting image of moving through nice churchy patriarchy. I don't know if I quite thought about it in that way, but I think that's an interesting image of moving through nice churchy patriarchy. I don't know if I quite thought about it in that way, but I think my hope is to help people who've had some experiences in patriarchal church environments to process those more fully, to fully acknowledge the things that were very wrong, because we're often told that it's not wrong or told that if it is wrong it's not that big a deal and we should just kind of go with it, it's fine, it's not fine, right? There are many things that happen in churches that are not fine. So I think my hope is to help people who've experienced that really name it and acknowledge it, because that's part of the journey of healing and figuring out how to move forward in a different way.
Liz Jenkins Cooledge:So yeah, the first half of the book is a lot of like naming some of those experiences and dynamics and sorting out what is so wrong about them, and then the second half of the book is more about how do we move forward differently for those who have found some value in the Christian faith in particular and don't want to throw it away entirely. How do we? How do we do things differently? So that involves looking at scripture differently, looking at theology differently, looking at church services differently, looking at leadership differently, so many different things. So my hope is that it feels hopeful in the sense of for those who don't want to throw this out entirely, there is a different way to do it, there are different ways to do it and different ways to think about things and a lot of people who want to do things differently. So I hope it feels like it's kind of a not really like a roadmap specifically, because I think it looks so different in different contexts, but at least like some things to think about on that journey.
Shelly Shepherd:Heather any closing thoughts or ideas before we tell people how they can connect with Liz.
Heather Drake:I think that I want to be really clear that if you allow love to guide you, if love is the anchor, that you do not have to be afraid about stretching, about growing, about expanding. I know sometimes, because we haven't been taught to question, because a lot of times we haven't been taught to look past what we can see now, that it feels a little bit uncomfortable and so all of us would say permission to expand your thoughts or to think differently, but that sometimes the actual practicality of that is very uncomfortable in our bodies. And so, remembering that, if you have an anchor like love, if you're gonna, if this is gonna cause greater love for yourself, for god and for others, then think those thoughts, then ask the questions, then wrestle with that until it actually you find the blessing in that. And then I also want to be really clear about the fact that as much as we're saying feminine and I am a woman and love, that we need to be mindful that even the descriptors of the word feminine go beyond what has been given to us in the Christian church.
Heather Drake:I think sometimes, like we have a lot of things that are like somehow elevated, or like motherhood for one thing in particular, or being married is another thing that we've elevated, and recognizing that femininity exists in many different places, and that when we're saying you know that you should listen to the female voice of God, that you should listen for the voice of the divine feminine, that it goes beyond the traditional roles that have been like, deemed appropriate by the church, that your singleness is holy and you don't need any other person to tell you, you know to, to add on to you.
Heather Drake:And so, um, even in our nudge toward hey, look here for an antidote. Also, look beyond what here might be like, expand your idea of what it might be to be a woman and what that might look like. And so, um, I think we can put a lot of fun things in the show notes, and you know, because I think we have other books that have been so helpful. But, shelley, you recommended a Google search, but sometimes Google searches are limited. I don't know how often Google will put way up at the top, like we can rank them for you, definitely with the bell hooks. But there's some beautiful other authors that offer such life-giving invitations to us to hear spirit, but to live and embody in spirit, but to pay attention to how love gives us permission to not only set ourselves free, but to set others free as well.
Shelly Shepherd:Thank you, Liz, for writing this book and for being a voice in this space to help us all right, To really help us all understand how we move through these periods in our life.
Liz Jenkins Cooledge:Yeah, thank you. Where can?
Shelly Shepherd:people find you.
Liz Jenkins Cooledge:Yeah, I'm pretty active on Instagram at Liz Cool J and recently have been writing on Substack a lot at Growing Into Kinship. So those are a couple of good places, Great. And where can they get the book? Anywhere books are sold online pretty much Bookshoporg, Amazon, Barnes.
Shelly Shepherd:Noble. All right, we'll put some links in the show notes for those places to find you. Thank you, heather, for hosting again and making this space available to us. It's been great to be here today to share with you you both, thank you. Thank you so much for having me here.
Heather Drake: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 expansionisttheologycom.