The Expansionist Podcast

Rituals, Feasts, and the Gospel of Mary

• Shelly Shepherd and Heather Drake • Season 1 • Episode 17

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Could Mary's gospel offer a more profound understanding of love and faith? On this thought-provoking episode of the Expansionist Podcast, embark on an exploration of Mary Magdalene's life and her unique relationship with Jesus. By reflecting on her actions, like anointing Jesus and proclaiming his resurrection, we invite you to consider how her teachings might inspire new spiritual practices and a deeper connection to the Spirit today.

Shifting our focus, we delve into the rituals and feasts found in the First Testament, emphasizing their importance in preserving spiritual treasures at a cellular level. Through personal anecdotes, such as the serenity found in nature's stillness, we illustrate the necessity of breaking from routine to enrich our spiritual lives. Mary Magdalene’s act of anointing Jesus becomes a powerful model for love and goodness, urging us to pay closer attention to lesser-known stories and the profound power of sacred love that they hold.

Finally, we explore the expansive nature of sacred love at the heart of Mary Magdalene's gospel. By reading excerpts from Megan Watterson's work, we examine how true vision and love transcend the ego, connecting us more deeply with others and the Spirit. We ponder the miraculous survival of the Gospel of Mary and its potential to offer fresh perspectives on Jesus, emphasizing that love, as shown by Jesus, surpasses death and loss. Concluding with a reflection from Hildegard of Bingen on the Holy Spirit's role in creation, we honor Mary Magdalene's lasting impact and the transformative communion with the Spirit that her gospel invites us into. 

Heather Drake:

Welcome to the Expansionist Podcast with Shelley Shepard 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:

Good afternoon, Heather Drake. It's great to be here with you this week, as we have been focusing on the Feast of Mary Magdalene. I'm so excited to talk with you about this today and hopefully share some insight that we're gaining as we follow Mary Magdalene a little bit further up and further in. So welcome to this segment on Mary Magdalene this week.

Heather Drake:

I am in full joy to be here and to be talking about something that we are discovering so much light and love from, and so I'm looking forward to opening a conversation, or continuing a conversation, around Mary Magdalene and her witness of Jesus and her witness of perhaps a Christianity that hasn't been lived before, and an invitation into something deeper, into something that we haven't tried.

Shelly Shepherd:

I love that idea, what you just shared, a Christianity or an experience with Christ or God or spirit that we have not had before. Let's talk about that for a few minutes.

Heather Drake:

I think sometimes, at some point in a Christian path or a path of following, there is a place where we can either choose disillusionment or we can choose to go farther up and further in and to be able to say what does it look like for us to maybe exchange some higher thoughts or some ways of looking at things, and not in any way to to be a different path, but to see a higher way? I'm reminded of the words in the scripture that that God speaks of God's self, when God says my ways are not your ways, my thoughts are not your thoughts, my ways are so much higher than your ways. And so the idea is, I think, more of an invitation to choose a higher thought, to choose, um uh, uh, love's way of living and thinking in ways that allow us to ascend. Hmm.

Shelly Shepherd:

That makes me think about, um, what dropped in in into my spirit as, as I was listening to that is, people often ask the question does does God evolve or does God change? Or is God the same yesterday, today and forever, and then never changes? You know, I like to think that these places of expansion that you and I are spending time either unraveling or unfurling or re-deciding how they fit into a better story, is this, this space of seeing God in just one dimension? I think is is causing me to, or has caused in the past, this desire to even expand what I understand, or maybe misunderstood, about God all along. And and one of the questions, um, that I had in my, in my mind, to to maybe, maybe for us to share a little bit about as we, as we jump into Mary Magdalene, the week here with Mary Magdalene, is this place of um wonderment about if we had been, if this had been a starting point for us, if Mary, if Mary's work that I believe you and I understand actually was first her gospel was first published in 1955, if we understand that correctly, if that story had been handed to us in the 60s and 70s and 80s, would we have a different reference point about love, about spirit, about God, based on what we are learning about how she and Jesus related to each other, loved each other, shared the same table, you know those kinds of things.

Shelly Shepherd:

And here we are this week, towards the end of her feast week and being intentional about that kind of expansion. Do you ever think that if that had been our starting point, would we be in a different place right now, spiritually, emotionally?

Heather Drake:

I think yeah, I think the answer would be yes, but I also think the loving thought would be that, wherever we are, the invitation of spirit is to come up higher, is to come up higher.

Heather Drake:

Wherever we start, the invitation is into this fellowship, this triune awareness, to be able to say this is the conversation that started before the worlds were formed.

Heather Drake:

In the beginning was the word and in of humankind, in the mind of God, and so, wherever we find ourself, starting and I do think there could have been an advantage to us if the gospel of Mary and the words of Mary had been given to us as young people.

Heather Drake:

But I'm excited about the fact that we even um are aware of them now and where we could go from here and what it's like to practice um and to think about the example that Mary set for us and the invitation that she showed us through her uh works of anointing, through her obedience to Christ when he said go and tell about the resurrection. And there is this continued work of going and telling the brothers about this promise that there is new life, that old things, old orders of things, are no longer in place, that love is eternal and love is the way to life and to experience God. So I'm very hopeful about the way that Mary can inspire us to hear for ourselves, to work toward the practice of living in the rituals of anointing. That perhaps will open up love to the world in ways that we haven't acknowledged before.

Shelly Shepherd:

I love the place that you are thinking about this right now in regards to, yeah, maybe we didn't get it, this introduction to Mary Magdalene, until later in life. But how can you and I be a vessel or a prompting to others, maybe people our age, maybe younger, maybe those that are just starting a spiritual journey, right Like? There's something significant about this time and this opportunity to say join in on this expansive love that seemingly Jesus and Mary Magdalene have expressed over and over and over with each other. That somehow made the boys a little bit uncomfortable. Now, whether it was their egos, whether it was hierarchy or patriarchy that got in the way of that understanding, we can't really say for sure.

Shelly Shepherd:

But there was something about Mary. There was something about the significance of how she we could use the word surrender, we could use the word postured, we could use the word acknowledged his witness in the world and what he was trying to do. There was something about Mary that caused this transactional, transformational moment for her that you and I have been learning about for the last several years, and so we've taken time this week to um, park ourselves in this beautiful cabin in North Carolina and offer time to honor her witness and her life and her apostleship with Jesus. So I'm happy to be here thinking about these things with you and offering them as maybe pathways or hooks, or just invitations for others to learn about Mary's work in the world.

Heather Drake:

One of the things that I have found inspiring is in the Christian tradition that I was handed, we did a lot of reading of the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, and Luke and John, and those points of view I believe to be a very reliable witness of who Jesus was and our life of following Jesus maybe not so much following the rules of a particular denomination but the following of Jesus that I believe to be so pure and so holy in igniting the world full of love that it was a pretty limited view, only through the view of these four particular boys, and to have a gospel that includes the view from a woman's point of view, it feels like a bigger picture, like a more generous orthodoxy to be able to say look at everyone who follows and how they follow, and it can be different and it almost it should be different for each person.

Heather Drake:

But to be able to follow that gospel into what I see that Mary does very often, or the witness that we see that Mary does, is the hands on work of love, and I believe that's something that can be emulated by so many people the hands-on work of love, loving ourselves, loving our neighbors, loving our enemy. And Mary provides an example that says you know, you might have to get your hands in here, you might have to bow yourself here, you might have to put yourself in places where people don't understand you. And that's a very hopeful position for me to say, that could be what I'm being called to and that work is absolutely essential for the work of love to increase.

Shelly Shepherd:

So beautiful. I love that point. Thank you for bringing that forward about. We haven't had a gospel to compare until the gospel of Mary shows up.

Heather Drake:

And again, you mentioned earlier that you know that it wasn't even published until the 50s. And so, though the Gospel of Mary is very old and is well by scholars, it wasn't there to be part of the tradition so much passed down. And so, you know, not every book that is immediately published is worldwide read, you know. And then sometimes people have questions about its validity. And anyway, here we are now and we're looking at the witness that is listed there and we're re-examining some things, some ways that we believed, and in no way to diminish what has actually been gifted to us, but to say and then, or, and here's more, and here's act two, of what it looks like to love ourselves, to love the world, to love God by loving every beautiful thing that God created and dwells in. Those are the kind of ideas that inspire me to find out more, to listen more, to seek the Spirit and say where are you and how can I follow exactly where you're going?

Shelly Shepherd:

You and I have had this week planned for several months, this week planned for for several months, and um, and one of the reasons that we wanted to take time and focus not just because of our appreciation of of of the gospel of Mary and who she was, but also wondering about is this is this expandable? You know, are these conversations that you and I are having something that would interest other people? Or, you know, is there a wider collective? And we already know that we're not the first ones talking about the Gospel of Mary. It's been widely discussed and made into movies and all sorts of things for many years. But I'm wondering, maybe, if we could just talk a little bit about what this means to us individually. Why take out this week and focus on her?

Heather Drake:

I think one of the things for myself is paying attention to prioritizing the contemplative acts and acts of slowing, acts of savoring, acts of listening. Those kind of things are not new to any faith tradition. In fact, most of them have them. But Jesus in fact offered us the idea of when you get together and you eat and you eat this bread and drink this that this is how you are going to remember me, this is how you are going to come back into a communion with me. And so by taking time aside to say what is what does it look here?

Heather Drake:

In fact, in the First Testament, the practices and the rituals of feasts are because, I believe, our humanity calls us to remember specific times.

Heather Drake:

It is why we celebrate holidays, why holy days, it's why we celebrate birthdays.

Heather Drake:

It is this idea that in the planning, in the executing of special times, it creates a remembering in us, on a cellular level even.

Heather Drake:

There's so much that we experience every day we can't remember. And although there seems to be those things I mean we've had 365 days in the past year and we certainly do not remember every single one but if I asked you to remember Easter of this year or Christmas of last year, we could bring those days right into remembrance, and the same is true for when we set aside time and we bring it into the sacred realm and we pay attention to what we're eating and who we're with, and what we're thinking or what our intentions are. Those are the kind of things that we can remember, rehearse, go back to and hold the treasures that Spirit has deposited to us. In that memory, 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:

I think for myself this week, for example, one of the days, uh, it was pouring rain here. I can't remember which day, Um, maybe it was Wednesday or Thursday, um, and I found myself drawn outside to the rain and I went out on the porch and just parked myself there, one to make sure that the trash person got our trash, but also to just embrace this different environment, the nature, the forest, the trees that are surrounding us, the sound of the rain, the sound of the rain. I flew in here from Arizona. There's not much rain that happens in Arizona, and particularly we don't hear the rain falling on leaves, on trees. And so, as I sat in that moment, I moved myself into a posture of listening, or receiving, or giving, which maybe could have been duplicated somewhere else, in another part of the country or around a different table.

Shelly Shepherd:

But I hear you, heather, when you say the pausing, the stillness, the quietness, the solitude, without the routine. Right, we haven't had our regular routine this week, and it has allowed us to, uh, in the mornings, uh, read something about Mary, to uh, use the anointing oil for someone or something, um, to to pause during the day, whereas if we hadn't taken this time, it might have still honored Mary, but maybe the fabric of us, the memory that you just talked about, the remembering, might not be as potent or strong, not be as potent or strong. And so I think for myself it's been a beautiful week of, and I'm grateful for the time, but I'm also grateful for this longing and this yearning to understand the love and the goodness that she somehow modeled, that touched, that touched Jesus and that Jesus touched her. And this has been a beautiful place to receive and to give that.

Heather Drake:

Something that compels me into further study of this is when Jesus declares to the people around him after his anointing by Mary, that you know, wherever my story is told, this story will be told too, and I've heard a lot of the Jesus story, or of the story of Jesus that the four gospels tell those particular witnesses, but I haven't heard the same amount of the story from other places, amount of the story from other places, and so I'm paying attention to listening for that story, the story that tells of a woman who, at great expense, anointed and this ministry of anointing that it wasn't just the one time here she anoints him before the burial and then you know when she's in the garden anointing him after the burial, and the intention then to tell the brothers that there is a resurrection, that being a type of anointing too, of saying you can have great hope even when everything looks like it's dead, even when it looks like there's no way past this realm.

Heather Drake:

There's no way past this way of knowing that Mary offers to us a way of being and a way of seeing and a way of connection to spirit that maybe has been less practiced than the other ways, and so I'm incredibly hopeful that, given focused attention to the spirit here that things can transform and transpire and ignite some passionate flames of sacred love between us and the world.

Shelly Shepherd:

Yeah, you mentioned sacred love. I'd like us just to linger there for a minute in regards to this is really the epicenter of Mary's gospel is this sacred love this, you know, love is stronger than death that she either captured in her gospel. She either captured in her gospel. Somebody wrote this down in her gospel story and it has been passed on to us through these words. This sacred love is such a. It's a beautiful, beautiful words, but can we unpack that for a few few minutes? What we mean by sacred love? And was it, was it different for mary and jesus than it is for us right now? Um, are we talking about the same kind of love? Is there only one love? Um, can we, can we talk about that?

Heather Drake:

Well, it is in my estimation, that there is not only one love. I think that love takes many, many forms, and that requires us to pay attention to the Spirit, because if you can say that love is one form or one way, then you can in fact live on autopilot or live sleepwalking, and the invitation of the Holy Spirit is to be reawakened, to be re-enlivened, to catch the spark of what the Spirit is up to. And I think that you know from again the witness of Scripture, from the witness of what we see, how Jesus relates to each individual person differently. What do you need? What would you like me to do? How would you like me to you know, bring the fullness of this moment between you and God into being? I think that again inspires me to say I don't get to just say I'm going to love every single person this way, but I need to say I'm going to love every single person and then trust that the Holy Spirit will show me how to to show that love, how to demonstrate that love or how to lean into a love that already exists between you. Know the people that are here or the energy that is being present here, but I really hesitate to say there's just one way to love, because there's just too many variations of people and experiences and thought for us not to be Again.

Heather Drake:

I think that again, going back to Jesus, and how do you humble yourself in love? Love is full of humility, and humility says I don't know. Humility says I'm here to be taught. And meekness. Meekness says I have the power to love you, but I'm going to pay attention to this greater gift. That says how would you like me to love you? And again I hear the words of the gospel witness that says when Jesus met people, he said what would you have me do? People around could probably assume you know the man with the paralyzed arm, the man who is blind, the person who is paraplegic. And we don't just get to assume that the healing comes to their legs. Jesus gives them this dignity. That says what do you want? And I think that in the following that we would ask the Holy Spirit how do I love this person, how do I offer what I have? And how do you bless it and anoint it and break it and give it? And how are people fed with loaves and fishes? With loaves and fishes?

Shelly Shepherd:

It's goodness. I'd like to read a little bit out of Megan Watterson's work discussing Mary Magdalene, and just a little bit of a paragraph here. Mary's intimate exchange with Christ in her gospel takes place from within her Christ tells her that she's wonderful for being able to perceive him and that this capacity to see with the heart, this true vision, is the treasure. This love that sits at the core of who we are, is what allows us to become a bridge between the worlds, this love that is stronger than death, this love that reminds us, when we are bound by a power of the ego, that we are also a soul, this love that frees us. The point is to let love reach where it has never been before. To let love reach where it has never been before. And so I think to your point as well in talking about the sacredness of love, the expansiveness of love, the reach like maybe we have not, as you said earlier in the show, we haven't experienced this form of Christianity yet. It's hard to imagine, heather, that we haven't experienced something as people of faith. But maybe because we haven't expanded, because we've been in this construct, that it's these four Gospels and no other Gospel.

Shelly Shepherd:

And my hope I do believe it's hopeful that, as more people read the gospel of Mary and as we try, as we try to digest it or even talk about it, sometimes it's it doesn't fit neatly into the other gospels, which is possibly why it got left out, maybe why it got burnt, maybe why it got lost for lost for so many millennia. And yet here we are talking about it. Is that not a miracle in and of itself? Is that not love? That love is stronger than death, love is stronger than being burned, love is stronger than being lost, and so I am hopeful that her gospel and thankful that her gospel is in our hands today, and hopeful that others will find the gospel of Mary to be a new branch, a new path, a new way of seeing Jesus, maybe for the first time.

Heather Drake:

I don't know who said this particular quote, but I do remember it to say or to imply this be mindful, be careful of what you bury, because it may just be a seed.

Heather Drake:

And perhaps whoever was burying this did not understand that what was being buried was a seed.

Heather Drake:

And I think that immortal seed, that eternal gift that is its original, that wholeness, that really authentic love that came through Jesus for humanity so that we could see what God saw in us and what God believes about us, and what the hope of the kingdom would be that love would reign here, about us, and what the hope of the kingdom would be that love would reign here, that in every situation, love would get to make the final decision.

Heather Drake:

And I think that the practice of returning to ourselves, the practice of remembering the goodness that is innate in us, because we're made in the image of God, the goodness that dwells in us and how eternal our souls are, I think that sometimes the idea that we are not even fully present where we are, we are so busy with to-do lists and productivity, instead of recognizing that in our belonging, a result of true belonging and intention with the belonging, is that we are actually becoming and we are becoming these. We're becoming who we were always meant to be, souls that are fully in tune with the ultimate expression that God is loving the world with at that moment, and so I feel so hopeful I don't feel discouraged at all that we've been doing it one way and now the spirit is inviting us and and now, try it this way, now breathe it this way.

Heather Drake:

Now extend your hand instead of living in scarcity and in fear, open up your hands and live in generosity, and live in grace and in grace, and come into the dance that the Spirit is inviting us to and allow the rain of love to soak us, to drench us, to bring us back into true communion, Beautiful.

Shelly Shepherd:

Thank you so much for this time and thank you, Mary Magdalene, for your essence and your presence, not just this week but through the millennia that you have endured and that you give us a love to expand and to hold out to others in such a beautiful way.

Heather Drake:

And I heard a voice saying to me this lady, whom you see, is love, who has her dwelling place in eternity. When God wished to create the world, he leaned down and, with tender love, provided all that was needed, as a parent prepares an inheritance for a child. And thus, in a mighty blaze, the Lord ordained all his works. And then creation recognized its creator in its own form and appearance and from in the beginning, when God said, let it be. And it came to pass, the means and the matrix of all creation was love, because creation was formed through her in the twinkling of an eye. Hildegard of Bingen, on the Holy Spirit. Thank you, heather, for this time, grace and much peace between us. 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.