The Expansionist Podcast

Unveiling Divine Connections

• Shelly Shepherd and Heather Drake

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What if the cosmic significance and divine orchestration of our lives were revealed in an ancient text? Together, we'll unravel the profound connection between the vast universe and our everyday experiences. Focusing on Mary 6:1-2, we'll discuss Peter's acknowledgment of Jesus' extraordinary love for Mary Magdalene and her unique spiritual perception. 

Moreover, we venture into the transformative role of women in early Christianity, through the lens of the Gospel of Mary. We ponder why Mary Magdalene might have been entrusted with unique teachings from Jesus and explore her openness, vulnerability, and deep attentiveness. This discussion extends to other influential women in Jesus' life, like his mother Mary, and the reverence they commanded. Closing our episode, we delve into the boundless nature of unconditional love, illustrating how it transcends judgments and liberates us. Embrace this heartfelt exploration and find inspiration to deepen your relationship with the Spirit of God.

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:

Hey, Heather Drake, welcome to the Expansionist Podcast. So excited to have you here so we can talk more about the Gospel of.

Heather Drake:

Mary, welcome, I feel welcomed and I am thrilled to be able to talk with you about the Gospel of Mary and our pursuit or our intention focused attention to be able to say how do we engage with the Spirit, in what the Spirit is doing in us and in the world around us and in the galaxy at large.

Shelly Shepherd:

I love that cosmic um vibration that you have always expanding us out into the galaxies.

Heather Drake:

Thank you for that.

Heather Drake:

You can blame the James Webb telescope for that no, you can't Stars from the time that I was little.

Heather Drake:

But that idea that the scandal of the particular, that we in the galaxy, that is so big in the cosmos, that is so vast, that we live on this planet, that we have this awareness that this is the time that we have been gifted, that we're in this location, that spirit had worked it out so that you and I could have a meeting together and have a friendship together. I mean all of those things that had to line up so that we can be here right now. I savor that as an invitation into the divine. But, yes, and then remembering, it's not just this minuscule version right now, it's what happens to the whole world, because we join with the cloud of unknowing. We join with everyone who has gone before, everyone who will come after us, with the galaxies that are singing, with the trees and the animals that are also declaring that love is real. I'm excited to be a part of that. So, yes, I do involve the galaxies, because I think this is way bigger than we even imagined.

Shelly Shepherd:

And such expansive an invitation as we dive into the gospel of Mary. If we look at it from that cosmos platform that you just built in, about what a minute or less for us. How can we not be amazed at what we are holding in our hands in this gospel?

Heather Drake:

Well, I think that one of the first things that everyone needs to come back to, amazed at what we are holding in our hands in this gospel. Well, I think that one of the first things that everyone needs to come back to and this is not an idea that is started with me is that awe is so important to drawing us into the divine Wonder, is such an essential part of us, reigniting our humanity and our place in all things that God has created and is creating. And so, when I look at the beauty of the invitation of the gospel of Mary and again, just the incredible way that the gospel has come to us in this century, and to listen to her invitation to return to the good, listen to her perspective, listen to her witness to us of Jesus and the words of Jesus that came to give us life, and life to the fullest, Wow, this is going to be fun.

Shelly Shepherd:

Thank you for opening this up to share with others and to have this conversation. We're going to jump into the Gospel of Mary. Mary 6, 1, verses. Chapter 6, verses 1 and 2 of the Gospel of Mary Sister, we know the Savior, okay. So Peter says to Mary in her gospel Sister, we know the Savior. Okay. So Peter says to Mary in her gospel Sister, we know the Savior loved you more than all the other women. That's Mary 6.1. Because of this, peter then asks Mary, tell us the words of the Savior that you remember, the things which you know that we don't because we haven't heard them. That's Mary 6.2. So I wondered today if we could look at these two passages, these two verses in the Gospel of Mary, and just unpack them. What do they mean to us? What you know? What does it mean? That the Savior loved Mary Magdalene more than all other women?

Heather Drake:

What does that mean to you? One of the first things it does to me is excite me to be able to say I want to hear what she has to say then, to be able to say I want to hear what she has to say then because I want to know, yeah, the beautiful, intimate things that Jesus shared with her, or even her focused attention on his words, on him, on the truth that he was living and breathing and being. And Mary was there, paying attention, and her love brought her to places that perhaps the people around, who didn't recognize this particular time, this particular moment, how holy it was, how sacred it was. I have a suspicion, and it is only a suspicion, but to me it is very it's exciting to think about that, but to me it is very it's exciting to think about that. One of the things that Mary did was recognize a moment, and the reason that I have an idea that she could do that is that the anointing stories that the other gospels tell of her she was aware of a moment and then held it holy and sacred and said this needs oil, this needs remembrance, this needs spirit on it, and I think that that kind of thing, even when Peter is saying to her teach us things that you heard, that we didn't hear.

Heather Drake:

And I don't mean that in any way, that you know that perhaps Jesus was saying something to her that he wasn't saying to anyone else, but it says to me of her attention paid, she heard things because she was listening. She heard things because she postured herself in such a way that everything that he spoke she saw as valuable. Everything that she spoke, he spoke, she recognized the holy on, and so that's very inspiring to me, that the whispers, that the intentions were not lost just because the boys were busy fishing or whatever it was that they were doing, but that when Jesus was speaking and talking and being that, there was a woman there who was paying attention and marking it holy and bringing her focused, holy attention to it, and maybe she just had a better memory than the boys did. I don't know, but there were things that Jesus was saying and the boys were like oh, tell us, tell us those things because you were paying attention.

Shelly Shepherd:

I like the paying attention piece. I'm not going to disagree with that, and I would add that you know the passage doesn't say that he only loved one woman.

Shelly Shepherd:

Mary. It's like he loved her more than all the other women. Right? That's what it said, yes, meaning he loved the other women. There were other women that ministered to him. I'm sure there's other women that may have anointed him, that broke bread with him, that set a table with him, that walked to the beach with him. I'm sure there were others. It wasn't just Mary Magdalene, but there was this singular focus that Mary Magdalene had and maybe it was the attention, maybe it was the focused attention that caused him to see and communicate to her differently.

Shelly Shepherd:

You and I have read and read and reread these seven powers that Mary has been. That's noted in a different chapter in Mary's gospel and maybe we'll get to those powers on a different podcast, but it's possible in my you know just from where I'm sitting that maybe the reason that he loved her more is that she had already tuned a frequency, she had already lined up a resonance, there was something that he communicated that when she received it, wow, it was everlasting, it never left, it didn't disappear. It's also interesting that the Gospels didn't say that the women had a problem with the way that Jesus loved Mary. It was the men that had a problem with the way that Jesus loved Mary. But I love that, that focused intention, that singular form of communication that they must have had Just a beautiful, beautiful expansion. And we get it right here in Mary 6.1.

Heather Drake:

When I read this text, it re-enchants the other texts to me. It reminds me that the witness, that the four gospels that we have readily available to us, that we've used for generations to tell the story of Jesus, that I love this new lens that we get to put on and we get to see it through this vantage point of Mary and part of her teachings that she received from Jesus. One of the things that is a really important anchor to me as we expand our understanding, as we expand our practices, as we expand love between us, between the world, between every living thing, is this idea that love is the way Love has always been the way. God is love, and so when I allow the anchor of love to place me firmly in the source of God, I feel so much confidence that this imagination that we can have allows us to see with the eye of the heart, allows us to see past a written, specific, literal version, but to be able to see and imagine what it is like to be in the presence of love even now, what it would be like to prepare a table for our enemies, what would it be like to prepare ourselves for the love of neighbor and to honor the love that is in us already.

Heather Drake:

These texts and the other ones from the Gospel of Mary and from the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Philip, those lenses that are new to me certainly they're not new to everyone, but they're newish to me. I've not been handling them for 50 years like we have other texts excited for what can be birthed in me after hearing this witness, after listening to the voice of Spirit, after soaking in the text and in the graciousness and asking the Holy Spirit among us to bring revelation, open our eyes. Let us see Jesus the way that Jesus wants to be seen. Let us dance with Spirit, let us follow the Holy Spirit into radical love that provides hospitality for everyone who desires to be in God.

Shelly Shepherd:

Yes and Heather, I am reminded that these texts the gospel of Mary, Thomas, Philip, some of the other ones that didn't make it into even the apocryphal books at the time were actually, some of them, written before the Gospels or about the same time as the Gospels, as we're learning, were written, were written.

Shelly Shepherd:

And so what that does for my spirit and for my understanding is it reminds me that this love that Christ had for Mary had not one ounce to do with anything that was written in the four gospels. And so I take that and jump off of the diving board into the deepest end of my being and I carry this with me because, you know, to me this is just a huge, a huge shift. And I'm not saying throw out the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke or John. We have been born and bred on those, we know them in many ways like the back of our hand, and yet I am reminded that the love that he demonstrated towards her and for her had nothing to do with any of those stories thing to do with any of those stories.

Heather Drake:

There's a saying that says familiarity breeds contempt, and I think sometimes we are contemptuous when we consider the works or the witness or the testimony that we have heard for our whole lives and maybe the way that we've been hearing those things. We can also get to a place where we're like, well, I don't see how that works or I don't see how that matters. And I love that the gospel of Mary invites us to look again with fresh eyes, perhaps to look again and to say what is the teaching of Jesus? And I would like to say, before any of us panic and though maybe no one has panicked at all, or maybe you're clutching your pearls going what are they talking about? How can there be more?

Heather Drake:

That many testimonies in the gospel tell us this that the world couldn't hold every written account of what Jesus did or said, if that was possible.

Heather Drake:

So we do have a very narrow slice of what it was, what all of the things that Jesus did, all of the things that Jesus said, and so we can trust the Holy Spirit to bring us revelation and we can judge that, or we can trust that because if it brings us back to love if it brings us back to our true selves, our souls that have been named by God as very good. If it brings us back to that, we can have confidence. And so I don't have to necessarily have confidence that I've heard this story since I was a little girl. In fact, I'm really glad that I'm hearing it now. I mean, maybe it would have been great to hear it as a young person, but where I'm hearing it now is that there is more, and it is an invitation into an ascended way to live. It's an invitation into a higher thought. It's an invitation into a practice that makes love the way that we do everything.

Shelly Shepherd:

Yeah, I love that thought and I also wish that I had had it when I was young. At the same time, I am nearly 100% sure that if I had this understanding, that patriarchy wouldn't have maybe taken the hold that it has taken in the lives of many women and many individuals at this juncture in our histories. You know, I mean, that's what I wonder, and so wishing that it had been more prevalent in conversations in theological circles or in Sunday school classes, or you know, from those preaching. But again, at the same time, if it's, if it's male preachers, um, you know, there you have that piece. So here we are. Here we are with, with Mary, 6-1, and um, the Savior loved her more than all other women, so we'll let that one stand.

Heather Drake:

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. Online community. Visit our website at expansionistheologycom. Let's jump to 6-2.

Shelly Shepherd:

I want to read it again Because of this. Peter then asked Mary, tell us the words of the Savior that you remember, the things which you know that we don't because we haven't heard them. Mary 6-2. We're going to speculate here as to why, heather, that Jesus did not share these things with the boys.

Heather Drake:

I'll let you speculate first and then I will. Well, actually, I want to hesitate from speculation, because I will tell you that, instead of speculation or judgment, I will tell you only from my own experience there is a presence that a woman can hold for you and an intention that I have not found practiced in a lot of the sons that I have, the brothers that I have, the fathers that I have, the husband that I have. There is a singularity that I believe that women can hold, and I'm assuming this is the singularity that Jesus was honored to have been witnessed by Interesting answer, my friend.

Shelly Shepherd:

Well, the first thing I see here in this particular verse is that Peter asks Mary so we know some things about Peter already through years of being taught about his temperament. Tell us the words of the Savior that you remember, the things which you know that we don't because we haven't heard them. Not understanding the tone in which he is asking Mary this question, if we read on in some of the rest of her gospel, he gets pretty aggressive with her in his questioning, in so much that Levi steps in and asks him to back down. You know why are you distrusting her? She's answering Jesus loved her, obviously, and told her these things, and so, whether it's speculation or accuracy, there was this forwardness in Peter of wanting to know why Jesus did not give him this information and only shared it with a woman. I think there was a problem right for him.

Shelly Shepherd:

And we read later in the Gospel of Mary where she just says basically she says you know, peter just has an issue with women in general, right Like he just doesn't like the human race of women, and so maybe in chapter six he was trying to be a little bit inquisitive. Maybe in chapter six he was trying to be a little bit inquisitive, maybe using curiosity to get his question answered. And yet I have to myself just think what intense pressure she must have felt even by that question. Why would Jesus tell you and not us? Maybe because she was listening.

Heather Drake:

Why would Jesus tell you and not us?

Heather Drake:

Maybe because she was listening.

Heather Drake:

Maybe Jesus did not have and these are maybes but maybe Jesus did not have the energy to fight for someone's attention and maybe Mary was already attentive to the words.

Heather Drake:

Maybe she saw him Matthew, mark, luke and John and that if you also read the gospel of Mary and Philip and Thomas, you will see a witness of the fact that Mary saw Jesus and Jesus saw Mary, that there was a oneness between them, and I think that that's an invitation for all of us, for all of us, that we could also have a relationship where Jesus communes with us.

Heather Drake:

I mean, jesus even prayed for this for us in John's gospel gives us an invitation to listen into that prayer where he says Father, make them one, the same as you and I are one. And so you know what would it look like for us to acknowledge our own oneness with God and the invitation of Jesus to be seen by God, to open ourselves up. And maybe she trusted him, maybe she was vulnerable, maybe she made herself available, maybe she was listening. I don't know those things, but all of those things are hopeful thoughts to me into how I can open myself more to the Spirit of God, to the love of Christ, to an empowerment to see things with more hope than the world sees them.

Shelly Shepherd:

I think that is the hope of this text in the Gospel of Mary Heather is that if we're given this information out of her gospel, then it has to be for us. As women, we have to be moved by the fact that he told her some things that he did not tell anyone else, male or female.

Heather Drake:

And Shelley, I suspect he didn't just tell Mary things, the Mary Magdalene I mean. I suspect he told his mother Mary things that maybe he hadn't told anyone else. And I suspect you know sisters, aunts, you know the mother of James. That is often you know. So there's women here who are recognizing the bread of life, who are recognizing the sacredness, who are recognizing the specialness, who are recognizing the divine, and in that place of recognition they hold the reverence that allows this truth to be expanded to them.

Shelly Shepherd:

I'm sitting with that for a minute because, of course, yes and amen, but we were not told that, we were not taught that necessarily. Well, maybe, maybe through mother Mary or Jesus communicating with miracles or things that she wanted specifically to um, to say to him, but we didn't even get all, all of mother Mary's stories. So that's a whole nother podcast, maybe. But my point is, of course he told other women, of course other women touched him or listens to him, or uh. But that's the beauty of this gospel, Heather, is that we are given now documents that say to us research that says to us God wants to speak through you or to you. Take this opportunity and attune and align yourself so that spirit, so that wisdom, so that love can be moved between you and the divine. I think that's also the invitation of the gospel of Mary, is that?

Heather Drake:

wow. And one of the things that I think that it also invites us to do, though, is move beyond the literal or beyond the idea of now. I have to have proof that I would give up or surrender certainty and move into the realm of spirit and of love, and move into the realm of embracing the mystery, but absolutely coming to grips with the fact that the four gospels, as we know them, do not give us the complete picture that give us an entry point, but that we're invited not to stay in the entrance but to enter into completely. Allow the spirit to bring us revelation, to bring us truth, to bring us grace. When Jesus says it's better for you if I leave, I'm going to send you a paraclete, I'm going to send you a helper, I'm going to send you my spirit, and you won't need a teacher. You'll be full of the spirit, and the spirit will lead you, and this invitation, I believe, from the gospel of Mary is an invitation into life, in the spirit, as we have never experienced it or never seen it, and these practices, again, don't lead us into now. Mary is our teacher, but Mary showed us where the door is, and now we can enter. That same way, we honor this. Why isn't Mary our teacher? Well, let me rephrase that Mary can be our teacher, but I believe that, even beyond Mary, that spirit is to be our teacher, expanding, even like we wouldn't stay just within the realm of the gospel of Mary either that she would appoint us to the way. And the way is Christ, and the way is this, eternal, immortal, and it's an invitation back to our true selves, back to love that is unconditional, back to the source that Jesus showed us in God, back to the way that Jesus said.

Heather Drake:

God is like a woman who is coming and looking for everything that is lost, some pieces that have been lost. Maybe God is like the woman who found the lost gospel of Mary. He dug it out of the floorboards or wherever it was found, and here it is returning that. And then he throws a great party with the neighbors and said, look, what was lost is now found. And so maybe we're invited to that party to look what is lost and now say it's been found. But there's so much hope in the fact that things that are buried will be brought to life, things that are lost can be found, things that weren't heard before can now be heard with joy and with gladness, and there is a way to practice love that we haven't been shown, and now we get to see it and choose.

Shelly Shepherd:

Yes, and I would add to this expansive conversation that we've been given not just mystery and mystical our entire lives, or where we started this beautiful conversation, in the cosmos, like that's always been Mystery is there, mystical is there, magical is there. But I believe that we now have a portal into holy imagination that doesn't have to be contrived just within our holy imagination, that we actually have a gospel that says to us I am love and I've always been love and I am the good and I have always been the good, and that this gospel of Mary is about teaching us that this goodness is within us. And to me, if you want to wrap all that up and include not just the gospels but every biblical text that you can find, so be it. But we are on a, I am on a. I should say I shouldn't speak for you. I am on a path of expansive love that I don't think I've tasted before.

Heather Drake:

I want to read to us from Sacred Love All true love is unconditional. How you feel about others need not get in the way of blessing yourself and the world with unconditional love. Love doesn't care whether you feel someone is worthy of your love. It is not your love. Love is a wild thing and free. It just wants to run through you unobstructed. It wants to flood your vessel and then flood the world. When you get out of the way, love comes through you and soaks your soul and your sorrows. It does the same then to the world that touches you. Touch you first with unconditional love.

Heather Drake:

Unconditional love is not unconditional like Liking, has nothing to do with loving. Liking is a fickle approach, a retreat, an aversion, attraction. Love does not care about anything but love. If you spread enough love, soaked light wherever you go, eventually you begin to run into more and more love, radiant and growing wildly. This is the bounty you reap.

Heather Drake:

The most essential oil of all is love, sacred ointment for suffering, a salve for every soul, sweet incense for all time. Love is in the midst and mist of you. It pools in your pores, pours from your eyes, courses your blood rivers, shivers you in the cold, lifts you in sorrow. You do not have to wait for love to arrive tomorrow. Love is with you. Love will never stop etching its divine script into the ground of your fertile heart.

Heather Drake:

Surrender everything you are to this clandestine composer. You were never meant to be dry notes on a page. You are music, a living thing. When you learn that you can have and give all the love you ever wanted. Without a relationship, you are free. You can be broken, perforated, punctured and still absolutely gush with love. You can be on a wild spending spree of soulful wandering and you can be love's fountain. Today is for loving, yesterday too, same for tomorrow. Resist and suffer, surrender and be free. Love is the most necessary human endeavor. Your entire nature is love. All else is tangent and aimless drift. There is no end to the beginning of love. Open to its gift and it will open for you endlessly. If you want to be kissed by eternal sunlight, call yourself by your truest name love, and then live up to your name. That's from Jaya John, a Sacred Book of Love. 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.