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
The Mystical Nature of Hope
Have you ever wondered how hope can be both a gentle feather and a gritty sewer rat? That's exactly what we explore in this thought-provoking episode of the Expansionist Podcast. We start with two powerful poems: Emily Dickinson's "Hope is the Thing with Feathers" and Caitlin Sudea's contemporary reimagining, "Hope is Not a Bird, Emily, it's a Sewer Rat." Through this poetic conversation, we unravel the complex, multifaceted nature of hope and its significance in both privileged lives and those on society's fringes. As Advent unfolds, we question the limitations we often place on its potential, urging listeners to embrace this time as one of genuine transformation and profound connection.
We delve deeper into how adversity sharpens the need for hope and how privilege might cloud its importance. Drawing wisdom from St. Paul and the life of Jesus, we highlight the power of sharing hope, particularly during times of darkness and renewal. Personal stories illuminate how relationships sustain hope, showcasing the delicate interplay between hope, trust, love, and faith. By embracing moments of intentional connection, we explore how hope can be shared, transferred, and ultimately, how it can become a catalyst for personal growth and communal strength. Join us as we invite you to slow down, listen deeply, and discover how nurturing hope can lead to rest, renewal, and unexpected growth.
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. Greetings Heather Drake, it's good to see you today. Greetings Shelley Shepard, I am overjoyed to be with you and have a chance to have a conversation about things that we love, things that we're learning, things that we are embodying, and this is an awesome season we are approaching and I have a lot of thoughts about it. I'm excited to share them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I know you do, I know you do. I used to call you the love queen, but I think I'm going to change it to the advent queen now. Well, at least advent for now. I still want to be the love queen, forever and ever.
Speaker 1:Okay, but maybe love can be folded into advent, but advent is so hopeful to me. Advent has so much promise in it. Advent is, I think that it's we haven't unwrapped enough of the gift that it is for us to really see how transformative that practice can be. So, anyway, I'm hopeful today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, me too, and I'm grateful that we are able to have these conversations. I was talking to a friend the other day and just realizing that there's so much freedom in being able to just be yourself with someone that understands a little bit about your journey and the road that you've traveled and you know the places that you've stood or fallen. You know there's just something holy about that and I think you and I are discovering that these conversations, that these expansionist places that we're stepping are. Some people would say, well, that's like some kind of minefield that you two are walking in, but really it's this beautiful conversation that we get to have about what's happening in our lives, what brings us hope, what expands love, what is in our hands today, and I'm so grateful for that. So thank you for being here and continuing to have these conversations.
Speaker 1:So you shared a poem with me this week and I wanted you to read it, because then I shared a poem with you and I think it's a perfect place for us to start this.
Speaker 2:Yes, it is Part of the conversation that we want to talk for Edwin.
Speaker 2:We're going to invite Ms Emily Dickinson into our conversation today with her hope poem. Hope is the Thing with Feathers. Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings the tune without the words and never stops at all. And sweetest in the gale is heard, and sore must be the storm that could abash the little bird that kept so many warm. I've heard it in the chillest land and on the strangest sea, yet never in extremity. It asked a crumb of me.
Speaker 1:We are not the first people to listen to those words and be inspired by them To say yes, hope. That feels so delicate and sometimes even out of reach. But you had shared that poem with me and I had memorized a number of Emily Dickinson's poems when I was much younger. But I have recently found a poem and it's also called Hope, and I believe it's in response to that particular poem and it's by Caitlin Sudea and it's called Hope is Not a Bird, emily, it's a Sewerette.
Speaker 1:Hope is not a thing with feathers that comes home to roost when you need it the most. Hope is an ugly thing with teeth and claws and patchy fur that's seen some shit. It's what arrives and thrives in the discards and survives in the ugliest parts of our world, able to find a way to go on when nothing else can even find a way in. It's the gritty, nasty little carrier of such diseases as optimism, persistence, perseverance and joy, transmittable as it drags its tail across your path and bites you in the ass. Hope is not some delicate, beautiful bird, emily. It's a lowly little sewer rat that snorts pesticides like they were lines of coke and still shows up on time to work the next day, looking no worse for wear.
Speaker 1:This is what hope looks like. It's mangy. Hope looks like a passing sewer rat, not an Instagram sewer rat that does clever things. Oh, my goodness, patchy fur clawing sneaking in where you can't find it. And I was thinking what an incredible beautiful thought that hope could sneak up on you. That hope could withstand very difficult situations. That hope can be a beacon for us, a light for us. Hope, yeah, gives us the ability to keep living and keep thriving when the rest of the world says no.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm, I love the metaphors from both Emily. And did you say, caitlin? Yeah, these two pictures of what hope can be right. Yeah, yeah, be right. And I think that that's the realism of Advent in my thoughts is, on one hand, it is this bird, this thing with feathers that, no matter you know, the storm by day or the calm at night, or reverse, right, it's there Like hope is perched like a bird. But then here's Caitlin, no, no, no, no. Hope is not a bird, it's a sewer rat and it's snorting pesticides and showing up the next day at work Like this vastness, right, this vastness of hope. I think sometimes we do as people of faith. I wonder if we do a disservice to the sacredness of hope by making it just a candle that we light on the first week of Advent. Tell me your thoughts on that. Is it a disservice, or are we shining that candle in the sewer as well as next to this metaphorical bird?
Speaker 1:I like the idea of the bird, but I also in my own life have found hope to be in the form of the sewer rat, and I'm confident that the people that dwell in the sewers or that have been pushed into the margins, those people very often have a lot of hope, hope that things will change. But then there are people who are recently in those margins and they need the hope of others who have been there, and so I see the need and the beauty in recognizing both of those ways that hope appears. And I think that sometimes privilege keeps us at a place where we don't maybe appreciate hope as much. We have a perceived privilege or a perceived perception, depending on where we are in the world, and I think that struggle or loss or trauma, difficulty, pain, all those things, when things have been ripped from our hands, when things have been taken from us or we've been excluded from places and things, that's when hope is needed. And so sometimes, when we're oblivious because of our privilege or we're blinded because of our privilege, we may not see the essential light that comes from hope. And perhaps that, maybe that's what the Spirit is waking us up to, you know, changing our perspective and being able to say, you know, not only, if you have a hope, be ready to share that hope. In fact, one of the things that St Paul said was be ready to give a reason for the hope that is in you.
Speaker 1:And I wonder if people aren't having conversations about hope, if maybe they're not very hopeful, if maybe what they believe or what they talk about is so negative that it is devoid of hope, and so maybe starting conversations about what am I hoping for, what am I expecting out of my relationships, out of the places that I'm in or being able to offer to the world? Where's the hope? Do I know it? Am I the rat? Am I the person that's supposed to be bringing you hope with my patchy fur? Am I the person who is bringing those good, bringing you hope with my patchy fur? Am I the person who is, you know, bringing those good tidings of comfort and joy, or am I supposed to even?
Speaker 2:yeah, just look for it you make such a great um point more than a point, um, when, when we, when you say that we've come through places where both of us have experienced, uh, a dark night of the soul or a lack of hope, or something stopped us in our tracks and we didn't really know how we were going to get around that, something stopped us in our tracks and we didn't really know how we were going to get around that.
Speaker 2:And, um, I just wonder sometimes if, when we have no hope and then we make it through that place of hopelessness and we continue on with our life and maybe there's another space where there's a lack of hope or something that we couldn't get around, do we look back at the first time that hope showed up, which emily dickinson?
Speaker 2:Emily dickinson says that it is a bird. It's like a bird perched in our soul, like it's always present. They're singing, but maybe we can't hear it, maybe we don't want to hear it, we can't find the bird or whatever, but it's always there. But when we get to that second or third or fourth place where there's no hope and we look back to the places where we have overcome or we have walked through that gate of hell or that portal of disconnection or rejection or whatever the word might be for that emotion? Is it that we forget and then we just offer blind hope based on something we find in First or Second Testament Like how is hope rendered in our culture and in our times for people that have forgotten what hope looks like?
Speaker 1:I think that it's rendered many ways or it can be, but I think that, as a people who are following the way of Jesus, who showed us into love, I think that Jesus' whole humanity and only what we see as the witness of other people who lived alongside of Jesus. But turning water into wine, that to me is a message of hope. Raising the dead that's a message of hope. Curing leprosy that's a message of hope. And so I think hope looks like many different things to many different people, based on their needs. This was years ago, but I was listening to someone's pain and, because I had been through a similar place, I was trying to be very mindful not to say, oh, I've been there or I understand, because I think that can be very dismissive. And so I was being careful to listen and not to assume that I knew exactly what. But when they explained it and I asked the question, tell me more? And they began to explain it, I knew that I had been in those dark places with them. And that's one of the reasons why Advent speaks so beautifully to me, because it is in the practice of being in the dark and being able to see there's potential that birth would be happening, that there's happening that darkness is not just a prison, that it is a womb-like experience, that we don't always have to be bright, shiny and growing, that there are seasons of rest and renewal that come to us in the darkness, but, ultimately, that the presence of the Spirit is with us in everything. So that's one of the things that I love about practicing in Advent is practicing the hope of the darkness that it will not always be like this, that there will be a way to function. And the Advent in the darkness asks us to slow down. We don't go as quickly when we can't see something, and I think that slowing then leads us into contemplation and leads us into places where the spirit can absolutely be transformative.
Speaker 1:But I was listening to this person's story and I recognized that they had no hope that this would ever change. And it was not just something that I knew in my gut, it was something that I heard them say repeatedly this will not change, this will not change, this will not change, this is never. And I said I have a question for you Is there any trust that you have in me as a person? And they said yes, absolutely. And I said well, I will carry the hope for you. You don't have to have it, I'll have it. Just stay close to me, just stay in this relationship and I'll carry the hope for you until you feel like you can take it back. And they agreed. And I will tell you that it's been more than 10 years and they have their own hope now and I carried it for them for a while.
Speaker 1:But that sometimes that's what we do for people too, that we ourselves stay hopeful, that we don't. I saw my friend's pain and I saw the trauma and it was real, but recognizing as much as there is darkness and there is holy in the darkness there is an invitation into the life, in the spirit, the spirit that hovers over the chaos and that invites us to co-create this beautiful kingdom, this new world. This other way of thinking and maybe the other way of thinking has to be we take ideas like hope is a beautiful, fragile bird and we look at her and go, oh, she also might be a patchy-furred sewer rat. You know like there is hope that things don't stay the same and yet there is hope that what will be rebuilt will be something far more glorious than the first.
Speaker 2:I love that story. Thank you for sharing that and the invitation to practice holding hope. Like I hadn't thought of it that way before, perhaps. Holding hope Like I hadn't thought of it that way before, perhaps. But if we could hold hope for someone that has none this season, what would it look like? And is it easier for us who have hope now? Maybe we have more hope than we had last year, maybe we have less hope than we had last year, maybe we have less hope than we had last year, but is it possible for us to practice that and offer that to someone who may need that this season? I love that. I love that thought. I'm just sitting with that and holding it. I don't think I've ever carried hope for someone Like. What was that like?
Speaker 1:I was particularly aware of the fact that I, in my expression or what I've experienced, hope is the thing that lights, the spark. It is like the little light that shows us how to get to the greater light. And so what I recognized was my friend was in a very fragile space. To be somewhere without any hope feels like you're. You know that's an open door toward depression or toward further trauma or for further, you know, a deepening of a grief or of a lament.
Speaker 1:And so, because I was aware that I was the person holding the hope, it made me more intentional with the connection with that person. You know I didn't expect that person to reach out and call and or make forward motion that I recognized I was holding the hope. Sometimes hope motivates us and if that person had lacked motivation toward, you know, progress or toward things that are ahead, I recognized that it was going to be through relationship and it really meant to me very much. I've done this many times with my small children where if they have need of something, I've held whatever they felt like they needed or they wanted to discard, but I've held it in my hand and then I just stayed close to them and I think that connection and closeness is the way that we can hold someone's hope that especially in our world and how we experience community.
Speaker 1:Community is not just geographically set to one small space anymore, you know. We can be in community with people who are very different from us, but also in varied places than us. And so, recognizing how important that connection is and making ways to stay close to someone intentionally, and eventually, she said, because we talked about it, she said I don't think you held my hope. She said I think your hope rubbed off on me, and so, whether it was her hope that I've held for her, or whether I had enough hope to share that that kind of connection can inspire, I guess I believe that everyone has a hope, because I believe that the Spirit lives in us and the Spirit is hopeful, but sometimes we don't see.
Speaker 1:And sometimes things haven't been unveiled yet or unwrapped yet, or there is such a pain that we can't see past that pain. But I am of the belief that every person has a hope, because the light of Christ that's in all of us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm thinking about something that you know in my own experience, where it was dark or there were moments in my history that I didn't think I would ever pass through it. And I've often held this title for a book and I've shared it with a few people not many people, but this title of the Three Times that God Disappeared, the three times that God disappeared. And in holding that over the years, those three particular markers in my life, one of the common threads that I've noticed is that trust was broken. That trust caused me to or mistrust. A lack of trust caused me to or mistrust. A lack of trust made the hope meter fall and decline, and I wonder if you have any experience with that. Can we hope without trust? Can we hope without love? Can we hope without faith? Can we hope without faith? Can we hope without peace? Are these Advent themes that we're getting ready to experience all interchangeable and interconnected in a way that brings us into the light, out of the dark place, into a place of hope, peace, faith and love?
Speaker 1:It's a powerful question that you ask, and I certainly wouldn't consider myself an expert in hope, but I would tell you that I have at least an advanced degree in holding onto hope. I feel like I have a lot of grit when it comes to holding on to hope, and I think that hope is different than luck or different than I think you used the words earlier a blind hope. I think it's essential to know where my hope is like when you have a grappling hook, if you know where that hook is in or the strength of the rock that it is connected to. I feel for myself, I don't always have hope that people will change. I have experience that says that they don't.
Speaker 1:But my hope is not necessarily in that people will change, but my hope is in the fact that love is eternal and that God one day will right every wrong and that one day all the things that have harmed will be healed, and one day.
Speaker 1:And so my hope is not necessarily in a particular time, but in the eternal and in the eternal one, and not in the sweet by and by particular time, but in the eternal and in the eternal one and not in the sweet by and by. But what that does for my soul to be able to say my hope is in God, my hope is in love, my hope is in the power of spirit, who creates from the chaos, and sometimes, when I see chaos, even naming it as look at this beautiful place for the spirit to work, look what we have created in our world, and then the mantra of come, holy Spirit, come. And what does that mean for the Holy Spirit to come? Not that I get out of the way, but if I'm inviting the Spirit that I'm inviting, use my hands, use my words, use my life, use my imagination to bring the kingdom that we're asking for, the kingdom of God that is so full of love and goodness and the prayer that we've been praying, as it is in heaven, may it be on earth.
Speaker 1:I want to see that and I believe in the hope that is the promise to come. It's yeah for me. What do I have my hope in? I am disappointed when I put my hope in someone to keep their word. Yeah, that has disappointed me. But when my hope is in the eternal and again, not in the afterlife the eternal that is present, the spirit that is present. When my hope is in the spirit who breathes life into dead things, who wakens the seeds and brings the springtime, who tells the leaves to drop and to take a rest, you know, my hope is that resurrection spirit is in the spirit of the divine, who calls us all into oneness and wholeness. That's a beautiful thought. 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.
Speaker 2:It's interesting that you bring Spirit into this conversation, not that she's not always present with us, but that was one of the transitions for me when I felt hope slipping away. There was a particular verse in First Testament, in the Psalms, I think, around 25 somewhere, I can't remember, but it's close to 25. I can't remember, but it's close to 25. That I put my trust, it says, in God, and I changed it to spirit. I put my trust in you, spirit, I put my trust in my soul is entrusted to spirit and I'm trusting you, spirit, with my life. It's a bad version of the text, but my point is I had to change hope. I couldn't, in my particular case, keep walking the same faith path, even until I connected somehow differently with the light that you're describing Like. I needed to have a different experience and I needed to find a way. I believed that God existed, I believed that spirit existed, that Jesus was at the center of my faith, but the hope of what even Advent is about, of what even Advent is about, this coming of light, of this new birth, of this freshness, seemed so far away like I couldn't even touch it, I couldn't even imagine, and so I just want to encourage people today that might be listening to this is it's a real thing not to have hope. You know, it is a very real thing not to have it, and I was reading something the other day I don't know if I have the author's name Bruce Feller suggests that we undergo meaningful transitions once every 12 to 18 months, and this spoke in a way to me that says I'm either going into transition, I'm either in the middle of a transition or I'm coming out of one. Right, that's a lot of change in our lives. If we think about every 12 to 18 months, there's some kind of transition for us, and so, as I hold hope today, I'm thinking of it in similar ways that I'm entering Advent.
Speaker 2:I'm entering this season, this first theme of Advent called hope, and I feel like I'm at the beginning of something that I haven't yet experienced. It hasn't been birthed in me yet. It's coming right, but you and I have been through many Advents. Yes, year after year after year, or season after season, or time after time, advent meaning this Christmas season. And yet here we are, in expectation, in this excitement of waiting. So is patience a part of hope? Do I need to wait? Do I need to linger. Do I need to hover? Do I need to be still? Do I need to hover? Do I need to be still Like as I enter this place of light and renewal? If I'm seeking hope, what am I doing in this waiting period, in the now and the not yet? What's happening I had for you today is what does centering your hope on love for God or others mean to you? Like when you center your hope of love towards God or towards other people, what does that mean in your life?
Speaker 1:Well, personally, it means I love Advent because it's an invitation to slow, and it's an invitation to claim the sacredness and practice sacredness in every season of our life, not just in the sunshine, not just in where we are experiencing growth, but where we are experiencing what may to some people, and even to ourselves, if we're looking, feel like nothing is happening, nothing is changing. Well, this might be a winter season where we accept the slowing that creation offers us, the invitation to rest in the fact that god has put beautiful things there. But darkness, um, does something powerful to our sights it, it widens our eyes. We begin to see glimmers of things when we turn all the lights off, or when light is. There are the lights that we can't see during the day, but at nighttime we're able to see their little glimmer or shimmer, and sometimes those are the very stars that lead us to a better place, to a new experience. And so sometimes the dark is absolutely necessary to increase our vision. And, in fact, my children love pirates, and so they remind me all the time that there's a particular pirate who is known to always have worn an eye patch, and that way, when he was fighting someone and it got dark, he could just switch, because I was always used to being in the dark and he saw out of both eyes, but he kept one in darkness, so that he would always have the advantage.
Speaker 1:And I was thinking about the idea of what would that look like for us to have the ability to recognize sacred in the bright, sunny places, but also recognize sacred in the damp and in the dark and in the places that feel like the earth Like. Maybe it feels like a grave, maybe it feels like the seed that is buried, but there's holy in the hope of all of that. And you asked me where I begin with that. To me it begins with my understanding that I agree with you and agree with the psalmist who said my hope is in the Lord, my hope is in God and in your rendition, my hope is in spirit, god being spirit. But sometimes it is just as much as saying maybe my view of God needs to be changed. Maybe I need a different idea of who God is. Maybe I have an image of God that does not line up with the loving, beautiful, expansive spirit that God actually is. Maybe my perception needs to be expanded, and I am excited about the fact that Advent offers that to us, in fact, anytime that our eyes need correction, when you go to the eye doctor and they dilate your eyes, they widen that pupil, but they're like you're going to be sensitive to bright lights. You know, wear these dark glasses for a while until the healing begins.
Speaker 1:And so I think sometimes that there is healing that actually begins in the dark, that there is goodness and wholeness that begins in the slowing. It begins in waiting for the light, and you mentioned Advent just now, at the beginning of this particular topic. And I just go back to my holy imagination with Mary. There's no way she could have imagined Jesus and his impact in the world, but she had a visitation, she had an experience, and in her understanding she was asked to co-create. The Spirit said are you up to this? We have a plan. And her response was let it be. I mean, she couldn't have had the whole thing figured out and we are not given the same thing. But I think that the invitation is that the Christ is going to be birthed in all of us, that we would also respond to any prompting of the Spirit with okay, let it be, be it unto me, according to your word, because I can trust and I have hope that what you're creating now and what you're inviting me into is good.
Speaker 2:Yes, that what you're creating now and what you're inviting me into is good, mm-hmm, yes, yes, there's something that I'm trying to pull up in the back of my mind that I read a couple of days ago. Someone else's words pull up in in the back of my mind that I read a couple of days ago, someone else's words um, when we're talking about this season of, how does hope change us in these transitions of life, or transitions of time and space, how does hope change us? Because that's really what we're talking about is we're hoping that there's change. We're hoping that there's more love for people to be healed. We're hoping that war ends. We're hoping that global warming that seems to be melting Every part of our world and earth is somehow turned off. We're hoping that our neighbor's son or daughter comes home from war. We're hoping. We're hoping for some kind of change, some visible, tangible way to see light and love breaking into the world. And so we keep hoping, and sometimes we have to carry that hope as you just described to us. We have to carry it for someone.
Speaker 2:But one of the things I heard the other day was this and you use the word co-create with the divine, like that's how hope breaks in, and that's how Jesus breaks in to this season. Right, because Mary had hoped that this angel was telling her the truth. She trusted this voice that maybe she didn't know or didn't understand or never had seen or heard, but there was something that she held to as she transitioned through that dark place where she knew there was going to be rumors and gnashing of teeth against her for all sorts of reasons, but she remained faithful to the divine partnership that she was being called to. And it sounds like this divine partnership, divine human partnership that you spoke of, where you carried hope for someone that could not carry it for themselves. That's the light of advent, that's the, that's the light of hope. That that I see, that I can actually physically do in a season and in a world where people are struggling to find it. It's not that it doesn't exist. Hope is here.
Speaker 1:And I think that hope is cultivated through conversations, hope is cultivated through actions, hope is cultivated when we practically love our neighbors and we love ourselves and we love the people around us. And we cultivate hope through, I think, a life of repentance. And in this repentance that Jesus offered us, it was a life of changing the way that you think and this idea that hope stands in the face of fear, hope stands in the face of betrayal, in the face of depression, in the place of all of these things, and says there is another way, there's a better way, there is a brighter light, there is a healing that is offered for all brokenness. And we just recently had this conversation because I was describing something that was by one of the prophets in the First Testament, where it said that one day you will no longer train your sons for war and you will no longer use swords against each other, but you'll beat them into plowshares. And I was sitting across the table from a woman who said I cannot imagine a world without war. And so I paused and I said well, well, I can let me tell you what it would be like. And I said I'd be interested in your input. And we actually paused and we said what would it be like for people not to resort to violence when they are angry? What would it be like when our anger is so sacred and so righteous that it only propels us to do good and not harm? What is it going to be like? And so, taking a moment to actually allow our imagination to be filled with the Spirit, what would it look like for a world with no war? Shelley, that's possible, yeah, but we have to imagine it first. We have to give ourselves permission to say what would it look like for us to have conversations when we had disagreements, and not immediately cut people out or, because we disagree with them, not hear them, or, because we disagree with them, defame them, but to be able to say if I believe that there is a potential for a world without war, then what am I doing to be a peacemaker? What am I doing to change the way that people's thoughts are? And I don't again.
Speaker 1:It can be as simple as a conversation. It can be us expressing our intention through a podcast. It can be reading poetry that expands us. It can be baking for a neighbor or sitting with someone who doesn't have hope and holding hope for them, but it also to me, hope is connected very deeply to relationship. It's connected very deeply to connection, to what does it look like to recognize that the body of Christ that is here on the earth today, that we are all so genuinely connected to each other and that we recognize our connectionness to the whole, to what love is intending to do here, how the kingdom wants to break through, and Jesus's words to us were that it's so close, it's even in your mouth. I want the kingdom that is in the atmosphere around us to be ones of love, and so I have great imagination for how hope propels us into loving action.
Speaker 2:You have a hopeful imagination.
Speaker 2:That's what you have hopeful, and I have hopeful thoughts and I have well as you're as you're, as you're saying these things, there, there's so many little places that I want to jump with you and I know we don't have time for that today. People that you know, people of faith, and people that are not even part of churches are, you know, just seeing, for example, faith practices that go against even a hopeful imagination that you just described. And so when you say that, I'm like I can see a world, I can imagine a world where love is this expansive blanket that covers us all, and then I can imagine somebody on the other side of that blanket saying you know, you're taking up too much of this blanket right now and have many reasons why they don't want to share the blanket.
Speaker 1:But, shelley, do we really have to share the blanket? We'll just get two. We believe in a God who is more than enough. Yes, yes, we can imagine another way of doing it.
Speaker 2:There is this kinship that we long for right. I do believe that there is this. You say kingdom, I say kingdom or queendom, even, you know, even bring the queens and the kings into this space, where hope is the breath of life. Yeah, hope is the breath of life. I would love to be part of that world. Let's make it. Yes, let's do.
Speaker 1:I want to read a prayer as I enter the dark, by Patti Joy Posen. I am humbled. An invitation to welcome darkness knocks at my door. Divine Mother, be with me as I greet the darkness. May the cloak of peace and hope wrap around me. May I listen to the voices, see the beauty in knowing, hear with an open heart, feel the caress of darkness, touch and not be afraid, and emerge above the murky waters and bloom with the beauty of a lotus. And as the rhythm of joy moves through my body. May I, as a butterfly, know lightness of being and be renewed. Amen, amen. 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.