The Expansionist Podcast

A Widening Embrace - with Dr. Matte Downey

• Shelly Shepherd and Heather Drake • Season 2 • Episode 1

Share episode

Send us a text

What happens when you challenge traditional beliefs and set out on a path of expansive theology? Dr. Matte Downey joins us to unravel the mysteries of faith in a world hungry for diverse narratives. Her book, "Go Wide," serves as a beacon, guiding us through the transformative power of storytelling, from biblical parables to the enchanting worlds of C.S. Lewis and Tolkien. Together, we explore how embracing broader perspectives and questioning inherited traditions can lead to a more inclusive faith experience, filled with hope and joy even in the most turbulent times.

Our conversation leads us into the realm of community learning, where curiosity thrives and diverse voices are celebrated. By examining stories that Jesus told, like the parable of the woman searching for her lost coin , we uncover unique portrayals of the divine and reflect on our own roles in these sacred narratives. This episode champions the shift from solitary study to communal exploration, highlighting the profound insights that emerge when we listen and learn together.

Finally, we confront the shadows of fear that often loom over our spiritual journeys. Dr. Downey shares personal anecdotes and insights on how community support and love can empower us to face fear with courage.  Join us as we navigate these rich themes, offering listeners a chance to transform their perspective and embrace the ever-expanding canvas of faith and storytelling.

Heather Drake:

Heather Drake. Welcome to the Expansionist Podcast with Shelly 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. Hello, this is Heather Drake, and I'm with Shelly Shepard and our friend Dr Matte Downey, and we're excited to be having a conversation today, one that expands our imaginations into what it looks like to practice an expansive theology and to live an expansive story. Shelley, it's good to actually be with you again.

Shelly Shepherd:

Yes, thank you, heather, good to see you.

Heather Drake:

Our podcast is now over a year old, so we're excited about that, and we're certainly excited to have a conversation with what feels like a new friend, and so I want to introduce our listeners to Dr Matte Downey, and I found her things, I think, through the algorithm, through the spirit, through common ideas, and started listening to some of her little reels and reading her posts, but also then reading her work and her book. You want to tell us a little bit about your book and about what's the message that you want to spread.

Dr. Matte Downey:

Welcome, Matte, it's good to have you. Yes, Hi, thanks so much for reaching out and having me. I love to be with you and get to make new friends as well and, if I might, the first thing I kind of like to do if I'm doing something public-facing, is to do territorial acknowledgement. I live in Montreal and that is on the unceded indigenous lands of the Ghanian Gehaga Nation, also known as the Mohawk Nation, and I'm grateful for their stewardship of lands and waters and so much more for many generations and up to this day, and I hope to be a good neighbor with my indigenous brothers and sisters.

Heather Drake:

That's beautiful, and so I come from Ocala, not originally, but for the past 30 years, and so on this particular land, it is the Seminole and the Creek Indians, and we also give thanks for their presence currently and also what they have offered to us.

Shelly Shepherd:

Yes, and in San Diego. The native history here is the Kamai Indians, and those that settled here were initially from that Kamai tribe.

Dr. Matte Downey:

Matte tell us about Go Wide. Oh, yes, well, I think it's kind of encapsulated in the title I hope Go Wide, and that's it. It's a verb in there too. It wasn't the original title of I hope Go Wide, and that's it. It's a verb in there too. It wasn't the original title of the book, but that's what we landed with Go Wide and this idea of we're always being invited to be learners, to be curious, to expand our ideas, because, I mean, we can only really look through one set of eyes. That's our eyes and our experience, and that's wonderful. But it's also a limitation. And I think it's an invitation for us to really engage with people who see the world and experience the world in different ways than we do, than we do, and realize that the story is so much bigger and so much more beautiful and so much more complex than if we just are looking through our own eyes and interpreting things through our own experience. And that's really what I tried to bring to this book, which is quite theological. It has a little bit of an academic flavor to it, but don't be alarmed, I tried to write it really excessively. There's stories and anecdotes and it is primarily focused on the stories in the biblical narrative, and I mean almost half of the Bible is narrative, so it is a very strong genre and way of communicating. We find that in the teachings of Jesus too, narrative stories, parables. I mean very, very strong way of communicating. We find that in the teachings of Jesus too, narrative stories, parables I mean very, very strong way of communicating.

Dr. Matte Downey:

And so with this book I really wanted to invite people to think maybe about things they hadn't thought about before, just because, you know, especially for those of us who grew up in the church, we get told Bible stories and we hear sermons and we just kind of take it in and we become indoctrinated. And that's not a bad word necessarily. It just means that we all grow up in a certain way of. We are told things and we believe them, we take them on as our own, but as we adult more we kind of can question some of those things and that's a very good process too and expand on what we have inherited as our faith traditions. So really the book is taking familiar biblical stories, for the most part familiar biblical and theological doctrines, and pulling at them a bit and saying can we see these maybe from a different perspective? Have we thought about it in this way, and what might that mean? Going forward for how we can live more expansively and more inclusively and, like you say, live a better story, live into a better story?

Heather Drake:

I think, where we find ourselves in the world right now, that we are on the precipice of needing a much better story, and I am a person that was very influenced by CS Lewis and by Tolkien, especially in my very early years, and so this understanding that there is a deeper magic still, that there is a story, that if you know the story underneath it, it can anchor you in joy, it can anchor you in incredible hope, even when things around you don't necessarily look hopeful or look like places for joy. So I invite a further conversation between us going how do we open our eyes or practice our holy imagination to be able to change perspective, to maybe have the courage to say I've only always seen it this way. Is it possible that there is another way of seeing this, of viewing this, of living this, and how that draws us, I think, deeper into the story of Jesus and what he offers to us?

Dr. Matte Downey:

Yeah, definitely. I think there's a lot of things that we can do, and what I do now I don't even teach in theology now what I do is I teach storytelling and writing, and there's so many things that we can learn from this the way we tell our stories, who's telling the story? But I go back to the stories that Jesus told and he used this very much as a teaching tool and an engagement tool. So telling parables and parables are basically puzzle stories and they're meant to challenge and engage the hearers and the readers and get them to wrestle with some of their assumptions or presuppositions or things they might think. Well, that's just the way it is. And suddenly they go wait, wait, what's he talking about? And one of the primary things that parables do is invite us to ask who are we in this story?

Dr. Matte Downey:

So if you take some of the parables that Jesus told quite a few parables with landowners featuring as a major character, and the way I was taught these was you know, god is the landowner, but the people that would have been hearing these stories would not have been landowners. They would have been people more on the bottom edge of society, poorer people, people that were struggling to make ends meet, and landowners were seen as the people who took advantage of them. And so just to assume that a landowner is the good person that's challenged or that the landowner is God, because then you're superimposing these two things together. When landowners were seen as the people in power who took advantage of others, and when we impose that on God, then suddenly we got to wrestle with something right. So I think this was I first read this, I think Amy Jill Levine, who's a Jewish New Testament scholar and talking about this really questioning our assumption that the power person in a parable is always God, because sometimes that person in the parable is not acting justly and we're invited to observe that and go well, what do we do about that?

Dr. Matte Downey:

Who are we in this story? Are we identifying with the landowner? Are we identifying with the slaves or the servants? Who are we identifying with right? And there's no neat and tidy answer. There's no one. Here's one moral thing, point that you get from the story and there you go, all finished. No, it's always like you go away wrestling with these ideas and trying to really go how are these relationships working? Are they just? Are they unjust? What is what action am I being called to what way of living in a better way with others am I being called to?

Shelly Shepherd:

I love that. Wow, that was just amazing. Thank you for that explanation and deep dive on the parable, on the parable of the puzzle, the puzzle parable Something in your work that I noticed you talk about storytelling connecting us as humans, and it invites shared vulnerability vulnerability, and I'd like for you to maybe talk a little bit about that. But also, when you bumped into these places of what's going on in the context of this story, who's in the story? Who's left out of the story? How do you, how do you wrestle with or process or get others to interrogate the text, like you just described, like how do you invite people to do that so that they have a different way of a different lens, or they flip it and can see it uh, you know from a different lens, or they flip it and can see it, you know, from a different position or preference. How has that worked for you? Or how do you get other people to do that? And then maybe you could talk about how this vulnerability plays into our storytelling.

Dr. Matte Downey:

That's a really good question, and maybe you can tell me how to get people to do that. I mean, you can invite people. Definitely. You can present something and say have you thought about it? This way? I try not to present things as it's a finished statement here. You should never that.

Dr. Matte Downey:

I try to invite people to consider something and ask questions and invite them to be curious, and that can be threatening to people that find safety and stability in certainty, and so you can't always get over that hump, so to speak, but you try. You keep inviting people to be curious and maybe that's all you can do and encouraging them. And the thing that is really important to me as an educator is creating a safe space for people to express their questions, their doubts, their imperfectly formed ideas and share parts of themselves that feel kind of vulnerable or like they're opening themselves up it's a bit raw, maybe and to give a space where they say that is welcome here. You are totally okay to bring that question and say I don't know what to do with this or this makes me mad when you ask me to engage in it this way, like just tell us what's going on and we will process it together, because together we will always have a more complete and full perspective than just one person trying to do that themselves.

Dr. Matte Downey:

So yeah, there's that community aspect of we learn as a community. We don't learn individually, which we kind of do. That's a western model that we sit at home, we read our bible by and maybe some other commentaries or voices and books, which are all great, I do all of it but this idea of learning in community is a different way of engaging with the biblical text, with each other, with the divine, with even how we see Jesus. So I think it's helpful. When we do it in community and where people feel okay to just honestly express themselves, something really special can happen, and transformational as well.

Shelly Shepherd:

And don't we wish we would have had that invitation when we were growing up to just be in a safe place and kind of share whatever way we saw the particular story that was being shared. But thank you for that.

Heather Drake:

So, based on what you've just said, I want to invite us to take a moment and listen to the story, or the parable that Jesus offers.

Heather Drake:

When Jesus tells us that God is like a woman who looks for a lost coin, that's one of my favorite parables, to start with, when we're talking about Jesus and about his telling us a better story of who God is.

Heather Drake:

I think that I grew up in church and I grew up in the holiness Pentecostal tradition, and in our particular church we went seven days a week, so I also have heard the stories many, many times and engaged in a certain way. And then, when I started an expansion journey and looking at things and going, if I turn this on its head or if I look at it from this perspective, what can I see? And I felt like this was one of the parables that had the least amount of talk time and I was like, why have we excluded this parable that God is like a woman who is searching for a coin? And so I would love to talk about the fact that Putting yourself in the position of a coin, the one that God is searching for is a really beautiful way of connection and reminding all of the lost coins, that God is coming for us in really beautiful and in restorative ways. But I wonder what you could share with us or see in that particular parable that might be something that we haven't seen before.

Dr. Matte Downey:

Oh, the pressure's on. I think again, I don't always remember these things. Despite having read the Bible many, many times, I don't always remember all the details. I think that's one of a section of parables describing the kingdom of.

Heather Drake:

God. God is like a shepherd and God is the father with the prodigal.

Dr. Matte Downey:

Yes, so I think it's important and I have done this in the past.

Dr. Matte Downey:

I think I might have presented a paper on this where reading them in conjunction with each other and how they all add and build on each other and show us different perspectives, and the one that God is like a woman searching for a coin, I think, as we just hear, the prodigal son, one very much told separately. And I think what if you always, every time you told that one, you had to connect it to God is a woman searching for a coin and God is a father searching for not one but two sons One son that is close but distant in some way and one son that is far away but closer to his heart in some way? And what if we connect these two and we say it's always God as mother and God as father and you can never separate the two? Because I think when we separate them without meaning to, I think we bring alienation into that story, because it's all about men, the prodigal son, the two sons and the father.

Dr. Matte Downey:

Where is the mother in this story? We don't get a female presence in that story at all. We don't get a female presence in that story at all and you would probably know this, as females in the church, women in the church, very often you're not represented, whether from the pulpit or leadership, or in stories that are told or in authors, theological authors, that we are reading. We're just not represented. And these can all be very good authors and good preachers and good leaders that we have, but they will never walk through the world as a woman, so they will never see things that we see, and I think we need that perspective.

Dr. Matte Downey:

So, I'd almost want to like write, write an expansion, or write, uh, some kind of short story based on this woman looking for a coin, and expand it a bit so it carries the same kind of weight that the that we put on that story of the the prodigal son, and we've so much talked about who the father is, and I think, well, who's the? Who's the woman searching for that coin? What are her qualities, what is she like, what came before and after this? And really explore that. And I think only a woman could really tell that story, and from a particular point in time as well. I think we have to be a little bit aware of that as well.

Dr. Matte Downey:

So I would love I mean I'm excited now to kind of explore her story a little more, because she's intriguing, she's a strong woman, she's persistent, she is faithful, she is committed. It seems she has some kind of good standing with her neighbors and her community because she's hospitable, she invites them all to come and celebrate and she's extravagant in some way. I think this amount of coins would have been a bit of a significant amount. So, as we see, the story of the father and the prodigal son is extravagant in sharing with others. So is this woman very centered on her search, because there's something precious that she wants to recover, but there's also. She cannot celebrate that alone. She has to celebrate and invite others into that joy. Just a few thoughts on that.

Heather Drake:

That's beautiful, brilliant, brilliant, exciting. What you said inspired me to think about something that Shelly and I were talking about earlier today how Jesus asks that, wherever his story was told, that the story of Mary would the mandate to tell another part of the story, and so I love what you offered and join with you in telling that story. And again, then, that leads me to believe that telling the story of a shepherd reminds us of God's connection and care for creation and our responsibility to care for the earth, to care for creation, to trust that God is coming for it. But then how do we participate in that? So such brilliant, wonderful imaginations that we have together. But I'm excited about that. But talk for a moment, shelley, join in here on the story of Mary Magdalene and what it means to us and how we tell a better story by telling her story as well.

Shelly Shepherd:

Yeah, I'm excited to hear this, matt, you're asking me.

Dr. Matte Downey:

I thought Shelley was going to give us an exposition here on Mary Magdalene. I was going to sit and listen. The instructors for me here have been Catholic because they really did not drop the Mary story and have heightened it. And I used to because I read a lot of theology and the place where I went had a lot of Catholic scholars and they would give me text to read and one had a whole chapter on Mary and I would roll my eyes and go, oh my goodness, no, I'm writing about Jesus, I'm not writing about Mary here. But you know I had to read the chapter and I just look back and go see that was my not being curious. I was just, you know, certain of my stance, but I did get more curious about Mary as well and people who have studied all the Marys and kind of put their stories together and what they have to offer us. But I feel I'm very much still a student in this, in learning that these are the people that Jesus chose to surround himself with and these people chose Jesus. It's a both-and two-way street.

Dr. Matte Downey:

And then their stories were highlighted by the writers of the Gospels for a reason that I mean the writers all being men, mostly in very patriarchal society, and highlighting so many women some named, some not but making sure that these get into the story.

Dr. Matte Downey:

And I think I don't want to overlook that and just take it for granted, because I've heard it so often that when we talk about Mary, his mother, when we talk about Mary one of his closest companions, that always seemed to be there, she was like I don't know, I'd have to read up on this, but I don't think Jesus ever rebuked her as a disciple. And the male disciples were often told you're not getting it. Oh, come on guys. No, don't do that, don't be fighting for prominence. Come on, mary's not doing that, she's not doing that. She is almost our most faithful and most receptive disciple, that we have, an example to us all, and I think that is difficult for a church that became very much steeped in patriarchy within the next few centuries after Jesus to accept that our example is a woman, of being really a faithful and true disciple.

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.

Shelly Shepherd:

Thank goodness for the Catholic Church recognizing that Mary Magdalene had a better story to tell. Even I think it was what 1969 or 70 that they decided okay, we're going to put Mary Magdalene front and center and maybe even reverse some of the story that had been told about her in the past. So grateful for the Catholics bringing that to us Beautiful.

Dr. Matte Downey:

Yeah, and I could tell the most complete story I can, and yet only male leadership allowed in the Catholic church. So they have given us a great gift in preserving and highlighting the story of Mary and then not done such a great job in enacting it in their governmental structures. So something to learn from that too.

Shelly Shepherd:

Yeah, that that's a whole other podcast I'm sure for us to think about, because I was in a similar. I was getting ready to say I was in a similar group last evening with a group of theologians one philosopher and three theologians and we were talking about the one had just last year had done the Camino pilgrimage, and so there was quite a bit of conversation about around it. And then he invited another conversation that he was doing another trip to Nicaea this year and was inviting people to that. And I said, well, I said I'm planning to attend a pilgrimage with Mary Magdalene in France this year, and with just a hint of sarcasm, one of the theologians tilts his head and says Mary Magdalene. And I was just waiting for him to say something, you know something else behind it. But he said I think she's in the Bible, right? And so here we have these, you know, very seasoned theologians talking about this story that in the gospel says anytime this story is told, her story will be told. And yet he was surprised that there was even a pilgrimage or a feast of Mary Magdalene. And so I'm with you there is some kind of patriarchal divide that we still find ourselves in, for sure. But the beauty of her story. If we're going to talk about the story for a few minutes, the beauty of her story is that we can actually see ourselves very clearly in many, many ways in the story of Mary Magdalene, and I think that's what makes her, as this role model, so powerful in the gospel stories. Powerful in the gospel stories Even if you don't use her gospel. That's in the non-canonized section of the Apocrypha we still get in the canonized version of the Bible. We still have this ability to see ourselves in Mary Magdalene and that just is like so exciting to Heather and I in many, many ways. So we love that story. We love it so much.

Shelly Shepherd:

And there's something else that I wanted to dip into. Heather, if you have something, jump in. Yep, okay, in chapter three of Go Wide you talk about, the divine is always in motion, always moving towards us, and this is the whole story really. God is not static, not committed to the status quo, not a set of laws or attributes, but alive and moving and responding and interacting. Some call it the divine dance. What a beautiful paragraph that is. Talk to us a little bit about the movement. Are you talking about the spirit there, or are you talking about a different kind of dance with God. What is this piece that's?

Dr. Matte Downey:

a good question. What is that? I think what I'm talking about mostly is the relational aspect of we're always in relation and I see God I have a whole chapter on Trinity there of really seeing God as always being in a community, so always relating to others, not as this singular one above everyone else making decrees and laws and making sure everyone stays in line, but really a community within God's self. So there's always, when you talk about relationship and not doctrine, you're immediately invoking a different kind of paradigm for talking with how we relate to God. So the movement is I mean, we all have relationships. Some of, have you know, especially family relationships, I think, can be very close relationships. Some of us have you know, especially family relationships, I think, can be very close. These are always moving. There's always like there's nothing static about relationships. I don't think Certainly. There's strands, consistent strands that are through them. You know that, you know there's a sense of faithfulness and we know what this person is like, but then they surprise us as well and then they do something that we, you know there's a sense of faithfulness and we know what this person is like, but then they surprise us as well and then they do something that we're going oh, I didn't know they had it in them. Or children as they mature. They're like something blossoming and opening in front of our eyes and going wow, look at all this imagination and capability and wonder. And I think that's how we're meant to interact with each other and with creation. Look at this coming into being and the coming into being never stops, right. I mean, I have trees. I'm in a fairly new neighborhood. It's well new, it's 20 years old and every year I look at the tree outside my front window and I go look at you, you just grew another couple of feet Amazing, how did you do that? And there are new leaves, and then there's some older leaves, and then there's newer bark and then there's some scars. I'm just going you are a different tree, but the same tree, but you're kind of a different tree every year and I'm so excited by this growth of this tree, this becoming a very mature tree in front of my eyes, that every year I notice there's something new and different. But still something totally familiar about that and I think that's what I'm talking about is that we are always being invited to become more. Like you talk about a better story, we're always invited to become better, more whole as people. We're invited to participate in communities and make them better and more whole. We're invited to be better neighbors all the time. This is just an invitation to.

Dr. Matte Downey:

We have endless capacity for learning, I think, and that is that's basically my my thing. I'm a learner. I love being part of a learning community and I love being an educator in learning communities, because there's always something new happening. It is so exciting. I mean, the best thing for me is when I'm in a classroom and people do something and they discover something new and I'm like vicariously just having the biggest moment of joy in my life because I'm going, someone discovered something new, because we were together and we were doing something. So that's just my paradigm. This gets me very excited is learning and discovering new things and seeing that we can always do more, learn more, be more as we turn our eyes outward, to this wonderful world, this created world that we are part of, and the more we explore it and learn about it, the more whole we become in some way and the bigger our experience is.

Heather Drake:

In the message translation of Ephesians, the book of Ephesians, there's a part that says that you will be made whole and holy by God's love.

Heather Drake:

So the invitation into wholeness, into holiness, into belonging, into embodiment, into the ritual and the mystery, is an invitation, we think, into the better story, into the bigger story that God's telling that we would actually mature into more loving people, more gentle people, that our kindness would just be known to everyone.

Heather Drake:

But I think it takes a lot of bravery and courage to step out of spaces and thoughts that are very structured or very limiting and open yourself up to an idea or a practice that widens the scope, that increases the capacity to see things differently, not just in theological works, but I think that in that beginning, when you do open up to God, that you will see it everywhere in that same way. But that practice of the mystery, that practice of a bigger thought, those are the kind of things that I think take so much courage and I would love for us to talk about. How do we engage or how do we practice our own courage to be able to say if I stop thinking this way, what will happen? Is it possible that a better thing could happen if I would allow a new thought, a new learning, a new understanding to come.

Dr. Matte Downey:

Yeah, that's really, really good, and I think my theory on this is that we do not feel that we are loved or beloved, as you are prone to say, I'm told. If we do not know that we are loved and we are secure and safe in some part of our environment, we are so afraid it will be taken away and everything will crumble if this thing is taken away and we're in survival mode. Really, we feel threatened all the time. You can't be curious if you're threatened and I acknowledge there are people in the world that are in dire circumstances and are legitimately they are living in threatening environments and they are in survival mode and I am not asking those people to jump into curiosity or learning or anything like that who have pretty physically, we're secure that in some way we have to find a way of knowing that we are not under threat in our faith. This is not a threat to our faith.

Dr. Matte Downey:

For someone to ask a question or raise questions about what Jesus was saying or what the nature of God is, or how we relate, or who's in or who's out, or what does God love and what does God not love or accept, like these are not threatening questions. I think that Jesus shows us that people were asking him questions all the time. He loved to ask questions. Questions are not threatening. They're how we learn together and they're very legitimate. And I think knowing that that's like it's creating this atmosphere of we're all students and we're expected to learn and we can ask stupid questions and we can say, well, I don't know, or I didn't know that, or oh, I thought this is that. Is that not correct? Am I mistaken? You can say all of that and no one thinks any less of you, because we're in this classroom of creation where we learn from everyone and everything and there's a humility to it. Instead of yeah.

Dr. Matte Downey:

I think sometimes we are taught as Christians in the West that we are the superior people, that we have the answers, that we know these things and we have found the one right way and we need to kind of teach others or even impose it on others, and I think that's a lack of humility. We have so much to learn from other people, people with different experiences from creation, from our indigenous neighbors and friends, from other cultures, even other religions and ways of being. We have so much to learn. There's no way just one segment of society has all the wisdom in the world. I just can't believe that that's how creator, the creator, who's invested in diversity and multiplicity, as we see in the Genesis creation stories, I can't believe that it would all end up with. And there's this one narrow group of people that have all the wisdom. I don't think that's the story.

Shelly Shepherd:

It's good preaching. We call that good preaching, good teaching, good preaching. Yeah, I do think that there's a fear that inhibits that courage sometimes, particularly in denominations or faith circles where women do not have a voice of themselves, without a male presence or that male headship that they're taught. I do feel that fear is often the sideways place that we find ourselves in sometimes, and so change is difficult to make. When you're afraid, you might have the wherewithal to make the change, but sometimes fear keeps you bound, keeps you in the same place.

Heather Drake:

That's why I'm so excited about everyone telling the better story that God is love, that the scaffolding that we've built our faith around has been fear. And there's another way of seeing who God is our place in the world, our place with each other in that true belonging. And it comes from the scaffolding of love that we can grow together. But we would have to choose a different way of examining the world, the lens that we see things through and how we participate with one another.

Dr. Matte Downey:

Yeah, definitely, and I think it's a matter of almost retraining and I'm probably speaking to those who have been formed within the church or some faith tradition. It's a matter of retraining ourselves and then helping others to kind of step out of that fear. Because I'm a fearful person. I just grew up as a fearful child. I had a nightmare last night about drowning in the ocean. But I'm just a fearful person. That's how things come out. I automatically want to stay away from dangerous things and not take risks. And I married a risk taker, someone who's like always no, go big, do it, try it all. There's just no fear in him at all and I think this is good for me. We are good for each other.

Dr. Matte Downey:

So this idea of fear, my fears, are diminished or dealt with or shown to be. They have no substance by being in a community or a relationship with others who can speak truth to me, who can reassure me, who can walk with me and show me that the path isn't that as scary as you thought. Just take one step and then another and then another. And I remember some of my professors in school. My first reaction he would say let's do this and I go what? My first reaction is freak out, and I think he got to know me. It's like just give her a minute to calm down, she'll actually think about it, come up with a first step, or maybe we come up with it together. And as soon as I know the first step, all my fears, they're just gone, because I have a plan of action, but it gets. It just seems overwhelming at first. So I don't know I'm rambling here about my own thing. But I know fear, right, and I've had to develop tools and ways and a community so that fear doesn't run my life, so that fear doesn't come and just take over a moment when I'm being invited into bravery or curiosity or community or commitment, that I don't let fear block that. So I've had to learn tools to overcome that and say thank you, fear, thank you for you know you're raising warning signals. I hear you Like I don't deny it I go, I am genuinely feeling fear. I acknowledge that fear, I let it process through my body. I calm myself down, however I need to, and then I say, okay, and now? What do we do Now? What do we do? Thank you, alert system, you are working wonderfully, got it. But what do we do now, because we can't be paralyzed.

Dr. Matte Downey:

This calls for some kind of action, and fear, for me, is a paralyzer or a runaway, and I think, well, I don't want to run away and I don't want to be paralyzed. I want to take good action which makes the situation better in some way, and that's a process for me. And I think, well, if I can invite other people to just process that instead of, if they have a fear reaction or a I'm threatened reaction or an angry reaction or whatever legitimate, got it, but don't get stuck there. Let's find a way to go. Acknowledge that anger. It's a response. It's a legitimate response to something I'm feeling.

Dr. Matte Downey:

Threats remind ourselves we are loved, we are safe, we have good people around us who are committed to our well-being. We have a good creator who is always near us, in whatever form we may see, and just remind ourselves that we are beloved. We're not always safe 100%, we can't be, but we are beloved. We can have courage, we can move a step forward. We can take that next right. I think Anne Lamott talks about this too. Take that next best step. Just what's the next one thing that you can do? That one right thing, and do it.

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 expansionistheologycom.