The Expansionist Podcast

Celebrating Feminine Joy

• Shelly Shepherd and Heather Drake • Season 1 • Episode 25

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Imagine if your ordinary morning coffee could serve as a conduit for divine joy. Shelley Shepard and Heather Drake invite you to explore this notion as we celebrate the Advent season by discovering joy amidst the ordinary. Through Mary's extraordinary story, we learn how everyday rituals, like savoring a cup of coffee, can become holy moments that ground us in love and holiness. Our lighthearted musings even question whether Mary had her morning brew before the angelic encounter, setting the stage for a deeper reflection on finding joy as a form of defiance against despair.

Join us as we celebrate the feminine spirit by honoring the profound experiences of Mary and Elizabeth, two women who courageously challenged the status quo. We delve into the power of Mary's Song, a proclamation that uplifts the oppressed and heralds a new order through love's transformative power. Conversations in this episode reveal the strength found in surrender, the resilience in spiritual rituals, and the crucial role women play in divine narratives. This enriching dialogue invites you to embrace a transformative understanding of divinity and join a revolution of love, guided by Mary's faithful path and willingness to follow divine guidance.

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:

Merry.

Heather Drake:

Christmas to you, Heather Drake. Happy Advent to you, Shelley Shepard.

Shelly Shepherd:

What a delight to be here with you to share in this week of joy. I am just so joyful today to have this time together. Thank you for that.

Heather Drake:

It is the week of joy in the liturgical calendar and in the understanding of where we are in this. The new year that started on December the 1st, that starts with this. Prepare the way and are holding space to say how are we preparing our own souls for the coming of Christ, of Christ being born in us, of love being born of us, of peace being born from us? What does it look like for us to consider, for us to surrender, for us to acknowledge and maybe even sit with the beautiful path that is shown to us by Mary? And we were talking last week about how joy is this defiance? It's an intentional defiance, and I love that idea of when despair is all around us, when war looms, when it can feel so overwhelming just to be present in the world that we're in. That joy says there is something more. There's so much more. There's something to savor, there's good here, and so I'm so looking forward to our conversation. We're holding these beautiful, empowering thoughts that say what is it like for us to participate in holding peace within ourselves?

Shelly Shepherd:

I heard a friend the other day say that, um, that joy is more than being happy. Yes, it is this place of um that the joy comes, when we're, uh, where we should be, and I thought that was that was an interesting, an interesting way of of talking about joy, because I think sometimes with the, with the excitement of of Advent and Christmas, um, there is this. Oh, I'm supposed to be bubbly and happy and exuding all of these Christmassy kinds of thoughts and songs, and I'm just this happy person, but I think Advent teaches us that joy comes when we are where we need to be.

Heather Drake:

It's a fascinating thought to me that joy comes perhaps when you're where you need to be. But until that joy arrives, how do you know that you're where you need to be? I love that idea of the ordinary, and I think that's what we're gifted with in this part of the season is, according to the story that we're given, mary is doing ordinary things when the angel appears to her and invites her to co-create with God, and so sometimes I think that we can become disheartened in our ordinary things, and one of the practices that you and I have held now for more than a year is paying attention to how sacred everything is. I mean, what kind of things could Mary have been doing? Probably, you know, I mean, perhaps she was in the field, but this idea that she was probably doing, you know, ancient housework where there was a lot of things to be done, to prepare meals, to take care of animals, to take care of other family members, and it was in that place of her faithfulness in the ordinary that the extraordinary comes to her, and the extraordinary comes to her in this very cryptic way, and so to be able to say that you're going to have joy when you're in the right place.

Heather Drake:

I mean it's a fascinating thought. But I'm also thinking that joy to me reminds me that it's not always happiness, but joy comes from being anchored in love, that, no matter what the situation is, no matter where I find myself, that I'm deeply connected to abiding love, to this belovedness, to this holiness that comes from abiding with God. And so, again, I'm fascinated by this subject. I think we could talk about Mary all the time and not exhaust it. I think that she is such a beautiful model for us on how I mean she's, in the way that we're gifted the First Testament, we're showed this woman's path to embodying the Christ, and then so the invitation is for us as women and as men. How do we allow Christ to be formed in us? How do we allow this peace? How do we allow mercy? How do we allow just the beauty that is the light of God? How do we allow that to be formed in us? And I think Mary has left us a beautiful path and a way to follow.

Shelly Shepherd:

Do you think that Mary had had her coffee Heather before the angel appeared? I'm not sure she did. Had she had her morning ritual, had she taken her quiet time? She may have had morning rituals.

Heather Drake:

but the very fact that she said how can this be? Leads me to believe that maybe the French press hadn't all the way brewed, like, maybe she was in the middle of that, but it had not yet been four minutes, so she couldn't wrap her mind around. How can this be? The messenger comes to her and says, hey, god wants to do this and wants to know if you want in on it. And then she thinks about the details. Okay, how can this be? And so I think that morning coffee also brings me a little clarity on how can this be, and so?

Shelly Shepherd:

maybe she hadn't had her coffee yet. Yeah, we talk about these ordinary. You know, these moments of joy happen in the ordinary and for some people that's coffee, for me it's kombucha, for you it's definitely French press coffee, right, but there's joy in that moment that might have nothing to do with the Christmas story nothing to do with the Christmas story and yet if you compound that joy over time, over many cups of coffee, over many glasses of kombucha, you get to a place of wow. I want more of that kind of joy. I want joy when I'm walking on the path. I want joy when I'm riding my bike. I want joy when I'm serving in outreach. I want joy when I'm talking to a friend or visiting a neighbor or at the hospital with somebody that is not going to make it to spill from the ordinary into the extraordinary. And I wonder if Mary, in that ordinary moment of her waking that morning and this angelic presence appears, had she already prepared. You say she was hesitant. The text says why me?

Heather Drake:

Yeah, I don't know that she was hesitant, but she certainly asked questions and I commend her for that, as we all should. What is it going to look like for me to abandon ways of thinking that don't allow the shalom of God to be between me and my neighbor? What is it going to look like? And I'm sure Mary was capable of saying I think this is important, you and I have talked about it, but the invitation here is to consent. The spirit is up to something. The spirit that hovered at creation over the chaos is once again going to hover over this feminine body and create something that is not only revolutionary but is for the saving of the whole world. And so the invitation is do you want to co-create with us? And I think that's what Jesus kept extending to us this invitation Will you allow the kingdom to be born in you? Will you allow the kingdom to be in the middle of you? Will you allow the reign of God's kingdom here among you?

Heather Drake:

And she went from how can this be? And her next response was okay, let it be. Let it be unto me, according to your and I love very much how the awe of seeing an angelic being offering to her an invitation of co-creating wasn't too extravagant. She got what she needed, as far as you know. I don't know if she got details, but she had reassurance, and maybe the reassurance came from the fact that she already knew the Psalms and she knew that there was a promise of a Messiah coming and she could lean back on the things that she had heard before. But there, certainly, until this point, we are at a unique place in history where we get to say we get to look back on the story and so we know the end.

Shelly Shepherd:

But she just saw the right thing, and so that took so much hope and so much courage and so much intention to say be it unto me, according to your word certainly as a brown refugee female was standing in a peculiar place, certainly vulnerable, yes, very vulnerable, and I believe the divinity that was present in that conversation to come to a woman with this invitation that would somehow make it even into our lives is pretty phenomenal.

Shelly Shepherd:

It's pretty phenomenal to me that God, that Yahweh, that Spirit, took on this form to bring life, to bring joy, to bring peace, to bring hope, to bring love into the world. And yet it seems like it gets harder and harder to understand that point of the story or to get people to believe or to even grapple with. Is this possible? Could this have even really happened? Is this some kind of myth or somebody's story that was made up in ancient ancestors and handed down?

Heather Drake:

Yeah, but stories are so powerful and Jesus is the master of the metaphor himself and he is the living word, the word made flesh, and so I prickle at the idea of somebody saying it's just a story. Stories are how we understand the world, but you've heard people say that.

Shelly Shepherd:

You've heard people say this is just a story.

Heather Drake:

Yes, yes, yes right, but there's always a deeper magic still, to quote CS Lewis, like there's so much more, even under the story. But the stories are how we make sense of our world, and so to have a story that has been gifted to us and saying this is what it looks like when this young woman says how can this be? And then moves into let it be. And then this is the prayer that she prays, and then we're gifted some other words that she prays, the Magnificat, and then we're so many times we're listening to her, and then we hear a repetition in Jesus's words where he is in a place of vulnerability and he says let it be unto me.

Heather Drake:

According to your word Sounds like not my will but yours be done. When Jesus says this is my body broken for you that it was first Mary whose body was broken. That's right To bring the world the incarnate of Christ here. And so her body broken, not only in childbirth, but broken as she continues to feed him, as she nurses him, as she goes through recovery of having this baby. There is so much brokenness that happens in a woman's life and in allowing the Christ. So to me it's very hopeful when I see broken places.

Heather Drake:

There's that beautiful lyric by Leonard Cohen this is how the light gets in, and so in women's lives I have such hope. The same thing when I see chaos and I'm like, oh, spirit, come and hover here because, look, we've made a giant mess. You can come here and empower us to live differently, to see differently, to change our way of thinking, to invite the Christ to be formed in us. This is the hope of the world that light and love would always be seen in us, that we would be the hands and feet. There's the ancients who talk about Christ has no body here now, except for yours, you are the body of Christ.

Heather Drake:

And so I hear the song of Mary and I hear the prayers of Mary, and they inspire me in a way of following. What does it look like for me to say I'm going to give up this way of thinking, I'm going to give up this plan, I'm going to give up this, whatever it is, because there's a bigger picture?

Shelly Shepherd:

Are we asking that same question of ourselves every Advent, every Christmas, every season of the church? Are we asking ourselves about how that surrender looks like If she was the first person to surrender to the incarnation? Meaning I am going to bring, I'm going to humble myself, I'm going to surrender, I'm going to accept this, I consent to this. Is that part of our posture? And have we forgotten how?

Heather Drake:

And if we've forgotten how. If that is the case, then we can look to Mary, and this is the beautiful invitation. I love that right after this happens, the next thing that we hear is that she goes to see Elizabeth and she goes to see another woman and sort this out. Let me tell you what just happened to me. Let me tell you what I think, I saw, what I think I heard, and in the presence of another woman. There is this confirmation, and so I love that this story is woven together between the young and the old, between women, between this hope for a world that is clearly in need of changing, in need of the miracle, is clearly in need of changing, in need of the miracle, and I find that that feels like it's very replicated here. Our world is in need of a miracle, our world is in need of a healer, and Mary showed us the path in bringing Jesus, the healer before, and so the invitation is for us to prepare ourselves.

Heather Drake:

What would it look like for you to prepare your mind? That love would come and be formed in you, would be born in you, would be expressed through you in such a way that all of the goodness that God means for people to hear and to see would be something that they would witness in just being in our presence. That's exciting to me. 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:

Yes, and a beautiful hope as well. I wonder about the struggle with empire that Mary and Elizabeth I'm going to sit with that for a second In their conversation, as she entered Elizabeth's home and stayed there for a while with Elizabeth and she was also pregnant with John the Baptist, knowing that they were in a situation where things were being controlled by empire, what was going through their minds, particularly as women in this situation? I just find myself fascinated in my holy imagination to think about the conversation that they were having. And then, lo and behold, the empire tries to kill. As soon as Jesus comes on the scene, here comes the empire after the firstborn and then they flee to Egypt. But the marginalization of this whole context, like what part of that can you and I identify with today in this story?

Heather Drake:

Well, I love that when she goes to see Elizabeth, elizabeth greets her loudly and says the mother of my Lord. So something in Elizabeth identified the Christ that is being formed in Mary, and Elizabeth is the first one to acknowledge that Lordship, that Christ. Okay, this is going to be the one that I follow so clearly, this really deep connection Elizabeth has with the Spirit certainly has with her family here, but with this other woman and then before then, your question was what was their interaction or what was their experience regarding empire? And I think that in the Song of Mary, where she begins to say listen, the people that are wealthy, they're going to be turned away and they're going to have need, and the people that are powerful and are sitting on thrones, they're going to be brought low and the people that have no voice are going to have a place to speak. And the words of this are so provocative that men in power they were talking about their own context, right?

Shelly Shepherd:

They were talking about their own context.

Heather Drake:

Yes, yes, yes. Men in power have said do not read this out loud, do not let people hear what this young girl allowed love Christ. Hear what this young girl allowed love Christ, holiness, newness, god incarnate to be birthed in her. And then she began to say things like hey, the way that things are, they're going to be turned upside down. This is not the status quo, is not status quo for the kingdom. The kingdom is coming, and now love is the great equalizer and things are going to be different, and so the invitation to us is that same thing. What does it look like to allow love to be the great equalizer? Where love comes, love saves us and love shows us there's a new way to live, and it's not through empire, it's not trusting in systems that continue to oppress people, but in the work of spirit who's inviting us to live in a whole other realm, a whole other way it's definitely a story about the oppressed and oppression.

Shelly Shepherd:

But yet on the other side of that coin is this triumphant uh. Exclamation of here I am, I'm ready, I surrender, I consent, I accept. You know, here we go, knowing that. You know, here we go, knowing that the male population was probably going to look at this situation a little bit differently than Mary and Elizabeth were seeing it. And then the story unfolds biblically, from the perspective of.

Shelly Shepherd:

You know, most of the Bible have been written by men, you know, for men and by men. Here is this insertion of the feminine that I don't ever want to forget. I don't ever want to lose this moment in history where Yahweh, where God, says I am going to come through this woman, I am going to start my divinity right here with her. And, yes, it's going to confound everybody coming and going and there's going to be things written that are not true about her, about him. But here we go. I don't want to forget that part of this story. I always want that to be the part of Advent and Christmas that is intrinsically part of me, intrinsically part of me, and I think that's where the feminine spirit of God is such a powerful force in the world and in my life that, wow, I just, I can't see it any other way.

Heather Drake:

One of the paths that Mary took was the path that led her from awe into worship.

Shelly Shepherd:

Hmm.

Heather Drake:

And I wonder if, for many of us, the awe has gone out of the things that we practice, or the things that we allow ourselves to savor, or the things that we look for and looking for, those moments of wonder, those moments of? Is it possible that the spirit is up to something completely different here? Is it possible that what I'm seeing with my natural eyes is not all that is happening here? That's right and how can I get in on what God is doing here? How?

Shelly Shepherd:

can I?

Heather Drake:

get in on this revolution that love is planning. What do I do to be a part of that? My own personal surrender, my own personal invitation, Because in my surrender, in my freedom, it allows other people to be free. And so I'm not saying that this is my personal Jesus, come only to save me. Certainly that is not the path that Mary showed us. This is her body breaking for all of us. This sounds very much like the words of Jesus that said this is my body broken for you. Take it and eat, Pass it out among you. All of you eat this. All of you become this way of living, where from awe we move into wonder and worship, where it becomes this enchantment of. There is something else at work here.

Shelly Shepherd:

And to me that's the feminine perspective, heather, is when we try to make this passageway of Emmanuel with us a theological posturing, a doctrine, a dogma. A theological posturing, a doctrine, a dogma, something that has come to save us and save us only for me, it misses the point. It misses the point of that. The feminine perspective, the feminine presence, really has to be experienced in a different kind of way than oh, my goodness, than we've been experiencing it pretty much our entire lives, through an angry God or through a God that people say, that God hates people or we don't want those folks in our country, kind of conversations Like it takes. The feminine to me, in my experience, is that it is this open, inclusive. I give my consent to spirit, I surrender to this and I am bringing the feminine side of God into the world through my own vessel. And so I have friends who do not see themselves as sacred, beloved, holy, anything, and I try to remind them that they are.

Shelly Shepherd:

And it started with Mary. This is our story. Mary's story is our story. It's the feminine story. It's how light breaks in, it's how love finds us, and so, yeah, perhaps maybe we've lost the awe and the wonder that leads to that kind of praise and that kind of experience. But oh my goodness, if we could find that, if we could understand that this is where we are, where we could be, oh my goodness.

Heather Drake:

One of the things that strikes me in this story is the idea, not necessarily of knowing, but of being. Mary didn't know a lot of the details, but she was willing to be inconvenienced by the Spirit, or she was to be impassioned, emboldened, and also in this idea, this indwelling of God, and this is the promise for us, this is how it so relates to us that what is it like for us to embody shalom? What does it look like for us to embody? And when you speak of the feminine, I'm sure that people have experienced many forms of feminine, I'm sure that people have experienced many forms of feminine, but when you and I are discussing it in this matter, I remind you that it looks like the spirit. It is gentle, the spirit is long-suffering, the spirit is kind, the spirit is loving, the spirit is all of those things do not sound like what the testimony of these women that actually lived through it, or what the Second Testament tells us the Spirit is like.

Heather Drake:

I think that it's essential for us to be very mindful of the God that we have created in our own image. Yes, we sometimes have a God who is vengeful or angry or is coming for our enemies, but we have a God who's sitting everyone down at the table and saying everybody gets to come and eat. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. And Mary is this beautiful invitation into a following of Christ? What is it like for her to be up at night with a sick toddler? This inconvenience? What is it up at night? And then we began talking last night about when she's at the wedding of Cana and she recognizes we don't have what we need. And somehow she knows the bigger story, that there is enough, that there is no scarcity, that the scarcity that they're actually experiencing is not the reality. And so she asks Jesus to do something about it. Right, and I wonder does she ask him to do something about it? Because she just has this deep knowing? Or perhaps has she witnessed the way that abundance comes to him? And so she asks and I love in that asking can you do something for us? Would you do this? She doesn't say can, I don't think. I don't think the language is the same thing. Would you fix this? Would you do this? She doesn't say can, I don't think. I don't think the language is the same thing. Would you fix this? Would you make this right?

Heather Drake:

And then her, leaning toward the other people that are there present and says do whatever he tells you to do. That, I think, is the path of Mary. When you've heard the voice, when you've heard the voice above the noise, when you have identified it being spirit, will you do what the spirit tells you to do, whatever Jesus tells you to do. Do that, because maybe it's not the same every time. Maybe she had seen different kind of miracles or different kind of abundance or a different kind of seeing. Maybe she had so much confidence that, whatever it is that he tells you, follow that, because that's where you're going to find the reward, that's where you're going to find the answer.

Shelly Shepherd:

Yeah, it's a beautiful tapestry that has been handed down and protected, even in its form that we have it now. It's just a beautiful story, particularly about the women, Elizabeth and Mary, and what they give us in this season and in this time, but also what they teach us in our rituals and how we show up and how we surrender and how we continue to find the path of resistance against the empire. Perhaps.

Heather Drake:

It was our joy to have you listen to our conversation today. If you would like further information or for more content, visit us at expansionisttheologycom.