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
Unveiling Mary Magdalene: Sensual Beauty And Sacred Rebellion
What if Mary Magdalene's uncovered hair wasn't just a break from tradition, but a revolutionary act of spiritual and feminine liberation?
As we approach Mary Magdalene's feast day on July 22nd, Shelley and Heather dive into one of the most overlooked yet profound aspects of her story – her hair. In ancient times, a woman's hair was simultaneously considered her "glory" and something to be hidden away from public view. The cultural mandate requiring women to cover their hair wasn't simply about modesty; it was fundamentally about control and power.
Mary Magdalene shattered these conventions when she not only uncovered her hair in public but used it to dry Jesus's feet after anointing them with expensive oils and her own tears. This act of devotion wasn't just spiritually significant – it was politically and culturally subversive. She transformed what patriarchal systems had deemed should be hidden into a sacred instrument of connection and worship.
Through vivid imagery and thoughtful exploration, Shelley and Heather unpack how Mary's wealthy status intersected with her beauty, creating a platform that she chose to use not for personal gain but for devotion. They consider how this ancient story speaks to our modern experiences of beauty standards, cultural control, and the search for authentic self-expression. What does it mean when we reclaim aspects of ourselves that we've been conditioned to hide? How might we find liberation in seeing our physical bodies as sacred vessels rather than objects to be controlled?
This conversation opens windows into a radical understanding of embodied spirituality, where tears, hair, and presence become holy offerings. Mary Magdalene's example challenges us to expand our concept of the sacred and invites us to find transcendence not by escaping our humanity but by fully inhabiting it with love, courage, and radical authenticity.
Join us on this journey of expansionist thinking as we reimagine what it means to follow the path of Mary Magdalene – a path where beauty isn't hidden away but becomes the very story that liberates us all. Share your own reflections and join our community at expansionisttheology.com.
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. Good afternoon.
Speaker 2:Heather Drake Good afternoon.
Speaker 1:Shelley Shepard, it's great to see you today. Good afternoon, Shelley Shepard. It's great to see you today. It's very nice to be with you in this particular week where we are anticipating the Feast of Mary Magdalene and we are anticipating just the goodness of where Spirit will lead us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a beautiful month, Like the whole month. I'm just celebrating Mary Magdalene and all the goodness that so many before us have seen the light and have brought her into this space, of having her own feast day on July 22nd. Her own feast day on July 22nd. I know we talked about that maybe in the last episode, but it took a long time to get her that equality, and so I'm hopeful that, as women and the voices of women continue to rise, that we too will have that spirit that Mary Magdalene had the tenacity to just keep showing up through the voices of other women, through the practices, through the rituals, through the unfurling and unfolding that we're finding on this path that you like to call the path of Mary Magdalene, this path of transcendence.
Speaker 1:So I'm excited really to to share this month with her, and and not just it's not just july that we that we talk about mary magdalene, obviously, but there is a moment that we're experiencing in this month of july where we are focusing or putting intention towards and kind of staying in our waking consciousness. What is it like to follow the path, um, that mary magdalene left for us in relationship with christ, in with relationship with our own selves and our own giftings and, I think, ultimately, relationship continuing with the Spirit.
Speaker 2:Yes, I think that's the beautiful piece. I'm sure someday you'll preach on how Spirit moved her. Even before I was thinking how Jesus saw. I was thinking the other day. I'm pretty sure he saw Mary Magdalene from afar too, like why wouldn't he have? He would have already have seen her. Like I sat with that for a moment. He saw everyone else, why wouldn't he have seen Mary?
Speaker 2:So, yeah, these are called the expansionist questions and thoughts. You know, as they roll out and as we hold them, um, I just think there's so many pieces in scripture where, um, with an expansionist posture, that we can grow, and Mary is one of those places where we are allowed to expand beyond 12 verses that was written about her, the central character of the resurrection narrative, 12 verses. So you know that there was more things around that that didn't make it into the canon. But here we are. Here, you and I are in this present year getting ready to celebrate her feast next week and we have so much to talk about and to think about, and I think today we're going to talk about her hair, am I?
Speaker 1:And what's with her hair, and what's with our own hair and what's with what's with allowing the beautiful to be the story? And yeah, let's talk about her hair.
Speaker 2:So I wrote this piece as an introduction to a message that I will share this Sunday, and it goes like this she had long flowing hair. She wore it to one side, sort of flipped upwards, backwards slightly, and sort of whimsical thick. Sort of whimsical thick, easily rolled or pushed under a scarf while out at the market or to carry water. Her hair wasn't only her glory, it was her anointing fabric, layered and coiled, shaped with purpose.
Speaker 1:There's lots to think about, even thinking about all the different beauties that come to us because of hair, all the different ideas of beauty, all the different colors and shapes and how it is so incredibly expressive, and I have to ask myself why was a woman's hair required to be covered?
Speaker 1:Why did we demand as culture? Put that expression away, put that beauty under wraps so that no one can see that? And again, as people who are telling the making the beautiful thing, the story, telling the story in a beautiful slant or opening the windows, letting the spirit bring light to something so we can see it. I think that the hair, and the metaphor of the hair, has so much intrinsic value in our own life. I think that even thinking about the fact that everybody has hair growing out of the top of their head to some respect and there's not a whole lot of things that we get to choose about it I mean, you can choose the color once it's out and you can cut it in a particular way, but how your hair grows is a gift and what it does is a gift, and there's so many different I think that it's just incredible to think that hair has something to do with the way that we see the story, the way that we hear the story and the way that we find our own path.
Speaker 2:Wow, there's so much in what you just said. I'm going to ask you this question we talked about right before we started the show, but you asked the question why was her hair uncovered? If, in that culture, it was meant to be under the scarf or tunic or headpiece, why was it uncovered? Why did she uncover it?
Speaker 1:Maybe she was done with that kind of control, maybe she recognized that you cannot hide the beauty for long. Or maybe she had just had enough of the systems that bound her, and maybe her intention was to liberate not only herself but others.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, and I think that has little to do with the actual hair, but in those moments of resistance, in those things that we say I'm not going to participate in anymore, especially regarding beauty, especially regarding personal autonomy and freedom and gifts that we have, I mean there's so much around the idea of a woman's hair. There are stories that we each have, from the time that we're little, to see someone else's hair, and very often it's the other hair, the hair that we don't have growing out of the top of our own head, that we find so incredibly beautiful, that diversity that we're attracted to, so incredibly beautiful, that diversity that we're attracted to. I think that it has a lot to say in the story the thing that is different than ours that we find beauty in. I think the men told her to cover it. We don't want to see that kind of thing. We don't want to be enchanted by it.
Speaker 1:She was like the very thing that you're asking me to cover, I will uncover and I will anoint him, dry his feet with she we wept her own tears, but if we're going to dry them with something, it's going to be her hair, and it wasn't because she couldn't afford a cloth for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this, we know me. Yeah, yeah, I just saw. I saw this in this introduction here. I saw the hair as her anointing fabric, like she would have. She would have been accustomed to some some kinds of fabric, right, or even maybe have made, taken some kind of plant flax and created threads. She would have been some kind of weaver of these fabrics or maybe even made them for other people and sold them. I don't know, but I can imagine, like you said, that she had a towel of sorts or she had a cloth or she had something around her waist already that she could have used, but instead she used her own beauty, her own fabric to make this connection with him.
Speaker 2:And then I thought about we could just park here for a second but I thought also about how beauty and wealth make us suspicious. Some people say scandalous. When you put beauty and wealth together, something happens in the tabloids right. Some kind of story gets rendered. Some kind of story gets rendered. There's somebody trying to understand another person or their lifestyle or something about them, based on just the fact that they're beautiful and they're wealthy. And so I wondered about this moment when she anoints Jesus, uses her hair to dry his feet or whatever else she might have been drying his hands right His neck? We're only told about the feet.
Speaker 1:When you ask me to consider what happens when beauty and wealth are combined, I immediately think of the platform. The beautiful and the wealthy are given a platform always have been, and so, with the platform that she has, the wealth and the beauty, then she offers it in devotion, in worship. She shows us what to do with the beauty and that in this worship there is liberation for those who worship.
Speaker 1:there's liberation for this, through these acts of devotion and I think that there's something so incredibly powerful about that imagery, and again, imagery with hair is used throughout the first testament and second testament. It is, you know, the the fables of poems and has been of artists. You know, since, again, humanity, this idea of hair. And then I cannot imagine the billions of dollars that the hair care industry is. Let's don't get started on that. It's. You know, thousands of years later and we're still interested in the story. The hair is telling yes, yes, what does it mean? I mean even of God. The story is told that he knows the number of hairs on our heads, like that kind of devotion that here Mary is using her hair and then this is who she's devoted to the God who knows how many hair are on our head today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I can't say that I've ever heard somebody preach or teach. Just on the hair.
Speaker 1:Well, let's start talking about it, because hair was a big thing growing up in my particular trends, in my particular denominational Pentecostal holiness was-.
Speaker 1:Oh my goodness. Okay, so you had to have hair that was long. You weren't allowed to cut it. I mean, you could trim the ends. I mean, again, there's always a nuance no cutting hair, but you could trim your ends. Okay, you could have so much, but not a lot. Then you had to have this beautiful hair, but you had to put it in a bun. So again, this is not very different than head covering you had to have it, but you weren't allowed to see it. Yeah, and it had to be all tucked up in head covering.
Speaker 2:And so this idea of and if somebody came to your house and your hair was down, you had to immediately go and find a clip and get your hair up Right Like my. I can remember my grandmother doing that a lot, right Like, and I you know as a kid you just like think, oh, she's just trying to um present herself, right. But then later you realize, oh, there's a lot of, there's a lot of reasons behind keeping your hair on top of your head. But yeah, you just mentioned that and that memory and that thought just like jumped in front of me.
Speaker 1:And so carry on Because again we have these ideas that are from culture or from patriarchy or from places where they want to connect to us with a modesty. Again, putting away the beauty and people's hair, especially beautiful hair, hair different than ours is enchanting. It is a way to take focus towards something, and I have long straight hair, and so I have always been fascinated, excited and just mesmerized by curly hair, especially with long curly. It's just beautiful to me and in fact as a little child I wanted red curly hair so badly. My mother's brother, kim, had red curly hair, beautiful long red curly hair, and I just that's what I wanted from my head. Again, my hair was not growing like that. Straight, flat, blonde hair is what I had. And I had asked my uncle how do I get red curly hair? And he was like you have to eat carrots, a lot of carrots. I ate carrots almost until I was orange, you know like trying so badly.
Speaker 1:And then I met a dear friend. I met her when I was 10 years old. She was Irish and she had flaming red hair. I just thought it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen and I told her oh my gosh, I love your curly hair so much. And she snapped her fingers. She was very bossy. She snapped her fingers and said knock it off. She said this is not beautiful. She said what you have is beautiful. Again, here, I think that we see beauty in the other. She said you have predictable hair. You wake up in the morning and you know what it's going to do. And she said every day I have an unpredictable nightmare. And I said, yeah, but every day it could be different. I said this is not what you want.
Speaker 1:And so again, 10-year-old girls are having this conversation about hair and predictability or unpredictability, and how we will approach the world with our hair. I mean, we have ideas about things not turning out good because the hair is some kind of an omen. It's a bad hair day. I mean, what about the fact that it just grew out of our head this way? You know, like to be able to say you know, I understand the beauty tied up with it. I understand the beauty tied up with it.
Speaker 1:But what is that actually exploring in us?
Speaker 1:To say what is a path toward liberation? What is a path toward loving ourselves? Finding beauty in the predictability or in the unpredictability? What is it like to see what the universe has gifted us with and say, yeah, this is my expression, this is how I didn't choose my eye color. We don't choose the way that the hair follicles are fashioned on our head, and so it becomes a gift.
Speaker 1:I think 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. And then it becomes a way for people to control us as well, to say, some hairs are good and some hairs are not, or where the hair comes from is not, and then again becomes this method of controlling, and I think that the part of the story is that a woman's hair, or the way that she chooses to use it, gets to be redeemed in the story as well.
Speaker 2:I love, love, love the word liberation that we're using right now, in this context, in this way, to talk about her hair. If you think about empire in that day, right, or empire even in our day, hair would not have been like, okay, we're going to use this to liberate people, but this inner knowing, this ancient remembering, and this gift of anointing that she brought to her hair, I think there's so much more to talk about in that word liberation. You are exactly right, she was liberating everybody in the room, but she was telling the women the story from an ancient part of who she was, maybe a story that had gotten passed down to her. Maybe she was going to change something with this act, with this one demonstration. And I would think, heather, that that wasn't just a one time In my holy imagination, right? Why would she just anoint one time?
Speaker 1:No, this was the time that people were watching, or that whoever was writing about the story was actually writing it down. It's essential, I think, that we actually think about these things because Jesus said whenever you're going to tell my story, you're going to tell hers too, and this is a part of hers. And I think that we would be amiss if we didn't say and this is a part of hers. And I think that we would be amiss if we didn't say we have a particular set of experiences based on where we were born and the DNA andily hair, that would have stories of liberation that are also tied to hair and styles and how systems have been put in place to ostracize or to keep people away in saying you are not these standards, you are not welcome because of the hair that grows out of your head, and so I do. I think that it is liberation, I think it's an act of defiance and I think that that defiance that allows us to then turn that into worship, I think that's a path.
Speaker 1:I think there's paths here that Mary has shown us that lead us into deeper intimacy with the spirit, that lead us into ways of transcendence.
Speaker 1:But we do have to ask what's with the hair? Why is it anybody else's business how we wear our hair, how our choice to braid it, our choice to cut it, our choice to add to it, our choice to whatever? Why is that a judgment place? That that can be a place of liberation and freedom, and I think, obviously, that our sisters you know who are, like I said, brown and black would have a lot, I'm sure, more to say even than we do. But I think that we can speak for women and say you know, there is an invitation into looking for places of freedom, finding how the ancients remember beautiful, not as society or as culture has told us, that that is what's beautiful, that's what it's used for. I mean, I don't know of any other stories where we talk about anointing and using our hair, and so this idea of this is our person, this is our gift, and we use them in ways of healing. I think it's powerful to think about this.
Speaker 2:It's very powerful Jesus again. I think Jesus probably saw her from afar, but before she met him she would have been of the wisdom tradition, the Gnostics, meditative, maybe even centering prayer essential oils, like right now Heather's putting her hair on the top of her head.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because I'm hot and this is effective in cooling the back of my neck, not because someone told me I had to.
Speaker 2:Yes, and so these practices that she would have been involved in in prior to meeting jesus. I can imagine that, these essential oils. It's been said that that mary magdalene came from wealth, that that her family owned owned some property in bethany and and magdala, and I think maybe even Jerusalem, I can't remember, but she would have had access to what's the word you said, damascus, what, what was that fragrance?
Speaker 1:Oh, wild rose of Damascus.
Speaker 2:Wild rose of Damascus, so she would have had some access to these pieces and this way of thinking or this way of being. So I can imagine her whole head smelling fragrant with this Damascus rose scent or some kind of other delicious anointing oil, and I could imagine it being weaved in her own hair, like her taking the time sitting by the well, putting this into her own hair. And so anytime she walked the dusty path, there would have been a fragrance coming from her hair. And so I sat with that and I thought, wow, jesus couldn't have missed that. He would have recognized it, he would have seen her, he would have reminded her that she was beloved, that she was beloved. And there is this place in me that just wonders about wow, historically, heather, all of these things that happened that we're reading about. It's just amazing that they even wrote them down. It is amazing that they wrote them down and gave us this picture of her.
Speaker 1:It must have made such an impact that they also, you know, not only did they anointed, but the idea of using her hair to dry the tears. In this process, in this exchange of love or admiration, in this knowing we talk about the connection that Jesus offers and that Mary had offered this beautiful picture of spirit union, and this I mean, there's many reasons that Mary would have been weeping. And Jesus said you know, listen, she's doing this for my burial. And Jesus said listen, she's doing this for my burial.
Speaker 1:So maybe in her knowing that she understood, the trauma that was about to be unveiled and that separation that she would feel in his death. And maybe she didn't have yet a knowing of the resurrection. Maybe she did, but she allows that deep weeping. I mean, jesus knew that Lazarus would be resurrected and yet wept hard, hot tears. And so, even when we have a knowing of a greater truth, it doesn't mean we don't fully experience our tears as holy as part of our humanity.
Speaker 1:There's so much that could be said about tears in the same way that hair is, but that tears are a way of prayer, are a way of expressing. Most of the time, we don't conjure our own tears. They come to us as a gift from our body and to be able to sense things and know things. And her weeping and her anointing and then her drying them, her offering herself. I think that's why, a lot of times, people have told us to put away the hair, put away the beauty. Don't tell that part of the story. Yes, and I think that culturally we've been taught how to judge. There's certain hairs that are beautiful and others that we consider not.
Speaker 1:There's a certain way that you should wear your hair, and there's a when, in fact, our hair, all hair, is unpredictable. It grows as the world pleases and not necessarily as we please.
Speaker 2:And so finding beauty in the wild, and so finding beauty in the wild, this passage that we grew up hearing a woman's hair is her glory.
Speaker 1:When you were a younger person and you heard this, did you agree with it? No, it felt controlling and it felt horrible because it felt like I couldn't have hair the way that it best suited me, that I was told what my glory was was something that I didn't have any control over. Somebody else did. I think it is very much was a way of controlling. Now there are other passages that also talk about hair that do not feel that way, but like, for instance, the portion of the scripture that says that a silver hair or gray hair is a crown. That's something that should be aspired to. So what I hear in your question is something that we should all be asking questions about. When we take any kind of text and we wield it to control someone or to diminish or to categorize people, we should be very wary of those things and go okay, that can't be what the text is used for Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so again her taking her hair and uncovering it, lavishing it towards Jesus, wiping tears, using it as anointing fabric All of these things are her glory, right? All of these things are her glory, not just that she wears her hair a certain way or keeps it under a scarf, and I think that's also part of the liberation that we're talking about here. As women is we have to use the word that you just used controlled. We have been controlled or we have been. Things have been partitioned or expected of us as women to do a certain way. And here comes Mary Magdalene and she just rolls the hair out, lavishes the oil, dries the tears. Does this whole ritual to bring us anointing? Like without Mary Magdalene, would we have the ritual of anointing?
Speaker 2:I think we've answered this in another podcast and I'm trying to remember what we said, but there's several resources and scholars that point us towards that this ritual of anointing was brought to Christianity through the act of Mary Magdalene. And so what are we doing with this? What are we doing with this liberation and this, knowing I know what you and I are doing right now, like we're talking about this, trying to share from our own, you know, experience of being brought up in a very strict religious environment, of what the women did with their hair, to what the women wore and what a woman was supposed to submit to, to this expansive at least I'm going to speak for myself. I'm not going to categorize you in all of that, but in this expansive way, mary Magdalene, the recipe that she is giving us to me is expansive love poured out to me is expansive love poured out.
Speaker 1:I don't have to be constricted to these ways, that scripture or maybe even the way I was taught to think about those scriptures and I think that becomes, I think, a key for our own liberation is to say our perception some of it handed to us, our perception of what a text means.
Speaker 1:I was just paying attention to something today for another reason, but it seems appropriate now where, in John 14, jesus says I'm going to go, but while I'm here, I'm going to tell you something that I'm going to ask the Father, and the Father is going to send the Spirit, and the Spirit, who is like me, will also liberate you, and the Spirit will teach you everything that you need to know, and the Spirit will cause you to remember you to remember and I think that is very much what is happening again in the world that the Spirit is causing us to remember the things that Jesus told us, that were liberating, that were empowering, that. And again, I like to blame things on the spirit and on the idea that we are waking up to a bigger picture, a greater sound. But what I see in this particular imagery in Mary Magdalene is the imagery of embodiment.
Speaker 1:the imagery of this is how. This is the path. The path is that everything is sacred. Now, even her hair is sacred. We have so many things that we call relics and we allow for worship and to be able to say that a woman's hair is part of the relic, and so this idea of now it becomes holy because we have used it in the service of adoration. This is such a beautiful remembering for us as women that every part of us is not somehow awful and needing to be redeemed, but we are made in the image of love From the very beginning. We are beloved From the very beginning. The beauty has meant to tell the story, and it is that every part of you is welcomed in the presence of love.
Speaker 2:I love that and I love that talking about her hair today has brought us to that punctuation mark right there. It's beautiful, thank you.
Speaker 1: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.