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
Radical Hospitality:The Path to Acceptance
What does it truly mean to practice radical acceptance in a deeply divided world? This question sits at the heart of our conversation as we explore the challenging yet transformative path toward seeing the sacred in everyone.
The journey begins with an uncomfortable truth—many of us struggle to extend true acceptance beyond those who think, believe, and live like we do. Yet the revolutionary power of radical love demands we go further. Through personal stories and theological reflection, we unpack what it means to "take doors off hinges" to create longer tables where everyone belongs.
We dive into how Christian nationalism has unconsciously shaped many believers' understanding of faith, creating blind spots that limit our capacity for true inclusion. Using the powerful metaphor of church as "the huddle, not the game," we reimagine spiritual community as preparation for the real work of embodying love in everyday life.
Perhaps most challenging is our exploration of what radical acceptance doesn't mean—we distinguish between loving people in their belovedness versus accepting harmful behaviors. This nuanced approach allows us to stand firmly against injustice while still seeing the humanity in everyone.
Throughout our conversation, we return to a central hope: that through community and practice, we can expand our capacity for love in ways that transform both ourselves and our world. What if reimagining what's possible—even a world without war—begins with the simple yet profound act of radical acceptance?
Join us in this honest, heartfelt discussion about creating spaces where "the beautiful becomes the story" and where love—uncontrolled, unpoliced, and unbounded—shows us the way forward.
Welcome to the Expansionist Podcast with Shelly Shepherd 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, Heather Drake. It's great to see you today. Good afternoon, Shelly Shepherd. It's a joy to be here with you in the studio talking about things that we love, like love and presence, and spirit, and poetry, and connection and yeah, and church and worship and devotion. Yeah. All of those things. And unboxing and undoing all of it.
SPEAKER_01:We're trying to make what's beautiful a story. That's the goal, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, there's lots of stories going on. So intentionally saying, how do we make the beautiful, the story? How do we see the beauty? How do we practice holding that up to the light? The light that we are and going, this is the story, not the brokenness. So anyway, I'm excited to talk with you today. We are going to talk about, we've made it a plan anyway, to talk about radical acceptance. What does that look like? And how does a person get to radical acceptance? Yeah, what is that? And how far does your radicalness go?
SPEAKER_01:I feel like we need uh to get there. Uh, I'm not sure that we have a clear path to that uh based on the recent um happenings in our world, but it's certainly worth talking about with you for sure. I mean, Queen of Love is sitting right here, so why not have uh this conversation about radical love and radical acceptance?
SPEAKER_00:Let's talk about radical acceptance.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Let's talk about what it costs us. And even if we're not there yet, is it even on our radar that that's something that we should be working on? What do we need to give up in our own ideas of egoic superiority or moral superiority to be people who are expansive in our acceptance of someone else, in our acceptance of other cultures, in our acceptance of other faiths, in our acceptance of other people, just in our acceptance of ourselves and of our place in the story of all things.
SPEAKER_01:Wow, I'm glad you went there.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I I'm glad you went to self because um wow, I think that's that's where we have to start, right? Like if there's if there's some kind of tension um that begins to rise in my own spirit, in my own space, when I when I hear somebody talk differently than the way that I believe about something, then there's like there's like an immediate uh immediate wall that begins to begins to rise. And so how do we practice this? Um you and I were talking earlier about contemplation and prayer and those sorts of things. Um uh I think right now, in many ways, are the holding anchors of of people of faith. Uh, you know, sometimes I'm afraid to say Christian because it's such a a contentious word as well, a way to describe um a spiritual person. Um and so the the acts of of love and forgiveness and patience and you know, gentleness and kindness, and those those beautiful uh uh gifts that the spirit gives us feels like a radical conversation to have. But we have grown up with those things, right? You and I have grown up being taught that these that the gifts of presence and the gifts of spirit are these beautiful words that we have somehow um weaved into our thought and our consciousness. But does it take us beyond our conscious understanding of what radical acceptance looks like? Or or are we afraid to dip into being more gentle, being more kind, being more accepting? Are we afraid of those things? Meaning that's somebody else's job to do.
SPEAKER_00:But I think of course we're afraid of things like that because very often in our humanity we are fearful of the unknown. But we're fearful of the unknown because the very fact that it is the future or it is the unknown just means we project whatever we're used to into that space. And so to be able to allow the Holy Spirit to give us courage to be able to say, I don't know what it will look like to love this person. I don't know what it would look like to offer radical hospitality to this community. I don't know what it would look like, but I'm trusting that wherever I go, love will be there with me. And so I think there is so much hope in the idea of radical love leads to radical acceptance. And I see the most radical love in the way that Jesus loved the people around him, that the people around him who were so diametrically different in their thoughts, in the way that they lived, and even Jesus's opposition of the culture that he lived in, that he refused to stay in the norms of where he was placed and he was willing to live and thrive in his humanity. And isn't that the goal for us? That we would be people who would create places where people could flourish, where the beautiful could be the story, and where love would let everyone know that this is the kingdom, this is where we're all going to live. But it takes a lot of practice, and I think that it takes other people doing it with us to be courageous and even maybe show us areas where we're blindsided or short-sighted, and to be able to on a regular basis practice expansion, practice making it bigger, our acceptance, our willingness even to be confronted with areas where we are narrow or we haven't set enough uh tables. Um so I'm grateful for that. I have um a really vivid memory now that we're talking about this of um growing up and my grandmother always invited a bunch of people, and at one point there were so many people that were coming, she realized that we did not have enough table seat chair for all the people that were actually going to show up. You know how sometimes you invite people and then you don't know if they're coming and then they're coming and they're bringing plus one or whatever, and then you have way more. And so this was a situation where more than what she was comfortably able to serve were coming. And my mother took down a door and made it into a table. We put tablecloth on it, you know, things underneath it. And that to me feels like this is what is called for for this particular moment that we take down the doors and that we say the table is big enough. Absolutely come. And so whatever places we kept people out of, or whatever places we say, well, here's where we're offering hospitality, not in that room, take the doors off, make them tables. The hospitality will extend to that room as well. And then we can all bring our plus one, plus twenty, our entire culture. And that I think is the practice that we do communally. I think that's what's really important to have community or to build community, to um to quote Doug Birsch, if you feel that or see a need for something and you don't find that community, you are morally obligated to create it. And so this moral obligation not to judge, but to create a community where people thrive, where love is centered. I think about this so much when Jesus is elevating the love commandment. You've heard it said, but I'm saying to you, this is the greatest one. Love everybody. So, what do we do to pay attention to how someone feels love, to listen to someone to tell us this doesn't feel loving when this happens, and for us to make adjustments or take a deep breath and contemplate what it could look like if everyone was loved and accepted just as they are.
SPEAKER_01:Wow. Um that image uh that you just shared uh of your mom and grandmother taking down doors to make longer tables is such a beautiful, a beautiful, not just thought, was a reality for you. And so, and so that was your expression, right? And that has how you have evolved as well. Yeah, absolutely. Making longer and wider tables. Um, so let's let's park there for just a second. And as much as I love that image and that story, um, there are people who are really afraid to, you know, forget about taking the door off the hinges. They're they're afraid about opening the door to a stranger. They're afraid, you know, someone's knocking and it's like, I don't know this person, or, you know, is this is this really Amazon delivery, or is this somebody else, you know, in disguise? And so we have this impression, I think, that we have to change so many things in order to accept people. But what if, what if it was just, you know, for you it was take down the door and make the table wider and longer? You know, for someone else, it might be giving a donation at, you know, the Red Cross. For someone else, it's it's you know, cleaning the streets or feeding the homeless, um, where other people might think, oh, that's too radical. I could never, you know, drive down to that part of town and hand out anything to the homeless. So this fear or this uncertainty, maybe it's uncertainty more than it's fear that's keeping us from um expanding into radical acceptance of others. I'm not sure. I'm not sure if it's fear or or if it's just, you know, I don't know how to do this. I don't know how to love radically. I don't know how to love and accept all people and you know, all situations. But do we have to, or can we just start with, you know, this inner place that that you mentioned in the beginning? It's like, first ourselves.
SPEAKER_00:Can we start there? It's a yeah, it's a conundrum for me, though, when you present it this way, because I would like to talk about two things. I think this is best practiced in community. Because if you are already afraid and have reason to be in a place to maybe not want to open the door because you're not sure if it is the Amazon man or some other person who would maybe be trying to harm you or to scam you or to take something from you. That's the beauty of doing it together with someone else. Because that way you do honor your own um maybe conscious thought about safety or about other things. That's what we would love, does not ask us to become a martyr.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_00:We don't radical love for someone else doesn't mean that we have to put ourselves in doesn't always require us to put ourselves in harm's way. I think sometimes it would, but it doesn't to be radical in our love. I think one of the things that is so helpful is to do it in community. Then it doesn't become overwhelming. Then there is a safety in being able to say this is what we're doing together. And particularly for women, these are things that we need to think about when we're talking about being radically accepting and radical love, that this would also include radical wisdom and that we would bring ourselves into this wholeness of saying, I take it from someone else. But I also believe that in caring for ourselves and in self-acceptance, it really comes from the other. I at least this is where I am right now. It's in seeing myself in someone else, it is in recognizing oneness. And I think that's my point more than anything. It is in the oneness of all people that I begin to have compassion on myself. And maybe some people can start with self-compassion, kudos if you can, but very often we have a tenderness toward others that we don't always reflect back to ourselves. And so, in this practice of oneness, in this practice of community, in the practice of extending hospitality radically, I think then we can actually start to look at that and go, I'm aware that I need to be a compassionate witness for myself in this area too. How do I practice radically loving myself and accepting myself? I think it's in the radical acceptance of neighbor. And I don't think you could have one without the other, but I think sometimes it's easier to see people in their glorious beloved state, sometimes marred by other things, but in their belovedness. And maybe it's just more practiced outwardly than the practice of witnessing our own belovedness and our own otherness, but recognizing the plan of love has always been oneness.
SPEAKER_01:So let's jump to another place where on any given any given week in church, um you might hear someone say, you know, Jesus is love, God is love. And that we are our our business as uh people of faith is is to be to be like Jesus, to be to be loving, um, to be accepting. And and then the you know, the red flags go up on, well, does that mean everyone? You know, because if that means uh that particular group of people, I can't really um, you know, my mom and I had this conversation last week. She's just like, you know, Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, you know, uh on a particular group of people. And so, you know, even as people of faith, sometimes it's hard for us to believe in this radical acceptance that Jesus accepted everyone exactly as they were. Yeah, but it's preached all the time. So, for how many millennia now have we been hearing this story and yet we are still struggling with acceptance of others?
SPEAKER_00:I think a lot of it comes to the um to the point that we were told that if we understood a certain thing and we did a certain thing, that we would have moral superiority, that this was the way. And in our knowing it, then we would use dominance to enforce it. And we would, you know, again, morally superior, uh, mentally superior, it becomes this golden idol that has nothing to do with the love that Jesus shows us and the the love that is required to access the kingdom that is so simple that children would not err in it, and the kingdom that is so close to us that it's in our mouth, and it's this beautiful kingdom where love reigns, but it requires a denial of the kingdom that we're all building. I mean, to say your kingdom come, your will be done means my kingdom is not gonna happen. And that's very difficult for people because we have spent our lives creating, crafting, uh, striving to make our kingdoms established. And I believe a kingdom is anywhere that you have any kind of influence.
SPEAKER_01:So are you saying that we were so entrenched in white nationalism growing up that we didn't recognize it?
SPEAKER_00:Yes, unequivocally, yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, a fish doesn't know that it's in the water, somebody outside of it has to tell them you're living in the water, or maybe a tadpole would be a better idea because you don't always have to live there. Yes, I believe that, especially in our age group, you know, I was born in the late 60s and I think in the 50s and 60s and even the 40s, there was a movement or an understanding, and it was very different than the way that the church had lived before. And actually, I really believe that one of the things that Mary Magdalene teaches us is the presence, the power of presence right now in this space. Return to the good, return to this way of living that is different. And I I there's a portion in the scripture where it says, don't ask for the good old days. That's simply not the way of the wise. And so this idea of when was it good? When was it right? What does it look like now to live as people fully alive and fully in love with ourselves and others? And this is the hope for the world that we could change those aspects. But did Christian nationalism shape us? 100%. Did colonization and its evil seep into the way that we were people of a Christian faith? Absolutely. Are there things that we need to repent for? Unequivocally. And is there a way that we can live our lives as people of love that can make amends, build bridges to the people that we have harmed? I think yes. I think that's the power of forgiveness. I think that's the power of radical love, and I believe in it.
SPEAKER_01:That's where I was gonna step is, you know, that's the radical acceptance is first accepting and admitting that we have a problem, right? Like step one of the 12 steps. You know, admit that you have an issue with this, that you as a person of faith are not loving the way of radical love, right? Radical acceptance. Not you in particular, I just say in general, obviously you are.
SPEAKER_00:No, there are places where I'm being pushed. There's places where I'm looking at that and going, is this really radical love?
SPEAKER_01:You're you're teaching it though, and and and you're practicing it and it's showing up uh uh on a regular basis. If we're if we're only hearing it in a sermon on Sunday morning or in a podcast as, you know, uh as we're on our afternoon walk or you know, in an audio book that just quickly mentions um the need for radical acceptance. You know, I I love how you pointed to this really has to be in community. This has to be done where there's other people who are focused on the same, yeah, same outcome, the same, the same desire is to bring more love into the world, more acceptance. And, you know, if my mom were on this podcast with us right now, she would she would say that she accepts everybody, right? She loves everyone. But then when it comes right down to it, you know, in in our in our private conversations, it's clear to me that, wow, there are people that you know might not get the love, right? It's like, really? Can we really think that way as people of faith? And I and I think, Heather, that's that's part of the importance of this particular episode is as people of faith, how do we, how do we get there, right? Like, like who's the prophetic voice? Are we all the prophetic voice, or is there is there one voice like like the prophet Haggai who said, take the wood, go get the wood and build this house, right? And if the door needs to come off its hinges to create a wider table, do that too. It's like who who's saying that? Who's who's demonstrating that? And we could point to a lot of people that are doing justice work right now. We just had two beautiful women on one of our recent podcasts who who are all about uh expanding the love of and justice in the world. And we we could name name other individuals, I'm sure, that we that we follow and believe in the work that they're doing to create a more common good in our world and in our country. And yet, millennia, and here we are asking this question, um, which I know you and I aren't, you know, are not going to solve this question in one episode, but the but the idea is of having this conversation is that do we need a community? Do we need other people around us who who think different, who look different, who act different, who you know, who didn't maybe even grow up in the church to say, this is what the church is missing. You know, are we are we spending time with people that don't even go to church and listening to them? We should be.
SPEAKER_00:That's what love does. 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 expansionisttheology.com. So I am not a person of sports. That is not my bag. It's never been my bag. Did you say sports? Bless, I think everyone. Yeah. Again, it's because it's not usually something you hear me say, so that's why it astonished you. The sports. I have four sons, so there is some of that in our in our mind. But everyone should read something by Bell Hooks regarding sports, and then we'll get back to that. Let's do a podcast on that. Okay, let's talk about Bell Hooks. That could be an entire year's podcast. Uh, she's brilliant. If you haven't already read her, please find something and and read it. It'll it'll change your life. But um, the idea was there was a beautiful analogy, I felt, to a Christian church and sports. And again, not my usual analogy, but they were reminding people that in like the game of football, Sunday church would be the huddle. It's not the game. You only come to get instruction on what you should do when you're playing the game, how you should, what is the strategy? But it's not the game. And I think people have this idea that, like, I went to the huddle, who cares? I mean, like, hooray for you. You missed the game. And again, I don't want to make this into something that, you know, is relative or small because I think it's so much bigger than this, but this idea that I think we've gotten the wrong idea about what it means to be part of a Christian community. What does it mean to be part of a church or a place of faith? It should be that there are other people who have other stories and other needs, and it gives us opportunities to fall in love with them. That I think is what the huddle is. And this idea, again, I don't want to use a sports analogy when it's not my language, but it made so much sense to me that people have made that the issue. I showed up and I got my clothes on like for the huddle. And it's like, that's not even for the huddle. Your clothes are you have protection and you have all these things because you're supposed to be out there doing something with it. And so, whatever faith um community we're a part of, we recognize this is so we can get the wisdom of somebody who sees the whole field. This is somebody who says, How do we, what does it actually mean to get a point? What does it mean for us to do this? And then how do we demonstrate excellent sportsmanship with other teams that are also in the field? And how are we not, you know, necessarily just in competition with them? I think this, again, I think the analogy was so beautiful that I'm reminded that that's really what it means to be a part of the church is that you go and you get a team. It's great, we're all gonna do this thing. You get some wisdom, you get tips, you get, you get a coach, you get somebody who can help you, you get teammates, but that's not the whole deal. It's getting out there and loving the world. It's living our lives, it's making the art that we're supposed to make, it's making music, it's eating delicious dinners with friends, it's inviting neighbors over, but it's being kind to people that we shop with, it's being considerate. And it's in us, us taking our responsibility as children of God to care for the earth, to listen to the earth, to align ourselves with creation and to be able to witness God in all of God's goodness and then be able to be these beautiful lights. And then let's reimagine a world where violence is not the only way. We did a contemplative prayer the other month, and I was asking people to imagine a world without war. And quite a few people told me, I can't even do that. And I'm like, but we just haven't spent enough time doing it. Let's do it together then. Imagine what it would look like for us to be people who live without war. That's possible. Beloved, we could do this in our lifetime. We'd all have to get on the same page, but that's all that would have to happen. You know, we would just have to change our mind. And I realize how difficult it is for people to say, I want to change my mind about something. But this is what radical acceptance demands of us that we give up our judgments. And that's a very scary proposition, Shelly Shepard, because for some of us, our judgments what are what, you know, make us different or what keep us on the straight and narrow, or you know, how we can identify ourselves from others. And what if the good news is we don't have to identify ourselves from others? What if we're just all one? And what if in this radical acceptance of everyone that we see our place in the story?
SPEAKER_01:I love that. That's in a summation, that's making what's beautiful, the story. You know, to put a bow on that is we get to rewrite it, we get to change. And maybe, maybe this these last few years of disruption in what we would call the last few years, many would say the last 40 years is, you know, we needed to be awakened. We needed to have a different perspective of what love looks like, of what acceptance looks like. Um, because we weren't getting it. Many of us, we just weren't getting it. It's not that we were mean people or bad people. Oh, sometimes we were.
SPEAKER_00:I was, sometimes I was. I will I was accepting? No, I will say mean, judgmental.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, of course. There's there's the what I would call the you know, the challenge side uh of our personalities, of our behaviors, of our thoughts and deeds. Um that that's there. That's that's on that level of the ego, right? Trying to contain and um and figure out what to do with that part of us. I think that's a well, maybe that's what's feeding the lack of love and lack of radical acceptance in in our world and and maybe just even in ourselves is is how do we change our behaviors? How do we do that?
SPEAKER_00:Um, and do I have to keep doing that? I think one of the best ways to change our behavior is to change our mind about things. But also, there's another whole vein of thinking that says, just change what you're doing, and then your thoughts will come along with it. You know, like sometimes it is actually saying, okay, I want to be all by myself and I want to think differently about someone else, then I might have to go to where someone else is. Maybe I have to start volunteering in a soup kitchen. Maybe I need to put myself in a situation where I'm with other people, but I am outside of the realm of things that make me comfortable. And there's again, we live at such a beautiful time where things like the internet and other methods where we can, you know, it could be used for evil, but it could also be used for incredible connection. There are so many niche opportunities for people to be able to change their world in real tangible ways. And in loving someone else, it really does open our own eye to be able to have compassion, our inner eye for the places in us that we have distanced ourselves from, that we have disassociated from. And the practice of loving my neighbor really helps me to love myself. Now I know that also Jesus said, love yourself as you love your neighbor. I understand that. But for some of us, we don't see ourselves, but we do see our neighbor. And in the neighbor, we can see the other. And then I think that we can see ourselves rightly. I think we've spent so much time trying to take um splinters out of other people's eyes that we have these giant telephone poles in ours, and it's not led to community, it's not led to further growth. How can it? If you have a telephone pole sticking out of your eye, how close can you actually come to someone? Yes, you know, and and then how how effective can your surgery be if you have a telephone pole? out of your own eye. So these ideas. And I think that's why Jesus gave us these.
SPEAKER_01:Or how effective can you be if you won't allow somebody to get close enough to pull the telephone pole out of your eye because you've always had it in there. And so wow, this is just part of me now. This is who I am. This is how I think this is, you know, the direction I'm going. I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna walk around with these with these uh logs in my eye. Yeah, I I I think I think this this episode is is reminding me that wow I need more practice. I need more practice at this, right? This radical acceptance and radical love. It it doesn't it doesn't come in the box of Cheerios.
SPEAKER_00:Can I clarify that when I'm talking about radical acceptance, and I think that you and I would agree on this definition, we're talking about radical acceptance of a person, of someone who's beloved. Now, in no way do we mean radical acceptance of someone else's behaviors that harm, exclude or foster hatred or any of those things. Traumatize, yeah, yeah. Yes. We're talking about radical acceptance of people's belovedness, of our true selves, of who we are, and then also what it looks like to accept other people's cultures, accept other people's way of living. If it doesn't cause harm, if it doesn't injure someone else, then allowing ourselves to be free of judgments that we thought we had to carry because we were Christians, and being able to say really what it means to be in the consciousness of the Christ is to love people without judgment, to be able to say this is even what the apostle said when he said, in Christ, there is no more lines that delineate people, that separate people. And he included even the barbarians. And I know that's not huge language now, but that is just a radical group of people. And they were included at the table of the Lord, at the fellowship. And the idea wasn't that they had to be ex-barbarians. The idea that they have to be you have to be an ex-smoker or an ex-drinker or any of those things to be included, you know, that's just that's not acceptance that's something else entirely. And so to be able to say what does it look like for us to honor the sacred and see the sacred in every person to honor the spirit and to nurture the spirit's wooing in every single life that we see. What does it mean for us to recognize community and how that expands us? And again I can't think of any better way to transform the world than falling in love with other people, letting someone tell you their story and holding that story with honor and let it expand your heart, your life let's be the table of the Lord where we sit here and go, yeah, that's the guy that I don't agree with at all, but we follow the same Jesus. I think that's what the disciples and the list of them were such a big part of that the social norms that were of that day, Jesus completely disregarded those. And what does it look like for us as followers of Jesus to go, absolutely not we're not gonna let things like that divide us. And absolutely not we're not gonna let whatever the culture says tell us someone's value or where they belong.
SPEAKER_01:Well well some are not Heather many are in in our world many are allowing it to divide which is one of the reasons I think we wanted to have this podcast is wow can we can we find some kind of salve or balm right now in our world um when brown and black people are yeah being chased across the country can we find this is unholy and Lord forgive us some place in our hearts.
SPEAKER_00:But being able to have a community or a table a fellowship where you can fall in love with people and know them as humans and know them as image bearers of God is what expands us and allows us to say I won't you allow you to do that to my friend whom I know by name and I know where she lives and I know what her family is you know all those ways and we we are seeing beautiful ways that people are standing up to extremism in our country right now by knowing someone, by being an actual neighbor and saying what does it look like for us to protect our neighbors? What does it look like for us to protect the entire human population, the entire segment of people called women who are under particular threat and for us to say, we're gonna raise our voices, but not our voices alone. We're gonna raise our hearts and our hands and ultimately we're gonna allow our thoughts to be raised so that we can live differently and we can create a world that is different not only for the next generation but for the ones that are to come and the freedom that it will allow us now for us to be people transformed by love, this is the mirac miracle, this is the miraculous that we're hoping for.
SPEAKER_01:Wow, this feels very heavy in my heart right now just because the the abuse of I think towards women in particular in our country the canceling of individuals and the removal of people you know it just feels like a heavy place that you know I I I want it to end. I want that I want that to stop I want people to learn how to love and to accept and and yet um there's some kind of Christian national flag flying behind it all that tells me we have much reckoning to do on this topic this topic of how to love radically and accept and that means somehow Heather you know looking at the situation and either like praying for the gap to close like close this gap. Let us stand in this gap as long as we can holding each other's hand and holding arm arm in arm but please close this gap because you know in some situations like the ones that we're observing or witnessing it's it's hard to be radically accepting.
SPEAKER_00:I'll just leave it as that sometimes it's just hard I don't disagree it is hard but Shelly we can do hard things and we can we can do incredible things with the power of love inside of us and we have a spirit a spirit that is connected to all things and the spirit that is connected to the mind of Christ that says this is possible it is absolutely possible for us to usher in an entire new way of thinking it's happened before in the world it can happen again and it starts with a few of us saying I believe in the power of radical acceptance and love does not need to be controlled. Love does not need to be policed love does not need to have um etc around it love love is always the way God is love if it's not loving it's not of God and that's big enough for all of us in this idea of how do we approach the world in love in love with each other in love with ourselves and in love with Christ. It reminds me of that that song growing up the I don't know if it was a hymn maybe it is a hymn um let it begin with me let it begin with us Heather may it begin with us may it be and I hear the words of Mary from the uh from the Beatles let it be let it be let it be let let it let it be us let it be let it begin here let our minds be expanded let our hearts be open to the moving of spirit and let us be people who are willing to accept the love so that we can go out and demonstrate it so that we can say I I had a dream you know this is a a dream that not only Dr. Martin Luther King has but I think every mother every woman had a dream where we would all bring whatever we were making for dinner and we would make a big feast and everyone would be invited and no one would be left out and everybody would be nourished and everyone would be heard. That's how we build a better world so be it. So be it further information or for more content visit us at expansionisttheology.com