The Expansionist Podcast

Your Mansion Can Wait; Your Neighbor Cannot

• Shelly Shepherd and Heather Drake • Season 2

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A single billboard question haunted our childhoods and still shapes modern faith: Where will you spend eternity? We decided to take it apart—gently, honestly, and without losing the heart of the gospel. Together we trace how fear-based scripts formed our earliest images of God and how those scripts often create otherness, separation, and shame. Then we pivot to presence, asking what happens when we trade anxiety about the afterlife for the daring work of love, justice, and neighborliness here and now.

We revisit a familiar passage—“I go to prepare a place for you”—and explore a richer reading that centers God’s vast roominess rather than a gated heaven. This reframing loosens the grip of spiritual escapism and calls us back to the practices Jesus actually modeled: healing, freeing, welcoming, and making space at the table. We talk about empire thinking and why some religious messaging can function as social control, encouraging quiet compliance instead of courageous compassion. Through it all, we keep returning to the nearness of God, not as a concept in the clouds but as a living presence in our ordinary lives.

Our aim isn’t to win an argument; it’s to change the question. Instead of “Where will you spend eternity?” we ask, “How can I be a better neighbor to you?” Drawing on contemplative wisdom and Thomas Keating’s invitation to a new language of prayer, we name the kingdom as a present reality felt in influence, community, and daily choices. Love birthed us, love sustains us, and love will receive us. The task is to align with that love now—through equity, mercy, and attentive presence—trusting the Spirit to lead.

If this conversation meets you where you are, share it with a friend, subscribe for more thought-provoking episodes, and leave a review to help others find the show. Then tell us: What better question are you ready to ask today?

SPEAKER_00:

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. Great to see you. Good afternoon, Shelly Shepard. It's so nice to see you. And to further a conversation and to record a podcast and to be in each other's presence. It's all good. It's all good. Oh goodness.

SPEAKER_01:

Good, good things. Wow, here we are. It's been a couple of uh minutes before uh since we've uh since we've created a podcast, but I think this one might be an interesting conversation to have with you.

SPEAKER_00:

It's certainly we're just gonna set people up because this is such a big question. And we are people who are not afraid of big questions, but also questions that may have haunted us and questions that may be posed to others, and yeah, it's sticky and it's uh vulnerable and it's intrusive and it's uh rude sometimes. Yeah, let's let's talk about it. I can hardly wait.

SPEAKER_01:

I can hardly wait for this.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh you say that in uh that kind of intro. I'm like, I'm not interested in your questions, man.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh yeah. It is uh and and maybe um we've been in this space of uh learning and expanding non-duality. And I think when when these, I don't know, questions appear, or we see them online, or you know, one of our family members asks this question in a public in a public space, you know, it just takes me to a place of how we are setting the table as people of faith. Like how we set the table. And are we doing it well? Are we not doing it well? Um, how we've have we've forgotten the God of our childhoods, uh Heather, and we're just like out here on our own table.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh my gosh. Do you remember that song from years ago called I Will Return to the God of My Childhood? Did you sing that song? I I don't think I ever sang it, but you probably did. Oh, I did again as a small child, I sang a song about returning to the God of my childhood. Oh, anyway, so let's just rewind for a quick second when you reminded me of a question that used to torment me, that used to be something that I felt like was big and I could ask other people, or that I, again, in my youthful arrogance, that I actually knew. And the question is something that we would ask someone else, something that would probably keep you awake at night, and definitely something if there was some kind of you know, national or earthwide event. What is this question? And the question and if you are traveling southbound on I-75 in Florida, there is a billboard with this printed on it. May not be the only place, but this is a question that is not only on people's lips, but it like rattles around in our heads, some of it gifted to us by culture, some of it gifted to us by people that trained us in spirituality or in a religious order. And here's the big question, Shelly. Are you ready for it? Oh, yeah. The question is this where will you spend eternity? Oh my gosh, I was so tiny the first time I heard that question. And it was such an effective seed planter of fear. I couldn't even get out of the first grade. You know, I was trying to manage my life at you know, uh, five or six years old. And then someone saying, Now, now you must be accountable and aware and decisive about an eternity.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

I mean, what kind of concepts are these? Yeah. Eternity, afterlife, all these kind of things. So let's talk about this kind of question that says to us, you know, don't worry about what you're doing in your life now. Doesn't matter if you're gentle or tender or kind to your neighbor. Let's put all of our thoughts and all of our eggs in the basket of eternity. And let's have a lot of confidence and gumption and telling people how it's gonna turn out and you know, what we think as mortals in a present reality, what they should do about a future eternity. Let's let's talk about this nightmare.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, unzip that thing, right? It's like we we need a new zipper, like completely take the zipper out of that cloth and start over. Um, I was I was just in a situation with a family member uh yesterday where this exact question out of the blue comes up to a complete stranger walking by. And I was just beside myself thinking, okay, this person is uncomfortable. They do not know how to answer. In fact, they asked for clarification. You want me to answer that, or you're like, like they didn't even really know you know how to how to position the question. Maybe they'd never been asked. And so I sat there with that question thinking, oh my goodness, uh help me God not to turn turn this table over right now because I feel this energy from my childhood of people feel responsible to save the world. They feel responsible and they feel out of alignment, or something is like maladjusted. Or what you just offered is fear. There's some kind of fear. If I don't say these things out loud and to other people, then possibly I don't have faith, or God's I'm not securing God, or when I stand before um the great white throne and I get asked, what did you do in this life? Like this is real, real stuff that people are are handling and processing. Still, even the sign on 75 in your in your your neck of the wood, your your community, people are reading these things. And the bottom line for me yesterday was it just creates separation, it creates division, it creates um an otherness. Like if you don't believe that, if you don't believe that, if you don't know where you're gonna spend eternity, then well, Shelley, you just you better get down on your knees right now and start offering, you know, some prayers around this this question because you know, Jesus is coming. Jesus is coming, Heather. Did you know? Did you know Jesus is coming?

SPEAKER_00:

It's a hopeful thought, but not in the way, but not in the same way that I uh believed that before, or I experienced that before, to have this idea that it was our responsibility to spread the good news. And the good news was there's a terror that you haven't thought of yet. Here's a fear that you haven't uh unlocked yet and lived with in your life. That not only do you have to deal with everything that is unknown in your current state, but now you have to imagine and project and make choices in a future state. Instead of the other that Jesus offers to us is to stay in tune and connected with the spirit, and the spirit offers us a presence, the present right now, grace for the moment right here. I appreciate very much what you uh said and what that caused me to think about in this idea of this is fear-based, and it is meant to um compel some kind of action. If we you make a choice now, do something now, as opposed to really listening to Jesus, who says to us, the kingdom of heaven is right here among you. It's so close to you, it's even in your mouth. But we hear this even from Mary's witness when she offers the same thing. Here, the hope is return to the good, not send yourself uh, you know, astro flying into the future, but stay here in the present moment where the good is. Stay here in this moment. This is the promise of Emmanuel, God with us now, wherever we are right now. I think people forget that.

SPEAKER_01:

You know, they've they they think God and God is off somewhere, you know, up, you know, instead of like sideways, like like God is right here to my left and to my right, in front of me, behind me, like all around me. Like, like we forget um that that God is in this relationship. God is not off somewhere else. God is here, God is present. But if in creating these kinds of questions, and I'm just gonna say it this way, you know, being raised in an evangelical posture, I don't know, was it evangelical or was it just straight up charismatic Pentecostal, which might even be worse? I I don't know which is I don't know, which is worse, which is better. Either way, we were handed these these words, these phrases, these positions and statements so that we could stand apart and judge the other.

SPEAKER_00:

Exactly, so that we would know how to judge someone else. That's right. Circling back around to it, these kind of questions produce an otherness, produce an illusion of separation, produce in us a thought, an energy, um, a frequency of uh fear and a frequency of opposite of oneness. I could parse you into many different little pieces here. And the invitation I think that Jesus offers us is to change the question. Absolutely. Sometimes you don't get the answer because the question is wrong. Pay attention. Are you asking in your life? Are you asking the right question? And if you don't know what question to ask, then you know, I think you invite the spirit to help you uh renegotiate uh the question and hear what what is this, what is spirit actually calling us to do? Who is spirit actually allowing us to become? And what transformation or evolution happens when we change the way that we answer questions, when we hear something in our own soul other than the words that were given to us by fearful religious leaders.

SPEAKER_01:

When I hear you talk about this, it causes me to reflect on the relationship between between Jesus and Mary Magdalene in in many ways, and how how he must have offered to her a better story, a better way to ask the question, uh a better way to understand or perceive uh what he was trying to communicate about his life. The the context of I go to prepare a place for you is often interpreted much like, where will you spend eternity? Like, what do you do with these verses? Oh, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

No, no, you said that, and the first thing that came to me was the rest of that portion of the text. I go to prepare a place for you. If it were not so, I would have told you, because in my father's house as many mansions. And so here we have this whole idea of there's a gated community in heaven that you want to have, and you're gonna you're gonna get a mansion there. Make sure you get a mansion there. You know, there's these things that you have to do, attend church, believe this way, say this way, wear these kind of clothes, make sure you give your tithes and offerings to a church, you know, like go on some kind of mission or service, make sure that you're volunteering this number of hours, don't say these things, don't watch this thing. It is this insanity that has been given to us as an interpretation. But if we allow the Holy Spirit to not only to re-enchant the text to us, but to really look at it for what it actually is, in that particular portion of scripture, Jesus is actually saying, or at least this is the light that we have now. In my father, there is so much room. Okay, because that's a whole other thing, Shelly, than when you die. When you die, you're gonna get a big house by yourself. I mean, that's a load of malarkey. That's a promise to someone who doesn't have. I'm not saying you're not gonna get a big house. I don't know what's gonna happen because I've not been there. But I'm saying that was never what Jesus was offering was this promise of a sweet by and by where you will suffer here, everything will be terrible here, but that's okay because in the future, in heaven, you will get that kind of thing. I mean, that allows somebody to not work on justice here. What about equality here? What about equity now? And these are the things that Jesus was asking or inviting us into.

SPEAKER_01:

Do you do do you feel like, or do you think, or we could have this, you know, just unpack this for a few minutes about how this how this all started and how it all began to be this sort of way where people just ask these questions randomly of others? But I was wondering about is this in contradiction to the empire where they were experiencing in in Jesus' time, okay, there's Rome and here's us, you know, there's the rich and here's the peasant. Like, is this contrast built in to the fabric of what Jesus was to trying to communicate? But possibly that Mary Magdalene was the only one who understood. Like she under she literally understood. I get this. I get this. God is in us, God is with me, the kingdom is within me, the good is within me, says the Gospel of Mary. Is she the only one who saw this contrast between the empire and what Jesus was trying to communicate? Like no one else, no one else got this? Only the women, perhaps. I'm not sure. I'll let you I'll let you flip on that one. Um, because I don't know. I don't know how it starts. I don't know how these questions, if it's colonization or if it's empire, or if it's like just a bunch of craziness that we all agree to participate in.

SPEAKER_00:

I'm not sure. 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. And I think here's the good news. We don't have to know where it started or who started it, but we do have a choice. This is what we're invited into, that we get to choose what we think about. And I do think it was intentional. At least I judge, and let me name it as that. I judge it was probably intentional by someone who wanted someone who was doing without to try to be content and to not push for change. So don't worry about things now. In heaven, it'll all work out for you. No equity here, no equality now, no social justice, but just hush, hush, and be quiet and start thinking about when you die. Right. What about when we live, Shelley? The invitation of Jesus is for now, is for this moment, is for this presence, is for while we are yet here. This is the invitation. Heaven here on earth, your kingdom come, your will be done now, as it is in heaven, and what it means to actually live in Christ. What does it mean for us to live in this awareness of the presence of God with us now?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, that's a beautiful thought. Beautiful question, hopeful thought, right? And I don't know how much time we're spending in that quadrant, thinking it thinking through what am I actually doing now? Like spending eternity somewhere. And I'm not here to take away from anybody's hopeful thought about eternity.

SPEAKER_00:

That's not the point. Neither am I. I'm not taking apart your mansion. There's an escapism of just saying, Well, I'm just gonna think about when I die or what's going to happen. And the truth is, Shelly, we don't know. That's a very unfamiliar place to be, to be people, and it's it's vulnerable. And I know that other people say, I know what's gonna happen when I die. Okay, bless. Bless. Yeah. Bless. I would have told you with a lot of confidence years ago that I know because somebody handed me that kind of arrogant confidence. And the truth is that spirit will unravel arrogant confidence and bring us into vulnerable presence because that is where we are connected with love. That is where we are connected with goodness, that is where all of the joy, peace, kindness, all the fruits of the spirit are in this present connected vulnerableness.

SPEAKER_01:

And that's deliciousness right there as it as it comes out of your mouth. And I also wonder if then our responsibility isn't to ask the question, where will you spend eternity? But our responsibility is if we hear that or we see that on a sign, maybe is to talk about it, like we're doing right now. Like our responsibility is to is to help others see that that the good is here, that God is with us, that God isn't absent somewhere off. And I'm not saying that God doesn't disappear. I I feel that there are dark nights of the soul. There are places where and departures where we we wonder, where is the presence? Where is the presence? Because I'm not feeling it at the moment.

SPEAKER_00:

There is a statement attributed to St. Francis of Assisi, and he was critiquing um the church as he did because he loved her. And he said one of the greatest disservices that we have done is put God in the sky. And I love the idea of God in the sky because I love the stars, and it does cause me to wonder, and it causes me to, again, see this magnificent smallness and this magnificent, you know, vastness. But this idea that God is out there over there, far away, is a disservice to us because it is the present. It is like a kiss, it is manna, it is now, it is connection, it is uh supernatural, mystical communion table experience. How is it that the bread of life and this wine is going to give us eternal life? But it is the practice now in the way that we set the table. And maybe the questions that we need to start asking are not in the sweet by and by. But when somebody has that question, oh, do you know where you're going to spend eternity? Maybe a better question would be how could I be a better neighbor to you? Exactly. How could I be more loving? Yes. How could I be the person that brings this kingdom? And really, I there is so much beautiful language in these texts, but sometimes the language is just a stumbling block. You know, what is a kingdom for us even now? And I will give Dallas Willard credit for this, but because he is the one who helped me with this understanding is a kingdom is anywhere you have influence. Some of us have larger kingdoms than others because they have more influence based on whatever it is that you you how the influence came to you. Some of us have small influence, but whatever influence we have, it is our choice. Will I participate and propagate a kingdom of love? Will it be the kingdom of God that Jesus offered to us now? Or will I offer empire? Will I offer a furthering of a kingdom that oppresses? Jesus reminded us that this kingdom that he was offering was going to loose chains, was going to free prisoners, was going to heal the sick, was going to open blind eyes. This is what the kingdom looks like. And the kingdom looks like helping us hear things differently. And what is it? What is the invitation of the spirit to give up questioning that leads to nowhere?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, it's the certainty. We're looking for certainty in those kinds of questions, right? Yes, we are. Like, like when we when we when I when I talked with people, it's like, but I need to know for sure that I'm okay. I need to know for sure that this is the right way, you know, that you know, that God isn't going to abandon me or turn turn God's back on me, or you know, all of these, all of these ways. And, you know, I I just think these these questions, they need a better story. They needed we need a different way to ask. Like if I asked you, uh Heather, where will you spend eternity? Like how what what is this connected to? Where are you gonna spend eternity? In the presence of God, right? Like Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00:

Returned to the source of all love. That's eternity will have a sudden. Yes. Yes. Right. So if if we believe that And not by my own doing, not because I myself have earned anything. That's right. Not because I've created a path and now I'm gonna stick to this path no matter what. This is the work of love. Love that birthed us is love that will receive us. Love that is God and that is immeasurable, and that God had a plan, and I believe the plan works. That love is coming for us, that love has always been coming for us. Where will we spend eternity? In the arms of love, fully known, absolutely seen? Because this is Jesus' prayer for us. Make them one and may they know that you love them the same way that you love me. These are the words of Jesus. This is the prayer that Jesus prayed for us, that we would be so concrete in our awareness that we are so loved by God, and there is nothing that can separate us from that love. We are so loved by God. God, who is all love, has always been inviting us back home. Come home to love. That's been the plan.

SPEAKER_01:

I I wish that we could erase some of that line of thinking, that that way that that we were taught uh to think uh that sets otherness, this dual, like everybody has to be right, and if everybody's not right, then everybody's wrong. These people are right, these people are wrong. And I wish there was a way that we could just unzip that and start over.

SPEAKER_00:

I think part of the way is change the question. Change the questions that we're asking. How can I be a better neighbor? What do it what does it look like for me to expand the table so that more neighbors are welcome? Absolutely. So that more people feel safe and feel the love of the kingdom of God, the kingdom that there is no hungry person in. The kingdom that Jesus showed us is available to us to live in light, to live fully immersed in love, and to I think one of the ways that Jesus showed us a pattern was that you don't always have to answer everyone's question. Over and over again, there are questions posed in the text, and the response by the narrator is, and Jesus answered them not a word. So sometimes those questions need to be left unanswered and unsaid, unrepeated, and we need to be asking better questions. How can I align myself with the love that I am?

SPEAKER_01:

And I'd be willing to almost bet, if I were a betting person, that the people that are being asked that question, where you where will you spend eternity? If you were to die tonight, where would you spend eternity? I bet the people that are the hearers of that would love a different question. You know, yes, say it different, ask me something else. Um, and some people would say, well, that's because they're not ready to meet their maker. Well, and and I don't necessarily agree with that either.

SPEAKER_00:

But I was just gonna say, whose job is it to get them ready? Is it our job to prepare ourselves? It's my job to belove it, preparation, transformation, those are gifts of the spirit. Here we go. Here she comes. Our job, our job is surrendering to the kiss. Our job is to opening our hearts to this radical love and acceptance. Returning that job is empowered by spirit. It is not going to be a work of our own hands. This is why she came.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes. This is why she came. This is why why Jesus knew that we would need this presence.

SPEAKER_00:

And Jesus said to us, It's better for you if I go.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Because now you're going to be present with the Spirit. Now, in every single moment, you will have connection to the divine. In every single moment, you will be one.

SPEAKER_01:

And it's it's beautiful to teach this, right? It's beautiful to offer to others um what it would be like to follow the spirit, or what it sounds like, or feels like, or um what those impressions are. And I I wonder if we weren't uh, you know, not you and I necessarily, but the people making the billboards. I wonder if we spent more time teaching and inviting people or just offering. Like that was the spirit. You just experienced the spirit. Like I shared that with a friend the other day. She said something, and I was like, that was this, that was the work of spirit. And she's like, It was? I'm like, absolutely. Um and but we're just not aware because we've been trapped uh in our mind and in our thinking to believe a certain way about this relational God. We've been trapped to believe something different about this relational God. Um yeah, that's probably a whole nother podcast. But I wonder, I wonder if we we could close with this with this prayer out of Cynthia Bourgeois's The Making of a Modern Mystic, where she features Thomas Keating uh offering some words to us. Shall I read this? Yes, please. And so just a little pre-understanding, uh, Thomas Keating is at a spiritual summit in Calcutta, invited to this gathering of monastic leaders, and he says, I will ask you to stand and all join hands in a little while. But first, we realize that we are going to have to create a new language of prayer, and that this new language of prayer has to come out of something which transcends all traditions and comes out of the immediacy of love. We have to part now, aware of the love that unites us, the love that unites us in spite of real differences, real emotional friction. The things that are on the surface are nothing. What is deep is the real. O God, in accepting one another wholeheartedly, fully, completely, we accept you. And we thank you, and we adore you, and we love you with our whole being, because our being is in your being, our spirit is rooted in your spirit. Fill us then with love, and let us be bound together with love as we go our diverse ways, united in this one spirit, which makes you present in the world.

SPEAKER_00:

Amen, amen, amen, amen. So be it. May that be so. In the immediacy of love, may that compel us to do all things. 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 expansionisttheology.com.