The Expansionist Podcast

All Shall Be Well: Opening To Mystery

• Shelly Shepherd and Heather Drake

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What if “All shall be well” isn’t escapism but a summons to live braver, kinder, and more open to mystery? We sit with Julian of Norwich’s beloved quote and ask what makes hope durable when the world feels unwell—plague, patriarchy, and the daily grind of uncertainty included. Instead of chasing certainty, we explore the freedom of unknowing, the grounding force of ritual, and the quiet courage that comes from trusting love over fear.

We take a hard look at how easy answers become avoidance, and we chart a different path: hope that looks pain in the eye and stays. From reframing death as passage to examining why judgment rarely produces justice, we talk about practices that rewire our attention—breath, blessing, bread, and honest questions like Who told me this? and Where is the holy? Along the way, we name the pull toward compassion and the call to act: advocating for the unhoused and immigrant, rejecting the myth of separateness, and returning to the good over and over until it remakes us.

Advent threads it all together as a living metaphor: lighting small candles in thick dark, consenting to carry love into the world as Mary did, again and again. If love is the truest thing, then “all shall be well” becomes a commitment, not a cliché—a way of imagining equity, choosing solidarity, and embodying mercy when it matters most. Listen, share with a friend, and tell us: what’s one small act you’ll take this week to make things well for someone near you? Subscribe for more conversations on mysticism, courage, and the everyday work of hope.

SPEAKER_01:

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 Shepherd. This is my word to you. It is from the mystic Julian of Norwich, but all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well. So, where we meet today is a intentional, I think, precipice onto something that is present right now, but is almost always present, at least underneath the surface, where big things are happening around us. Everyone can sense it. But how we respond to it, how we anchor ourselves in divine love, how we remind ourselves of the faithfulness of spirit, and how we as women attend to the feminine spirit that speaks to us and says, You can trust that love is eternal. And the things that are wrong, and the things that are harmful, and the things that are perpetuated by patriarchy and by the evil of empire around us, this will not always be the truth. So what joy you said today, let's talk about all shall be well. So let's talk about all shall be well, and not as a placebo, not as a uh just a word that is spoken that has no power, but that this hopeful, spirit-filled truth, that there is a higher plane, that there is a deeper magic still, and how that can be an anchor, and that we can be in peace, even when there's so much unrest, other places. So I'm glad you're here. Let's have a conversation about it. Let's talk about all shall be well. Not in a way that we dismiss the world, not in a way that we're saying we're not looking, we're not paying attention, not in a way that undermines, but in a way that speaks a higher truth.

SPEAKER_00:

It's a powerful quote and and one that I'm glad we're talking about because like you just phrased, um, sometimes people hear this all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well. And it it's almost like are our heads in the sand, you know. Um are we all ostriches right now? Pretending that nothing's going on in the world around us. I learned this fascinating thing from Lori Beth Jones the other day. The reason why an ostrich puts its head in the sand is not to hide, it is to cover and protect the eggs of the babies. She's protecting, right? But all these years, maybe we've heard, wow, is your head in the sand? You know, get your head out of the sand, Shelly. What do you what do you think? You know, it's just like you're not seeing what's really going on here. So I want us to talk about this for a second and and look at this all shall be well. I asked you a question. Um, I don't know if it was last week, two weeks ago, sometime. Um, if you thought that Julian was in this transcendent space when she received um this knowing, this annunciation, this information from spirit that all shall be well. And in the pre-show, you had an interesting comment about it. Like, what difference does it matter if it was transcendent?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, well, and those kind of questions are important to me. Like, does it matter that this was in a what changes if we, you know, understood that she was, you know, perhaps in a transcendent state or in a mystical state, or if from the intention of her suffering and from what she knew of God? This was a a poison, a person who was uh settled or cloistered or get had given her life and devotion to God and to learning the ways of God, and for as much as she was physically um in this one place, I think spiritually, that was a practice of expansion for her. But I do question all the time, what does it matter? Again, I hear that question from Jesus. What does it matter to you if I let John live eternally? What does it matter? Ask the question, why am I am I seeking this information just for knowledge sake or because there's some kind of control that I'm after? Or for does it matter? Does it matter? And sometimes it does, and other times it does not. So, what is the spirit leading? So, my question, you know, and it still is does it matter how the message came if we can acknowledge that there is so much spirit in the message?

SPEAKER_00:

It's a good point, it's a good question. And I wonder it like you use the words, um, is it about control or is it about this knowledge?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, sometimes that's what the questions are. Exactly. I want to know, I want to be able to predict. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Or what if we want to emulate that? Like, how do we emulate all is well and all shall be well? If we if we are on this mystical path of understanding what she was trying to communicate.

SPEAKER_01:

So you and I come from the Pentecostal tradition, and the Pentecostals are known for ridiculous questions, questions that do not matter. And so I'm always on this. Like one of the questions that Pentecostals ask is how many angels can dance on the top of a pin? What the heck? Why does that have anything to do with anything? But to have the message be all shall be well when you hear it, I think there is an ancient remembering, there's a deep knowing. Love wins, love is eternal. In Julian's case, this long sickness. I think people that suffer with chronic pain, people that suffer with chronic illnesses, with things that are not naturally recoverable. I think they do offer wisdom from a different place. But I think it is in this understanding that uh we are not just the body, that there is this place of soul and place of spirit connection. I think we do well to listen to the people that are other abled and the truth that they have encountered. And so, yeah, I question the question again, also a very ancient uh Jewish tradition. Um, it probably a human condition. Ask a question of the question and then question that question. That's a futile path. Listening to our own hearts and go, where is the shimmer? Where is the truth? Where is the holy in this? I think that's what we're being invited into. And I think that's what Julian asks us in the all shall be well, all manner of things shall be well.

SPEAKER_00:

I love your perspective. I do love your perspective. You you know this, right? You know this about me. No, I'm not gonna say that. And we'll put the and there.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay, and and and this is the beauty of maturity. It can be both.

SPEAKER_00:

It can be both. Um, I I I believe we both understand that this this place that she was in was about understanding divine assurance, um central to her work about divine love. And so if she was suffering physically from the Black Death or the bubonic plague, right? Did she feel like this was a separation for her? Like death was was gonna be a separation.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, can we talk about that? About that, about the fact that what is death? What is that illusion? What does it mean when somebody dies? Who taught us about death? I mean, do we allow the risen Christ to teach us about death? I knew I wouldn't be in our culture.

SPEAKER_00:

Come on, yeah. Yes, all that. Did she really think that there was this separation that death is that death is the final the final blow? Or was she reaching into a realm and saying, This is the beginning? I understand this now, this is the beginning. And this divine love is is the anchor that I feel in this little room where I've spent the last decades of our life. Like if you're facing divine love, you're looking at divine love, you're not looking at death, like death is coming for us, but you're looking at love instead. This divine moment between you and your Maker, and you realize, wow, there is nothing absent here, there is no veil, there is only love that I'm sensing in this moment. I can see how all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well, could come out of her. But there's some transcendence in that to me. Just say it.

SPEAKER_01:

And isn't it hopeful that we could all experience a transcendence if we would allow the spirit to empower us to change our minds, to think higher thoughts? Instead of becoming hardened cynics that everything is going to be the same, that nothing ever changes, that we are just destined to repeat patterns of harm against each other. Isn't it a more beautiful thought? And since we're committed to telling a more beautiful story, that the capacity for change that is beautifully human, that we can change our mind about something. It is the invitation of Jesus, it is the invitation of the mystics, it is the invitation of spirit. Come and change your mind about this.

SPEAKER_00:

Do you feel like the sin, we'll use that word small s, and evil of the day around her? That she saw a world that was just filled with maybe even similar empire issues that we're facing right now, right? 14th century and being alive in the plague and watching.

SPEAKER_01:

I mean, most people died before their 45th birthday. I mean, like this was this was not many of us were not long for this world with that kind of in that kind of period of time, you know, and so to be able to see that there was a hope, I think that's how we don't give into cynicism. It's how we don't get hard-hearted. I think it is that ability to maintain not a not something flighty, but something so eternal, so holy, and then to be able to focus on it, to be able to bring the sacred to that thought, and how to be able to uh beat back fear when you know the truth is that death is an illusion. That it is something that all of us pass through, but from this life into the next, and the fear of death that compels people to do the most heinous things, what a liberator it could be to remember that only love is eternal.

SPEAKER_00:

Seems easy, right? Seems easy to say.

SPEAKER_01:

Not if you believe it, not if there's pretty easy for you to say right now.

SPEAKER_00:

But I think it's harder, it's harder for people because of the cynicism, because of the way of the world, because there's so many. There's so many things around us that that make us question is love even here at all? And I wonder if that's the posture that that Julian was taking when she looks love in the face and says, you know, this must really trouble you, all your creatures down here, you know, just living in any way that they want to live or saying whatever they want to say, doing whatever they want to do. And then that powerful quote being handed to her. And you made a good point pre-show, too. You said, This is like, what's it any of your business?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, exactly what Jesus says. Yeah. When Peter says, Well, if you're telling me about my life and how it's gonna go and how I'm gonna be led away by someone that I don't want them to take me places and they're gonna take me, which seems just like such a beautiful metaphor for aging. Things are gonna happen to you.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes.

SPEAKER_01:

And then Peter's like, but what's gonna happen to John? And the response is none of your business, beloved. What do you need to know that I'm gonna be with you always?

SPEAKER_00:

So why do we keep asking these questions? I asked you this question this morning, and you look straight in my face and you said to me through the digital does it matter?

SPEAKER_01:

What does it matter? Like, why I think sometimes again, our brains are incredible computers. They're constantly looking for patterns of familiar. Our brain gives us what we want because we feel a certain way after we know something. But the invitation into life in the spirit, into embodying the spirit, staying connected to source, is not an invitation into knowing, but unknowing. And so our brains are programmed to ask questions for certainty when what we're invited into is the consciousness that Christ had. That there the certainty is not where the hope is, where the love is, where the Christ is. The certainty is in there, and in fact, there is no certainty, so I'm gonna give that up. But the idea is the connection is sure. The connection, the anchor, the hope is secure in Christ. And so what I'm experiencing now, what I'm believing now, what I'm practicing now, and maybe this changes in the next decade, but there is a great unknowing. One of the things that is attributed to Mary and to how people understand her particular modeling for us in the story is Mary Untire of Knots. There are so many knots that we tie ourselves up in because we ask questions over and over. And sometimes we need to turn our beloved brains off and say, How can I know the spirit? I think that's where rituals come in for us. The intention of I turn my brain off and I put on the holy oil and I breathe the sacred breath and I eat the bread and I drink the wine, and I know there is a greater mystery that holds us still. All shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well. There is a resettling of us, and there is, I believe, an a call, particularly for the feminine, to speak words of life, the same way that a mother would sing a lullaby over a child or speak words of truth, or in terror be able to say, I am here, I am here, when someone is in excruciating pain, when someone can't fix a situation, to know that presence is there to witness. This, I believe, is the same gesture that we would learn to live beyond our minds, to live in the spirit, and not neglect our minds. Again, love the Lord your God with all your intelligence. But we have been given a set of questions to ask as a society, and we're asking the wrong questions all the time. Jesus showed us this when people said, Who sinned? His parents, his mother, his father, like, why is he in this same Jesus? Like, wrong question. You know, no, 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. Retrain yourself. And the retraining is how do we live connected to the source? How do we live remembering our own belovedness, our own worthiness, and our connection to a God committed to reconciliation? This is the whole reason that Jesus came to give us this new idea that God was reconciling everything to God's self, the whole of creation, all of humanity, even the very nature that we experience, that we sit and we watch and go, all will be made well. The lion will lay down with the lamb. One day we will no longer train our sons for war. One day every tool we have will be for gardening so the whole world flourishes. This has been a prophetic thing since the since the prophets, since people could imagine something else, all shall be well.

SPEAKER_00:

And all manner of things shall be well. So so do my do my questions just drive you crazy? No. I'm always asking questions, right? And always curious. Um so if we if we question something, is it always about certainty?

SPEAKER_01:

No, because I believe that questions are the reason sometimes that we can expand. To be able to ask the question is to be able to say, I might not have the right answer, or I might need a different answer, I might need a bigger truth. Yeah, good point. Um the only reason that just checking it is, in fact, the tool that Spirit used in my own personal experience. It was questions that were asked that allowed me to even see the things that I was holding on to.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, that that's what I was gonna say. I mean, we've had to question and re-question and expand and re-expand many things that we were taught growing up.

SPEAKER_01:

And again, I the questions are they are the cracks where the light gets in. Yes. However, I feel less of a because for me, once I learned that the questions were the re the way that I got to other places or expanded, I begin to say, what are the right questions then? And I think that's that's a flaw. Where is my connection to spirit? Because spirit knows all. One of the things I, if we're not mindful, we can get into is trying to judge what is right and what is wrong, what is truth and what is false, and constantly in this place of duality.

SPEAKER_00:

When spirits or wanting to judge people, or we use it to judge someone else that they're not doing right or wrong, you know.

SPEAKER_01:

Or ourselves.

SPEAKER_00:

So we judge ourselves, yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

The whole judgment thing, that's gotta go. That's gonna be another beautiful uh podcast on how well are we doing with letting that judgment go when in all things, when it seems like in our world, judgment is sometimes tried to or tied to justice. If we could just get the right judgment or you to believe on which side to judge, then we could get the justice that we want. And again, spirit is offering us as what God wants is justice to roll like a river. This is not gonna come because somebody mentally ascends to something, and now this is good in this moment, but in a hundred years from now, the people that it harmed. So this invitation into spirit is into non-judgment, is into God asks the questions. And I'm so confident that God will come to us with the questions. I see this in the beginning in the garden where Adam and Eve are hiding. God asks, where are you? God asks, who told you this? This to me is the fundamental question. Who told me?

SPEAKER_00:

Boy, a lot of people have told us things that we've either had to unlearn or let go or reframe or expand. When I when I hear you sharing this right now, it it reminds me that again that the familiar brings us ease, right? The familiar is is a solace sometimes. And that looking or even taking this this quote in this statement, uh, all shall be well, seems more like a a posture of hope, maybe, um, from Julian. It's like that like there's something hopeful about believing that all shall be well.

SPEAKER_01:

However, if we really believe that, then we will work to bring it to pass. I think we have a uh I I can I can hear somebody using this, all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well, in order to ignore someone's suffering. And I don't believe that was ever used for that. You know, of course, get over it kind of thing, is is a terror, is a horror. So I am not talking about misusing this beautiful truth. This is for the shimmer that you have that connects you with the spirit that reminds you that there is a deeper magic still, that there is power in our understanding of scripture and in the rituals that we're invited by Christ to do to deepen our faith and our connection with each other, but not to look away from suffering, not to look away from injustice, not to call something good when it is wicked. In fact, Jesus didn't say that, you know, woe to you who call good evil and evil good. And this idea is then how do we know? We don't have to know. It's not our business to judge it. We cannot do it. So, how do we find the good and stay connected to it? How do we practice returning to the good? And here I hear the words of Mary the Magdalene who tells us this is the way, this is the path, beloved. Into ascension, returning to the good. When we want to question it, when we want to know it, when we want to figure it out, how many angels dance on the head of a pin? That's a Pentecostal one. Yeah. There's an Irish one that says, How long is a piece of string? Pointless questions that keep our mind busy and numb our hearts. The invitation is to live wholeheartedly. The invitation is to live fully embodied, the invitation is to oneness.

SPEAKER_00:

And perhaps the the call here, this this place to come up higher, whether it's through transcendence or acceptance, is is calling us to a place of of compassion and mercy as well. Not just looking at our lives and saying, well, all shall be well when when our neighbor things are not well for the neighbor, right? Things are not well for the immigrant, things are not well for the uh for the unhoused, and and having compassion, right? Is compassion and mercy. So sometimes in this all shall be well, all manner of things shall be well. I also hear compassion, but I hear a call to action.

SPEAKER_01:

How do we make it well? If we're aware that our neighbor is suffering, then how do we use whatever power is ours on their behalf? How do we advocate for people? I mean, Jesus showed us modeling advocacy, Jesus showed us modeling of what it means to stand up for the marginalized and not just to stand up and say there's a difference between them, but to say, I am one of them. The we are the immigrant. Jesus said he was the immigrant, you know, like we are those who are in prison. We are one. And this delusion of separation that we then use not just against each other, but then in a reality as well. It doesn't because it doesn't affect me, it doesn't affect, you know, it's not real. Poverty.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, this is why this is why I'm saying that this this quote, all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well, you know, people could just say this and call it their prayer of the day and move on and do nothing about what Julian, I believe, was sensing in the world. There's like all manner of things are going on, and the responses, and all manner of things shall be well, right? It's almost like the chorus and the benediction all in one. As I've been, you know, holding it and sitting with this and and and trying to understand, you know, is this a model? Is this the model of prayer that we could, is this a ritual that we could, right? Or is it that my brain, as you would say, is trying to figure out a way to um to solidify this as oh my gosh, I want to experience what Julian must have experienced when she's looking in the face of love and love says back to her, all shall be well. That taste, that instant, that moment, she's half, she's more than half dead when she is in this posture in the presence of divine love. And it's just powerful. It's just a powerful view that I have of her in that moment, communicating something so much bigger, so much more expansive than just the words of this quote. I think that that is what I want to leave this conversation with today is yeah, there's no certainty in that. There's no exactness. Do these three things and all shall be well. But this beautiful invitation to bring love and to bring more love into the world.

SPEAKER_01:

I think the invitation is to embody it. To embody what that knowing, to embody the wellness, the wholeness. To say yes to spirit the same way that Mary does. To consent. God shows up with an angel, or the angel shows up, it says, We have a plan. Are you in? And Mary says, Be it unto me according to your word. All shall be well. Mary then gave up her body and not just that one time, her life. How many times did she give up sleep to take care of that baby? How many times did she feed it? What did it cost her to say yes over and over again? Love tells us to say yes a million times, however many times it takes until it's manifest. And I would say, at least right now, what we see here, Mary hasn't even seen the full effect of what her yes was. We are not at the end of the story yet. And so what does it look like for us to embody the yes, to embody that hopeful truth that when it is dark? I was contemplating that portion of the text that says to us when sin abounds, grace abounds so much more. When things are dark, when the delusion of Separateness is everywhere. God does not leave us in that delusion. But that light will come. And I'm excited about Advent. I was gonna sneak it in there somewhere. We've got Advent. But Advent is that posture of waiting. We light the candles in the darkness. And the darkness feels thick around us. We light the candles and we hope. And we say the ancient words all shall be well. And all manner of things shall be well.

SPEAKER_00:

And we all shall be well.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes. And we birth the Christ.

SPEAKER_00:

A hopeful message.

SPEAKER_01:

And it's trusting that even if we cannot see it, God creating God in the darkness, God creating things can change, and we're invited into the kingdom work that's happening. We're invited to reimagine a world with equity. We're invited to reimagine a world where we are in complete unity. Where brothers don't kill brothers. We are invited to imagine a whole new world.

SPEAKER_00:

We must do that. And I think move it beyond the imagining, maybe taking it from a realm where Julian practice this transcendent, these revelations that she is known for towards divine love, and and bring it as the hands and feet of love in the world.

SPEAKER_01:

We see this modeled in God and through Jesus. God offers us in our humanity a way of changing our mind about ourselves and about God's involvement with mankind, with humanity. All shall be well, Shelley Shepard.

SPEAKER_00:

All shall be well, Heather Drake.

SPEAKER_01:

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 expansionist theology.com.