What If Communion Is How We Change The World

What if communion is less about rules and more about a living practice that heals our hunger for belonging? We sit down to reframe the table as a place of remembrance, courage, and everyday resistance—where bread meets body wisdom and wine meets shared responsibility. Starting with a growing pantry of rituals—anointing oil, candlelight, silence, movement, Celtic prayers, tea in warm hands, thresholds, altars, and blessings—we explore how simple practices become portals to presence without caging the mystery.

Our conversation traces a journey from fear to curiosity. We name the ways many of us were taught to gatekeep the sacred and how we’ve unlearned exclusion to embrace an open table. “As often as you do this” becomes a call to embodied storytelling: recalling meals, friendships, and the women who tended the sacred. We talk about communion as an inclusive act—bread as the food of the poor, wine as the drink of the privileged—and how the table trains us to make room, wait for each other, and carry love into the street.

This episode closes with a full blessing for the table: come as you are, unmasked and honest; receive what is given; rise sent to live what love has taught. If you’ve felt shut out of the sacrament or hungry for a practice that meets real life, you’ll find language, courage, and practical ways to host open tables in your home, church, or neighborhood. Subscribe, share with a friend who needs a seat, and leave a review to help more people find a table where they belong.

Transcript

Setting The Intention

SPEAKER_01 0:01

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, my friend Heather Drake. How are you? I am well, thank you, Shelley Shepherd. It's a joy to be with you. It's a joy to have a conversation. It's a joy to expand the world and the universe in which we're in.

SPEAKER_00 0:31

We're so very lucky that we get to arrive in this space, in this platform. Yes. On most days, the technology works, the internet works. Yes. The volume buttons work, everything works. Um and so, yes, it is a it's a real blessing to an honor, really, to be in this place with you. So thank you for that. I received that. We've been talking for the last um maybe couple of weeks about some things that are very near and dear to us, um, called our rituals and practices. You and I thought it might be good today if we we shared some of those on the podcast and then used some of our time over this next year to expand those rituals in um in conversation and how they work for us or uh what we experience. And um, so we're we're gonna share that list today, right?

Why Rituals Matter Now

SPEAKER_01 1:35

Yeah, or part of that list because I think, yeah, at least for me, the list is ever growing. Like we learn it, we practice it, we try it, it feels good. We trust the witness that it has to our own spirit, but in no means is this the end. It's not like 12 points or these seven things. It's the idea is this is what we're currently using. I think I it to me feels uh a closer analogy to say these are like the spices that I'm using in my kitchen right now. You know, like these are the ones that I'm always gonna have in the pantry, these are for special things that I'm cooking, or these are things that I'm learning about. And so um, prayerfully, this conversation will make people curious. Or if they are already curious, it might point them in the direction of where they also could find this spice or this flower or this ritual that may help ground them in the things that spirit is doing.

SPEAKER_00 2:31

The evergreen approach, as it were. Because you never know, we might find um a new ritual that we have not been practicing. Um, and we want to add it to this journey.

SPEAKER_01 2:45

Can we talk for a second about um both of us grew up in similar faith traditions, and there were some rituals that we were given that we feel um super comfortable in and very well versed, very well practiced. We've been practicing these particular rituals for years. And there are some that are added that are new, and because we already value the rituals as part of our spiritual journey, as ways that we connect with the energy that God has given us to lead us and to ground us or to bring clarity to us, we have a lot of confidence in the power of ritual. And so I want to invite our listeners, even if they have had a faith that they're not aware of the rituals in, that rituals and devotion and spirituality have always been offered together. And so maybe um just an invitation into curiosity. If you are not practiced in this particular order or thing, or I don't know what that would be, um embodied movement, then maybe the invitation is just to be open.

The Living List Of Practices

SPEAKER_00 3:59

I think that's always the invitation uh from an expansionist perspective, is to is to be open uh to where spirit may be leading. But here's the list, and they're not in order necessarily, but this is the way that that we talked about them. And so at the top of the list is anointing oil, the ritual of anointing oil, the ritual of the lighting of a candle, the practice uh of the presence into stillness, uh using no words, the nate uh the elements and nature, movement like yoga and walking, uh Celtic prayers and attuning to spirit, drinking tea or water, something warm in your hands, um, and asking guidance before drinking it, portals and thresholds, another ritual and practice, power of blessing. How do we bless this or this situation? The use of um incantation bowls or prayer bowls or um creating altars as a ritual, the act of communion. Um I would love to talk more about that one today, I think. Um communal and and presence, uh, what it means to practice communion in community with people, the ritual of returning to the good, the ritual of wonder and awe. And that's that's our list that we get to play with. That's the clay that's on the table in front of us as as you and I start this year in in this beautiful way of not just sharing how maybe how you and I have gotten here individually as humans in this spiritual journey. Yeah, I think it's important right now. I I don't know, maybe it's because it's the beginning of a new year, I'm not sure, or maybe the season that that I'm finding myself in in particular. So maybe we can just start off um today by saying why this is important to each of us and um what maybe what's what's calling to us um as as we begin to frame frame this.

From Fear To Curiosity

SPEAKER_01 6:13

You just mentioned that these are the things in front of us that we get to play with or that we get to use. And I was transported in memory back to a time when my David was very little, and our David was born an artist. He just was, and there was one particular time where he got for his birthday a set of play-doh, and it was like every color. It was like 12 play-dohs, and we put them out. And I said to him, as a person not as free as him, I said, be mindful to keep them very separate so that they can go back in the containers. And he took wads of it in his hand and he said, I am an artist and I am not afraid of color. And I was thinking when you had mentioned that, I was thinking, oh, this is what we're doing again. This is, I am a spiritual being. I am not afraid of the spirit, I'm not afraid of ritual, I'm not afraid of practice, I'm not afraid of embodiment. Although some of us have been gifted by our church traditions a good dose of fear about ritual or about embodied practices. And I think a lot of that is because if you can keep someone, you know, not being curious about other faith or about other things, then you can control them better. And I think this is an invitation for us to remember what it was like to not be afraid of color, to not be afraid to mix things, to not be afraid to look outside of the bounds of what we say this is who we are, and to open the table to a much bigger practice and say, what is it like for us to smell the incense of our neighbors' prayers? What is it like for us to taste the tea of our neighbor's prayer? What is it like for us to hear the song, the lament, the echo of our neighbor's song? And what is it like for all of us to remember that we are part of God's family and that devotion to love and to God calls us into something that is so much deeper, so much sweeter, so much more. And so this morning I'm excited to talk about holy communion with you, the Eucharist, all of those things. Yeah, because we're not afraid of color, Shelly. We're gonna mix this color and we're gonna take what we need. We don't have to keep it in the containers to keep it apart from each other. We're in earnest.

SPEAKER_00 8:46

You you said so much in in that in that few minutes that you just opened um our conversation with today. But I think you dived into the communal piece really, really easily right there. So maybe we should just linger in in this quadrant of communion. And and you mentioned that in in many faith traditions, there are there are rituals, there are practices, there are sacred um understandings that you do things in a certain order and um and they yield a certain result. Or maybe the the ritual in the practice was that patriarchy wanted us to believe that this was the only way to do something in order to experience the presence or the spirit of God. And so I think one of the one of the desires of um of being an expansionist that I have is is to invite the sacred not just to expand my thinking and not just to expand my practices, but to take what others have said uh have to be a certain way and find new ways in order to maybe integrate that or use that in a way that um leads me closer to to the divine or um uh the feminine spirit of God. So it yeah, it's it's a beautiful it's a beautiful opportunity that we have and and maybe a great time in our in our country to think about how we practice um communion and how we actually serve it to others and how we taste those prayers or um how we stand with neighbors. I wish we could talk about communion every week in churches from that perspective and not only the perspective of the death and burial and resurrection of Christ.

Centering On Communion

SPEAKER_01 10:57

I think when we're invited into, or at least I hope, remembering the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, I believe it's an invitation into telling a better story. Into an invitation not just to look at the highlights. What does it mean to remember, to look at the crucifixion, but to not linger there to go, we're a resurrection people. We are a people who remember that death claws do not get to stay in in our flesh, that there is a resurrection coming, that there is an anointing coming, that there were people who were versed in those sacred arts. Mary Magdalene, who stood at the tomb and who waited in the garden and who offered her gifts in order to witness what God was up to, to be a part, to pay attention to that invitation. And so when I hear weekly the call to the communion table, and um, as a pastor of a church, this is a weekly call for us, and we do practice an open table where no one is excluded. Everyone can come, whether you believe like we believe or not. And to me, it is a practice in something larger. It is our hope that as we practice this table, this communion table, that we would then take our little hands and and and our lives and the food that we offer and offer it to the world at large. Like in the huddle in football, it's getting the the marching orders. It's this idea of we come together, we eat at Christ's table, but then we're supposed to go out and open the table to everyone else. And it's not a ritual to remind us that this stays in the church and only that those that are here get to have it. It's not an exclusionary invitation. It's a practice in inclusion, it's a practice in generosity, it's a practice in belonging, it's a practice in who we are as people of faith. We are people that remind ourselves that love is telling a better story, that there one day will be an ascension in our consciousness where we can imagine what it would be like for there to be no more war and for us to beat our own swords into plow shears, into thriving, into farming, into this idea that the whole world can linger and eat at the table. I think there's so much education and knowledge and friendship and just togetherness that happens at the table. And so I know that there's also a lot of other things that happen at a table, but we're telling a better story. And so this idea that we can reimagine the world, that we can connect with each other. This is to me that just this beautiful invitation. And again, part of our Christian faith is an embodied ritual. Every week we show up, we're supposed to, and and retell the story.

Telling A Better Story

SPEAKER_00 13:57

Can we talk about that a little bit? Yeah. Well, imagine with me, kind of in an expansionist um lens at this at this very second, too, to think about the bread and the cup prior to this Lost Supper in Scripture where Jesus is getting ready to leave, you know, and head to the cross. Think for a second about the community, uh, the people that had been following him for a while, that had become part of his ministry or his outreach or his way of walking and being in the world that may have looked different than every other person that they knew. But here is a here is uh it was a ritual for them perhaps to have bread and wine at the table um every meal. Um it wasn't uncommon um because water was not as a sanitary thing to drink at the time. And so did someone perhaps see this ritual and make it into a practice after um after the death of Christ. They saw something beautiful in the story of how the people gathered, of where the the bread was placed in the center, where the the plate um that held the bread was in front of you, where the cup was placed. Um I can imagine in my holy imagination um as Jesus took these common, ordinary plates and cups and saucers and held them in front of this group, that something magical happened. I'm just gonna linger there with you for a minute. Because then it became a practice, it became a ritual, it became something that was passed on into the church with this particular phrase attached to it. As often as you do this, do this in remembrance of me. Uh, remembrance of me, meaning remember the times that we walked together, remember the times that we prayed together, remember the times that we fished together, and in particular with Mary Magdalene, remember the times where I took you to the good that was within you. These communal remembering, um, as often as you do this, do this in remembrance of me. That is the strength for me of what communion is. It's the remembering.

SPEAKER_01 16:55

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.

SPEAKER_00 17:14

It's not necessarily the actual blood and the body of Christ. And a lot of traditions teach that this actually becomes, you know, this blood and b uh bread become, you know, the holy within us. And I'm not here to take away from that that of that tradition, but I'm asking you to consider as you listen to this, what does communion feel like to you? What does it bring to you on a regular basis? As often as you do it, what do you remember? So I thank you for letting me like take a couple of minutes to express what what's in my heart in the way that I think about communion. Because as a ritual and a practice for me, it's I feel like it goes more towards Mary. You mentioned that it's quite the feminine act, that communion is quite the feminine act. And maybe you can share a little bit about that. You know, I often will read something or hear something, and I I it seems to filter through the voice of Mary Magdalene. And so communion is is no different. So this practice, this particular one that we're talking about today, it holds a lot of value and a lot of weight in in my spirituality. So thank you for letting me letting me unpack that a little bit.

Open Table, Open World

SPEAKER_01 18:36

Can I also offer that between the both of us? We've had lots of conversations, and um, I will speak for myself, but then I do speak with some confidence for you in what we've shared together is that communion has required us to do a lot of unlearning. Yes. There were things that the church offered to us or told us about communion, and in many ways excluded us based on our gender, based on other reasons. I mean, there's there's people who told me that since I was a little girl, I need to be careful before I took communion because uh this is why some people die. You might be worthy. Exactly, our own worthiness. So the the tradition that was handed to me was um don't do this all willy-nilly. Like you got to make sure that you are righteous and that you have you have confessed. You take a moment, an hour if you need, confess everything you need to confess, and then you come in and bless us, precious little girls who were given such heaviness. Instead of recognizing, really, what the table reminds us of is how much we're all loved, how good it is to come home and just eat. And you and I were mentioning a verse this morning from the prophets that says, Are you hungry? Come and eat. Are you thirsty? Come and drink. If you have no money, come and buy. This invitation to inclusion, into just even recognizing your own hunger for belonging, your own hunger. A lot of times, what we do, I think, as a culture in America is we are trained not to listen to our bodies. And really what communion reminds us of is listen to your body. Listen to your gut when you know something is not right. Listen to your own spirit when you know, yes, this is the way. I might not know everything about this, I might not be able to wrap my head around it, but I can trust my body to tell me this is good. This is the way. Return to the good you offer us the wisdom of Mary Magdalene. And our bodies are good, Shelly. It says that even in Genesis, where God looked at the bodies that He has made and said, They're good, they're very good. So returning to the communion table is really and essentially returning to ourselves and returning to ourselves in a way that puts us together as one communally. We come to the table and we come because we're hungry, and we come because we're thirsty, and we come because we have needs. And the communion table says you are not excluded because you have needs, you are welcomed here, and love has heaped up a feast. And come and eat, come and drink, come and be nourished because there is an entire world out there that needs you to see as you see, to exist as you exist, to be the love that you are. And I now have such commitment to the communion table. Once all the fear was undone, once all the prejudice was removed. So maybe if our listeners have an aversion to the communion table because someone told them terrible about it, maybe they'll listen to us say, let us retell, let us tell a better story. Let us tell the story of the incarnation when God did not despise our humanity, but God said, Let me come and be in the middle of it. And let's eat together. And let's show up for each other. And again, in this measure of presence where Jesus offers to his people, his friends, his yeah, his crew, his beloved community, and says, Let's eat together. He offers this after the resurrection as well, over and over again, because it is not just in some kind of otherworldly presence, but it is in the food that is consumed. And someone once very wisely said, it is offered in bread and wine because bread is the food of the poor and wine is the drink of the privileged. And so it's invitation into privilege, it's invitation into poverty, it's invitation into each other. And the communion table is an embodied practice where so often we relegate spirituality to just our head. Like, what do you believe? What do you believe? I how do I know if I can be your friend because of what you believe? How do you live is a much better way to invite people into our lives and for us to offer that to each other. So, yeah, I have a lot to say about the communion table. I have a lot to say about how I believe that there are some miracles that happen at the communion table, that whatever we have need of is offered at that communion table, not because of a particular bread, not because of a particular wine, but because we remember and retell the story and we tell the story in better ways when we do it together. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 23:38

Beautiful, beautiful words. And for those who who may listen to this, who haven't stood in front of a communion line, you know, ever, or lately, or it's been a long time, still that invitation into the practice of communing with spirit in whatever form that bread or that cup takes, as a cup of love, as bread of life, as um as new beginnings, as a fresh start, as a way to uh begin a new year. Um, or even in this case, uh begin a new practice. If this if you if you don't have this practice of communion, or you're not part of a church, or you would you would dare not get in front of anybody that wanted you to take communion in front of a church, this is still a sacred way of connecting with the divine, with connecting with brothers and sisters who um are like us walking on this path, trying to understand uh what it means to say that we that we love God on one hand and and um and harm um uh our neighbor on on a different hand. I think communion has this um, it's a it's a salve, it's a it's a bomb that it's a practice that we can do inside a church and and in and in your own living room. It doesn't it doesn't have to be something where um you know just the priest or the pastor or the leadership gives to you.

Remembering As Sacred Work

SPEAKER_01 25:38

Yes, that we all have the invitation to offer communion, but I do want to remind us that communion is not necessarily personal, although I don't believe there's anything wrong with taking it personally, but it's always intended to be communally, that you enjoy this with some person, with somebody. And if the church has excluded you, hear me say how sorry I am. And I repent on behalf of leaders who are afraid. You should never have been excluded from the table. You belong at the table. There is a place for you there. Jesus sets the guest list and Jesus has invited you. And so if you can't find a table community, make one. Offer yourself to other people and set a communion table and tell a better story. And the invitation is exactly as you described. We do not need to be knighted into this. We do not need to have some organization call us the priest. Beloved, you are a fellow at the table. Pull up a chair for someone else, make more room and say, this is what we are all entitled to as children of God. We have a good father who made an incredible world and heaped up abundance for us. And so the invitation into embodied storytelling. I love that at the communion table, when we practice it at the church, we stand and we wait for someone else to eat before us. We wait for someone else to be finished. And that is such a beautiful practice, even in the way that we pray and in the way that we move in the world, to be able to wait for someone else, to be patient with someone while they receive their daily bread, while they receive their nourishment. And it's a way for us to actually attune.

SPEAKER_00 27:30

And may we offer um the bread of life and the cup of love in in many ways, in many forms. Um like I feel like this this practice is um and this ritual is wow, so so needed right now is is just seeing other people and and offering them this sort of love that flows from this kind of action that flows from the table, or however somebody's gonna envision that um for themselves. But yeah, I just think it's so much bigger, Heather, than the than the way that we than the way that we offer this on Sunday mornings. I I think it's it's it's a deeper sacred path of of seeking the holy or well it is I I don't know use the word ritual or sacrament, but really it is a threshold or a portal into the mystery, into the mystery that is the divine, into the mystery that is ourselves, into the mystery that is how is it that we are here even today, sharing space on this planet, in this time, in this cosmos?

Invitation To Participate

SPEAKER_01 28:57

How are we who are people deeply aware of even the harm that is being caused to our fellow humans by the anger and the cruelty of Empire? The communion table to me is a practice in resistance, is a practice in joy, is a practice in brotherhood, in sisterhood, is a practice in family, is a practice in reimagining the world. What would it look like if there were no hungry people? Because every single person, what they were able to do was invite someone into the good that they already received, into shared experience, into the shared love, into the shared holy. And I hope that that's what the Expansionist Podcast does for people is invite them into imagination, into what would it look like for us to participate in the holy and for us to offer that to others as well. Yeah, and what would it look like for us to be able to reimagine ourselves worthy, wanted, and absolutely anointed to offer communion to the world? There's a good in remembering that we are not only seated at the table, but we are charged to make tables, to make spaces where people can experience the presence of being loved, of being welcomed, of being invited into wholeness. I wrote a blessing for our communion table, and I want to share it after we're done. So at the end, stay tuned for the blessing of the communion table. I think it's a good time. Let's let's hear it. Okay, let's do it. As not to cut us off. And certainly, this is not the last time we will talk about the power of holy communion. But particularly as women offered communion.

SPEAKER_00 30:54

Well, it's such a sacred uh piece of of the spiritual life and the spiritual journey, right? And this is what we're talking about. And and so maybe um today this this first conversation will not be the last conversation because um I believe it is I believe communion is expansive. I I do not believe it's it's just a performative act um that is done inside churches, but that individuals believe in the power um of this practice so much that there's churches that are open throughout the week where you can dip in the holy water, you can you can sit with the candles, you can uh kneel at the altars, you can ask for somebody uh to give you communion. You know, these are these are beautiful practices that are calling us home, that are call that call us to return to the good. And so I am confident this will not be our last conversation about communion. A blessing for the table. Let's hear your blessing.

Unlearning Exclusion

SPEAKER_01 32:00

Yes, beloved, come to the table that remembers you before you even remembered yourself. Come with the body that you carry, its hunger and ache, its stories written in bone and breath. Come exactly as you are, not as you perform, not as you pretend, but as the truth of your living, breathing self. The table invites us to lay down our masks, the careful faces we practice in the world. At Love's table, we're invited to be whole, to be honest, and to be tender with what is unfinished. Beloved, as the bread is broken, remember your own embodied calling to tend the flesh of this world with reverence, to honor wounds, your own and others, without turning away. As the cup is shared, let it remind you that no life is solitary. What nourishes you is probable to nourish your neighbor. What harms one echoes through the body of all. At this table we are made one, not by sameness, but by love practiced in responsibility. We belong to one another and to the sacred work of caring for one another. Beloved, receive what is given and rise remembering this truth. You are held, you are needed, and you are sent to live what the table has taught you, unmasked, embodied, and bound together in love. 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.