Milk And Mercy: A Lenten Vision Of Feminine Wisdom And Peace

A single sentence in the news can expose what we really trust and it’s rarely what we want it to be. We’re sitting with that tension, and with a different kind of confidence: milk and mercy, the fierce tenderness that refuses to accept a world built on domination, war, and forgetting. 

We talk through the season of Lent as a time for deep reimagining, using spring as our teacher: seeds split in the dark, roots take hold, and greening appears after a long hidden wait. From there, we turn to women’s wisdom in scripture and in everyday life, asking what it means to “participate in the greening” and to midwife justice. We challenge patriarchy, complementarianism, and the idea that hierarchy is the Creator’s plan, and we name the gospel as good news of peace, equity, and the divine image in every person. 

Heather shares a blessing for “women of deep soil” and threshold knowledge, honoring Mary and Martha, Mary of Bethany, Mary the mother, and Mary Magdalene as witnesses who stay, weep, and tell the truth. We wrestle with prayer as alignment rather than begging, the way spiritual practice shapes us, and how we can reduce hate and trauma in the small, local places where we actually have agency. We close with Mary Magdalene as the trusted messenger, “go and tell,” and an invitation into inner sovereignty, discernment, presence, and song. 

If this stirred something in you, subscribe, share this with a friend, and leave a review so more people can find these conversations, then tell us: where do you want to choose mercy over fear?

Transcript

Welcome And Why We Expand

SPEAKER_02 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, Shelly Shepherd. Good afternoon, Heather. Yes, yes, thank you. I'm happy to be talking about all the incredible and inspiring things we're talking about, particularly about women and women who are changing the world, and women who have changed the world, and women who are hidden in history and in faithful in their own taking care of their houses and their families. But what the world needs now, in our opinion, in my opinion, is an expansion in the way that we think.

SPEAKER_01 0:57

Tell me more about that expansion in the way that we think.

SPEAKER_02 1:00

We are very anchored in our present reality, in the fact that we have to live and breathe and work and create in situations where around us it feels constricting and feels like the world is getting narrow and hard. And this is what I think is the this is the ground where spring surprises us, where the seed that gives into the what feels like the dark earth ruptures and then takes root. And then spring. At least here in Florida, right now I know there's like lots of places that are still covered in snow, but spring is doing her thing here. It's like it went from one day, it was just kind of, and now there is green in so many colors, and the flowers are blooming, and it just reminds us that sometimes it feels like overnight things change. Of course, it wasn't overnight, right? But there is a hope for us. We're in the season of Lent and we're getting toward the end of Lent. There's a season of heartache, there's a season of deep reimagining of how things could be. There are stories, even in the scriptures, that talk to us about, you know, just recently we we did a message in Mary and Martha, where Mary and Martha both say, if you had only been here, it would be different. And how many of us in our lives maybe have that same kind of accusation? If this had happened then, this would have. But to be able to embrace all of it and to be able to say, now what? And how do I participate in the greening? How do I participate in the nurturing of spring? How do I participate in midwifing justice? How do we read the book of Ruth like you were reading this morning? And say, what is the ancient story? What are the women telling us on how to birth a more beautiful, more loving, more compassionate world?

SPEAKER_01 3:06

I think everybody is interested in that, actually. Well, hopefully they are, and hopefully Except for a few men maybe that have a different opinion about how to operate. Well, they haven't heard our conversation. They would actually be interested, I'm sure, if they heard us. But I do there is uh I do believe that there is a sense in in the world right now that uh the feminine energy, the divine feminine, the sacred feminine, the the woman, the womanist, uh, however it gets defined by people, is um is needed. Like we need it. We we're really needing a shift and a change in the way that we operate just as hum, you know, humanity and and neighbors and friends and colleagues. Um and I'm hopeful too, Heather, that we are merging and emerging in these in these sorts of paths and ways as we find ourselves, right? Like, like maybe that is the great resurrection um at the end of Lent is is that we actually find ourselves and we come to ourselves realizing that, hey, I don't need to wear these grave clothes anymore. I can just peel these off. Oh, that's such a beautiful image. Yes, and and and I can walk out of this tomb that um somebody else has painted the walls of this tomb for me, and they've hung some pictures, and you know, I've got some memories in here, but maybe I just really need just to move on out of here. And I think that's the hope of the resurrection is that uh the women, the women have a story to tell. The women have a way to run to the next city and say, come and see, go and tell, find a way, you know, go past the guards, go past the men that are, you know, sleeping in the upper room or eating or whatever, playing games on their on their cell phones, whatever they're doing, go past them and figure out how all the women here are going to tell a better story, which what is that story?

SPEAKER_02 5:22

Yeah, I think that's essential because the story has been told many, many ways. But one of the things I think that we have minimized or even left out is the gospel, the good news, is one of peace. What does it look like for us to imagine a world of peace? For us to imagine thriving, for us to imagine equity, you know, equality, for us to imagine that every person bears the divine image? What does it look like for us to imagine a world where suffering is no longer the main event? You know, like this idea that we have so much power. We are, I think that there is an illusion that we are powerless, when actually the opposite is true. We are full of creative power. And how we use that focus or how we use that attention, those kind of things matter. And so we're practicing, you and I, and we're entering into expansionist theology,

Spring As A Map For Hope

SPEAKER_02 6:30

um, like 101, when we're allowing ourselves to hear other stories, when we're hearing the voices of women and saying, Yes, I can imagine that too, and allowing ourselves to be stretched, but also for us to look at you know, a thousand grandmothers behind us going, women have always held the story ever since the beginning. And so, how do we again midwife a new world? How do we think differently? How do we bring attention to the feminine heart of the creator who continues to offer us um the idea that where we are in the world now, how we are suffering now, is because of the terrible, wicked thoughts of people, of you know, who wanted to dominate other people. But we can also have different thoughts. It is up to us to change the way that we think, and that's the invitation that the spiritual life gives us to change our perspective.

SPEAKER_01 7:36

Yeah, I was thinking a few days ago about the subjugation of women and um the complementarianism that um has been handed to some people, to some women, and and maybe in in a culture where uh dominance and um authority uh needed to be scripted, or people felt like it needed to be scripted, and so the women were subjugated and and defined um under those laws or rules. And so I I stepped into in my mind, in my holy imagination, I stepped into a space in in the home of a woman who's living under that kind of dominance or in that kind of um authority. And you know what I saw in that home in my imagination? I saw a woman in charge of her family, of her day, of the ordinary rhythms that she would go about when there wasn't any dominance around. Praying, thinking, looking beyond uh what was right in front of her to a further place down the road. And I'm not saying like divorce or freedom or anything like that, but she had the agency. She has these women who feel that they have no agency, like you mentioned, like are powerless or whatever. It's just not the case. And I think that you and I have grown up in some of those kinds of churches or or movements where male authority was uh the top shelf of everybody's mind and thinking. And look, look at us. Here we are. Somehow we expanded, somehow we moved and we went beyond what we were told the limits, uh, what the what we were told the limits were. And and so I look at I look at the women in in scripture, and particularly during this season, we're getting ready to go into Holy Week um next week, um, and we look at Mary, and we look at the mother of Mary who prompts her son to do some things, and we see that these women, under some kind of subjugation or authority, or culture, are making their way forward in beautiful, tender, compassionate ways that would lead others. And I think that's the story that is that is the better story that that we begin to tell um as women and not

Women Witnesses And Resurrection Courage

SPEAKER_01 10:20

get sucked in to this conversation about who has the authority and who who doesn't have the authority to teach me.

SPEAKER_02 10:29

Yeah. Well, and I love that idea that you're even asking us to challenge that hierarchy has never been part of the plan of the good creator, that we are made equal in the creator's site, that even nature and earth, that there isn't even a dominance of man, but there is this idea that you know we are all part of this beautiful story that love is telling. And to be able to find our place in that and to be able to, um, you reminded us that we're invited into co-creation. And how are we imagining a better world? How are we telling the better story? How are we looking? I have part of a blessing written, and um I'm gonna read part of it because that's what I have already written. But because we're working for holy work and because we're talking about the women, and because I am working really hard to bless the things that I can't figure out how to change. I can't flip the channel, I can't turn the light on. So, what do I need to do for my neighbors to set them free for myself for the world? How do I bless it? And I was thinking about you and I both um really enjoy uh Christine Walter's painter and how she reminds us about um our place in the earth and the elements. And so I was really considering, especially again, because spring is coming, that we are all daughters of the deep soil of not just the hard um top layer that gets dusty over, but that deep soil where things have been planted deeply within us that we find as anchors. And um, I was thinking about how, as women, we are keepers of threshold knowledge, of a knowing that we can't even explain how we know, but we know, and paying attention to those things. And so I was blessing our knowing something in your body knew before your mind could name it, the way that Earth knows winter long before the last leaf falls, and the way the seed in darkness holds the whole spring in its small, unbreakable heart, and how you feel it in your palms in the hollow of your sternum, this ancient knowing that lives beneath our clavicle, that something is coming, something is opening, something old has to die so that something holy can be born. And I was considering Mary, Mary who anointed his feet with tears and wiped them with your hair. And you were not in any way wasteful, you were prophetic, and your grief was a form of wisdom, and your tenderness a form of power. Martha, who ran to meet him on the road, who did not wait politely at the door, your love was muscular and loud, and the resurrection came to you first in the open air. And Mary of Bethany, who sat at his feet as a student who chooses the one thing that is necessary when the world told you instead to be useful to get into the kitchen. Blessed is your holy stubbornness, your sovereign presence, and your refusal to give up that thing. And Mary, the mother of mystery, who carried God in the dark worm of your body, who bore the divine through the straight gates of your flesh and your blood, who stood at the foot of the cross and would not look away. You knew from the beginning that love looked like this, that love moves through suffering like water through stone, slowly, irresistibly, leaving everything changed. Yours is the wisdom of gestation, of holding what is holy in the dark long before the world is ever ready to receive it. And the Magdalene, apostle to the apostles, first witness

Peace As The Forgotten Good News

SPEAKER_02 14:40

at the empty tomb, weeping in the garden, until the gardener appears and speaks your name. Your intuition was not hysteria, your devotion is not dependency. You went to the grave when others ran away. And the first word of resurrection was your name spoken by the one that you loved. Women of deep soil, teach us to stay when staying costs everything. Teach us to weep without any shame. And teach us that the ones who stay in the garden are the ones who actually witness the stone being rolled away. Anyway, we have more to learn about midwifery, but that's what I'm holding on to in these women going, I need all of the witness. I don't need just one, I need all of the witness of the women. And when I can't find it, I need to imagine it, or I need to make it in myself. I need to look for it in the stories of the women around me or of the people who have offered to me in their in their writings, in their autobiographies, in the way they make a coffee, in the tenderness women show other women. And yeah, I need to see it all and I need to imagine it, and I need to tell the story and hold that threshold knowledge so that I can offer it with confidence.

SPEAKER_01 16:01

Such a beautiful piece. Thank you. Thank you for that. Um, the images and the words. Yeah, I got more later. Yeah, I'm sure you do.

SPEAKER_02 16:09

So we're working at it for a holy week. Yeah, this idea of how do we imagine what the women are telling us and how do we receive their testimony? If Mary is the first witness, then how do we put preeminence on that witness of a new thing has happened? Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 16:24

A new way. Yes. Yeah, a new thing. I think it's evolving uh in our time and in our culture. I I I know that the gospel of Mary has been has been around for for some years, but there's many people that have not read it and do not know it. And and sometimes it's it's hard to decipher, you know, even when we do read it, like there's missing pieces and missing pages, and um we have to use our holy imagination again. Uh, you know, here's another biblical text that that didn't make it in, and and we're still trying to uh make it part of our journey. And so it is a beautiful time where we can move beyond. I think what what I heard in your in your blessing is yeah, remind us that we are here to co-create, that we are here with something significant and special and um appointed and perhaps even anointed to share and to bring to others. So thank you for that gift today. That was the gorgeous.

SPEAKER_02 17:29

I remind us too, thank you, Shelly, of this understanding though, that women are meant to be storytellers. We're meant to tell how things happen, and we're meant to see things that others do not notice, and and and to call out those things, to see the beauty hidden in dark things, to be able to turn things around, to be able to look at things from a different perspective, to zoom out of our our you know, focus, uh and what uh and the tension being, I just said that our our focus is so holy and that it, you know, distraction is what's pulling at us, and so what we focus on, what we give our attention to is so sacred. But at the same time, to recognize that what we do in the tiny and in the small and in the keeping of our own lives and our own hearts, that that matters to the world. The peace that we cultivate in our own heart, the peace we cultivate in our own home with our neighbors, with our local community. Sometimes it feels so big like the world is on fire, yes, and everything is wrong. And then we need to remember, get back together and eat the food and

Agency Under Patriarchy And Control

SPEAKER_02 18:40

tell the stories and sit with the women and rehearse the good and hear the different perspective and weep with those who weep, but also laugh, belly laugh with those and enjoy, enjoy everything. Savor every minute, savor every minute. 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. I was just in France and I went to the church in Lyon, and it's the Church of Mary the Mother Magdalene, and I have been to many cathedrals, and this is remarkable. And one of the things that we um experience there is there's a special place where there are people, um, specific nuns who have dedicated themselves to pray for the people of the world. And so you can write down a prayer, and these nuns will pray. And then you can join with other people around the world and pray for them. And I thought, well, this is great. And so um, I was there and you were allowed like this very small slip of paper. That's what they give you, like it's small for your thing. And I thought, I there's just a lot of people in my life that I need to pray for. So I took a few of them and my pencil, and I'm writing them. And there was somebody who went past me, and not everybody speaks our language, and they were just watching me there, I guess, for a while, writing, writing. And they said, Must and they were just walking past me. They said, You must have much love. And I was thinking, okay, that's a wonderful way of saying you have a big list of people you need to pray for. And ultimately I was sitting there going, okay, who's not here? And so I was writing prayers for families, every family that I could think of, every family that needs help, you know, like, and while we were there, while I was there in France, the news broke about our bombing of a girls' school. And it broke my heart in ways that I did not imagine could yet be broken again. I feel like I've had a broken heart before. But when I heard that, I I felt like a guttural wail. Like, what are we gonna do? Like, we this cannot go on anymore. I mean, it should, you know, my father was in Vietnam. And so to look at that and go, there were other men and we were doing this before, and and my grandfather was in World War II. You know, like so the wars have been a part of how we have, but we must evolve. The spirit must give us uh, you know, we must surrender to spirits. There has to be a better world. And so I'm writing for the mothers in Iran who are grieving the loss of daughters and sisters and and again, brothers. And what is happening to us is not just for us, it's we are one. It is humanity that we are invited into the process of reimagining that this is the work of the Holy Spirit, much love for all people, for all families, for for all creatures, for not just. Yeah, not just people, but what are we doing to the earth? What are we doing to care for again this whole beautiful cosmos that's reminding us we were built for more Much love.

SPEAKER_01 22:18

Oh I I love the love that it pours from you. Um it's such a beautiful thing to listen to. So you're my friend. So I'm over here relishing and savoring um all these words. And I'll just be completely honest here with um with this moment that you know some of my conversations in the last few months have been with um

A Blessing For Deep Soil Women

SPEAKER_01 22:50

people who are not of faith and you know who just think Christians are off their rocker. And some of us particularly the ones who seemingly are calling um God's war um labeling that sort of thing. And and I remind them that historically throughout time, maybe since the beginning of time, there has been war. There has been this um ability to take what belonged to someone else, to rape, to pillage, to take the village, to burn it as they walked away. Perhaps it seems different because now you and I are in it. We're we're living in this time, whereas maybe there was a time in our life when we we were just told these stories, and we thought that they just existed in some history book or some scriptural text, but now we're living in it, and now we're seeing it, and we're like, oh, okay, this is what um what perhaps we somebody else's story that was being told, now we're actually living in this story ourselves. And and part of that, you know, Heather, you say, will there ever be peace? Well, you know, we just need we need more peace, we need more love, we need more, uh, we need more ways to reduce hate, crime, trauma. And yet when we look in the mirror every day, for most of us that are looking in the mirror, we have to ask ourselves, you know, did I reduce it today? Did I reduce hate? Did I reduce trauma? Did I reduce something negative that was going on in the world by offering something positive to a neighbor, to a friend, to a stranger, to somebody that I don't even really know that well? Um and to me, uh knowing that historically we have been in this space for a long time with patriarchy and control and authority on trying to take things that were not ours to take land, people, slaves, you name it. I wonder if our hope is the women. I wonder if our hope I would agree. Not is our hope Jesus and okay, not is our hope God.

SPEAKER_02 25:28

Jesus showed us what to do. Like there's this idea that yeah, God already showed us what to do. It's uh it's our choice. We're living in the result of our choices. Jesus showed us the way, and it was listening to the women, and it was listening to the to the wisdom of no, you don't just take, you share equally, take this, pass it out amongst yourself. What did Jesus show us over and over again? It is the giving away, it is the generosity, it is the living open-handed, it is the way of justice, it is the way of mercy. One of the things when I had just heard, and again, I was in a foreign country uh while so I don't listen to the news, but I was reading it in different, um, just from different sources because of what was available. And they were talking about one particular person, and they said a quote from this person is, We trust our missiles. And I read it and I said just out loud, what came out of my mouth first was, I don't. I trust milk and mercy. I trust the mercy that comes from a woman, I trust the mercy that comes from a mother that says, I nursed that baby at my breast. I will not tolerate a world that will not include this person. And so you can trust your missiles, but they rust and they do destroy, but they will fall apart. But milk and mercy, I mean, there is a hope in that. That's what I trust.

SPEAKER_01 27:00

And well, and here again, this is this is our hope, is the women, right? This is our hope. And I'm not I'm not being sacrilegious when I say, well, our hope isn't isn't Jesus or it isn't God. It's like Jesus and God are in this too. Yes. And I told my mom the other day, she says, she's like, Oh, um, you know, I need this this medication or in, or you know, I just need to get prayer, uh, you know, uh, for this release that you know that I'm feeling in my body. And I'm like, look, mom, great, pray to Jesus for healing. I said, but use the use the Tylenol that's right in front of you that somebody uh was given the the wisdom to to create so we could take this medication. Uh and and so sometimes, Heather, I feel like we're in that in that space, maybe in time, and maybe we've we've always been here where you know we keep waiting for Jesus to do something, we keep waiting for God to do something, we keep waiting for resurrection, but we don't understand that the resurrection and that the prayer is for our own shifting, it's for our own shaping. Yeah. So as much as I hear you say, I'm praying in France for these families and these people and these situations and the war, like I hear you,

Sharing The Community And Website

SPEAKER_01 28:20

but what I hear also is that practice is shaping you into somebody different.

SPEAKER_02 28:28

Absolutely. That prayer brings us into alignment with what the divine already has wanted. Prayer changes us and allows us to expand and allows us to. God is, we're not praying and asking God to do anything that God already does not want to do. You know, like I'm not praying for healing. God has already given us healing, like you said, through the practices of, you know, the earth that gives every leaf for the healing of the nation. Right, you know, like like it's already there. Somehow we've gotten the idea that to pray for something means to beg God, that God would see it differently. And really, prayer is the may I see it, may I align my thoughts with your thoughts? May I give myself over to a bigger story, to a more beautiful story that includes everyone. When Jesus prays for us, he prays that we would see that we are loved

France Prayers And A World At War

SPEAKER_02 29:20

by God like God loves Jesus. I mean, if we all knew that from that place of belovedness, that we would know that we are simply adored for our being, we would not trust in our missiles. We would have no need for it. It would be foolishness. Because what we would trust in is the love and the care and the provision of the divine, that every good thing has already been given to us, that every good intention has already been thought about by God for us, that the good is already here. In fact, one of the things that Mary Magdalene invites us to do is return to the good, come back to the good, get out of the illusion that you're separate and you have to strive and you have to dominate someone in order to get the good has already been provided. Return, come back to the good.

SPEAKER_01 30:10

Maybe let's let's wrap up today uh talking about her for a few minutes, the Magdalene, and um this beautiful picture that we've been given in in the Gospels about about Jesus trusting her. So he trusted in not in the the missiles, no, but he trusted in the messenger, right? He trusted her to go and tell, like, wow, this every time I think about that, like I can take that one line, go and tell, knowing that it was from him to her, embraced, standing next to, holding her hands, touching her shoulder, whatever way he engaged with her in my holy imagination, sending her as the messenger is the hope that I see in many, many ways. The rest of it, yeah, I'm not sure. On any given day, you might ask me, what about the rest of it? And it might be, you know what? I'm just gonna go back to the messenger, the Mary story, and just follow that out. Watch it unfurl, watch it unfold, uh, watch what she does with it. And now we're here many, many years later, knowing what she did with it, right? Knowing what she did with it. So I don't know how that piece strikes you, this messenger. Um, I have some ideas, but um, maybe share what's what's on your heart about that.

SPEAKER_02 31:45

Again, the first word that the resurrected Christ offers is the calling of a name, is a reminding in that unique identity. You know, I see you, I have a relationship with you, you go and tell. But I all that is reminiscent to me of the woman at the well who has this big conversation and then is told to go and tell. And the idea maybe it was the same person. Yeah, perhaps, I don't know. But and and that is, I think that that we would do ourselves a disservice to try to prove one way or the other. But the intention is that for all of us, that we would use our own voices to go and tell a better story, to go and tell a bigger version, to go and tell a better way of living, and then invite people into an expansionist type of conversation. What would it be like if we didn't have to train our sons for war? I mean, the prophet Amos offs. And so I think a lot of people are very interested in a spiritual path, and people are interested in the prophetic. And I love that idea. But if you understand that a prophetic is being able to say, I can see this another way, you know, that yes, there are wars, but then is the prophetic vision to be able to say, Yeah, but I can see us really living in peace. I can hear us giving a gospel of peace, you know, this idea of this is who Jesus is that said, you know, put away your sword, put that down, come and see, you know, eat this fish, drink this wine, enjoy this table, which is why he gave the messenger the message, right?

SPEAKER_01 33:29

Yes, he chose her, or did she choose him?

SPEAKER_02 33:32

Perhaps, sorry, perhaps who's just and is that is that essential? And who who told us who exactly, but to be able to say, no, the spirit, the spirit within us, that inner knowing, that deep knowing that probably we have always known. That threshold knowledge, that threshold knowledge, yeah, yeah. And to be able to say, how do we offer each other a better world?

SPEAKER_01 33:55

I love that word, by the way. Threshold, just to just to go off on a tangent with you for a minute. I like the threshold knowledge, like like she had it. She had it. He knew she had it. Maybe they had even talked about it. Maybe it was the plan B, I don't know, or F or J. Whatever plan. But there was there was something, there was a threshold, yeah. Uh knowledge.

SPEAKER_02 34:19

And there is for us an invitation into threshold knowledge that we would be embodiments of the spirit. In fact, Jesus said this to us I give you a spirit. You don't have a need of a teacher, you have the Holy Spirit. There is an inner sovereignty that we are gifted. Now, do we need to practice discernment, learn discernment? Yeah, because there's a lot of other voices in our head, and there's a lot of other voices in our ears and around us. So we do need to be able to hear um the voice above the noise and to be able to say what is how how do I know the voice of the Good Shepherd? How do I know the voice of love? How do I hear the voice of mercy? How do I practice those things? And again, Mary

Trusting Milk And Mercy

SPEAKER_02 35:00

invites us into a few of those. Um, she invites invites us into anointing, she invites us into prayer, she anoint, uh invites us into watchful waiting or attentiveness, uh, the practice of presence. Um, I have threshold knowledge of this, but I'm confident that she invites us into song, that she invites us into the mystery of music that speaks to soul, that realigns us, and to be able to uh again to cultivate a language that goes beyond this realm into the I'm grateful.

SPEAKER_01 35:40

I'm grateful for Mary. I am grateful.

SPEAKER_02 35:42

I'm grateful for you. Thank you for this conversation for our time together. Thank you. Yeah, there's more and more blessings for the women who have been and the women who will yet be. And just bless them all. Milk and mercy. So be it. We're gonna trust in that. 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.