Little Gifts
Listen in as a millennial granddaughter in search of “more” picks her grandmothers brain about everything under the sun (and moon) like dealing with internalized patriarchy, how to work with dreams, finding your creative spark and so so much more. Sue Ellen Parkinson offers Savanna Wonderwheel (and everyone listening) wisdom and guidance through the gift of chat. Every conversation is a little gift and we believe a lot of little things add up. This podcast will give you a weekly dose of love and intimacy along with a little inspiration too.
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Little Gifts
112. Magdalene, Thecla and The Divine Within All of Us; in conversation with Meggan Watterson
You don’t want to miss this one! We are joined by the renowned author and theologian Meggan Watterson for a soulful conversation circling around the women who were written out of one of the most influential texts in the world, the truth that we can all trust our innate knowing and what it means to be a human awake to love within you.
You can find more about Meggan, her books Magdalene Revealed and The Girl Who Baptized Herself as well as her online community on her website https://www.megganwatterson.com/
Our next monthly community care circle will be Sunday January 25th at 10am. This is a space to come together to be in community, get centered, prime the creative pumps and have some room to just be as you are. Mark your calendar!
The zoom link will be accessible through our substack https://littlegifts.substack.com
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Please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts and leave us some stars over on Spotify. You can email us at littlegiftspodcast@gmail.com or find us on isntagram @littlegiftspodcast.
Find Sue Ellens artwork at www.sueellenparkinson.com or connect with her on instagram @sue.ellen.parkinson. And the same goes for Savanna! Find more about her practice at www.savannawonderwheel.com or connect on instagram @savannabeing.
The importance that is being transmitted in the Gospel of Mary is that the fact that she's female doesn't make her less than or somehow, you know, subservient or less holy or less worthy than the male disciples.
SPEAKER_00:Welcome to the Little Gifts Podcast.
SPEAKER_01:This is Sue Ellen Parkinson. And I'm her granddaughter, Savannah Wonderwheel. And we're on a journey together to find deeper meaning and magic in the day-to-day. We're so happy to have you join us.
SPEAKER_00:Good morning, Savannah.
SPEAKER_02:Good morning. It's another one of those special times where we're sitting on the couch together, which doesn't get to happen very often.
SPEAKER_00:It feels so cozy. And I have my little dog snuggled up to me when we were doing our meditation before we started this. That's sweet. I'm surrounded on both sides. And my heart is just vibrating with happiness because I'm so excited about our guest today.
SPEAKER_02:Megan Watterson. Yes. So for those who don't know, I'll go ahead and read a little introduction and then we'll get into what I can only imagine is going to be a really beautiful conversation. Megan Watterson is a renowned feminist theologian, the best-selling author of Mary Magdalene Revealed, and the recently published book about a courageous saint named Thecla called The Girl Who Baptized Herself. She is known for reclaiming sacred texts, giving voice to the women whose stories stopped being told, and helping to bring recognition to the truth that the divine is within all of us. She holds a Masters of Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School and a Master of Divinity from Union Theological Seminary at Columbia University. Her work invites readers into an embodied inward path of remembering, where the body becomes not an obstacle but a gateway to the sacred, encouraging readers to rethink traditional narratives and discover their own inner authority. Her work also extends into community and spiritual mentorship through the spiritual community she created at the house of Mary Magdalene. Megan, thank you so, so much for being here with us.
SPEAKER_03:So I'm honored to be with you too. I can see how much you love each other.
SPEAKER_02:It's true we do.
SPEAKER_00:Beautiful. We were just out under the stars the other night. There's meteor showers right now. It's so amazing to uh lay out under the night sky and chat with your grandchild, if you can imagine. It's beautiful. Anyway, Megan, shall we jump right in? I was very interested to read that you have a Lexio Divina practice. And I was wondering if you find yourself turning more to those sort of intuitive practices where you're just going within yourself. Do you do you turn to that more than the traditional scripture?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I think that practice is is really critical. And it's such a beautiful practice to use, whether it's on a sacred text like the Gospel of Mary or poetry by Rumi. You know, that that lectiotvina is really a it's a beautiful process of taking a word. It it can be one line from scripture or one line from poetry that moves you. And the way that I describe what it feels like when I know it's something that I want to take inward and digest deeper is it's almost as if I'm reading, and then all of a sudden a word becomes um like it's in bold face. Like as I'm reading it and taking a word in, you know, it suddenly comes into me as if it's like in a bold cap uh letters instead of just the normal written size. Like it just suddenly leaps out at me and I don't necessarily understand why. And so what it means is for me is that I want to digest that word a bit more. Sometimes then I'll take that one word in inward, you know, for me it's through the three breaths or the soul voice meditation that I've been practicing for decades, and I just sort of bring it inward into my heart and I just ask, is there anything more that this word wants to reveal to me? And it's it's beautiful because over the years, what I've found is that, well, it reinforces the truth that we contain our own answers. Also, it it heightens that capacity that we have to trust our own intuition, that there's, you know, words contain medicine, words contain energy. They're they're containers, they're holding medicine for us. And sometimes we gravitate towards a line or a word in scripture or in poetry because there's something in it that wants to reveal itself further to us. And that's where this practice comes in. And it's really, it's it's meant to show us that relationship with our own guidance, our own inner guidance, and to deepen it. And an example recently of sort of that revealing that can happen was around the constant refrain that's both in the the traditional New Testament and also in the scripture I use is the a New New Testament, which it's was edited and compiled by a professor of mine from seminary who gathered together a council of both men and women uh to decide which scriptures that had been exiled and edited out of the original New Testament, scriptures like the Acts of Paul and Thacla, which a girl, the girl who baptized herself is about, and the Gospel of Mary was edited out, but also scriptures like the Gospel of Philip that mentions that Mary Magdalene was Christ's you know beloved, his companion, his nonos, right? So the bishops weren't too psyched about that, right?
SPEAKER_00:And and kissed frequently on the lips.
SPEAKER_03:How did he praise it? But it was exactly and and he kissed her on the lips, right? Exactly. So the gospel of Philip would definitely complicate their efforts of one, erasing uh Mary Magdalene as the really significant other, the companion of Christ, but it really complicated their idea of the Christianity they were creating, which was a patriarchal Christianity from the fourth century onward. So, you know, they needed to erase women's voices, women's spiritual author authority. So the the Gospel of Mary, the gospel of Philip had to go, the Acts of Paul and Thecla had to go because Thecla baptizes herself in that one. It's like, oops, that won't work. If women are reclaiming power, spiritual authority, if they're saying, oh, I can hear the divine from within me, that's not gonna work. So what Hauteusig and his counsel did in 2012 is decide together which of those scriptures that were originally edited out should be brought back into our understanding of what Christ was truly trying to convey to us. And so they added back in so many scriptures that were originally edited out. And that so that's the the testament that I use, a new New Testament. And in that, there's this phrase that's repeated again and again where Christ is saying the kingdom of God is within. And that's something that most of us have really associated with Christ, or you know, that phrase. And, you know, for me, kingdom really stuck um because it was just like, I don't, it it didn't resonate as like I I just couldn't imagine that that was really. You know, when we think about translation and lost in translation and, you know, that Christ spoke Aramaic, first of all, or at least that's one of the languages that he spoke. For that then to come down through Greek to then English, you know, I'm thinking, okay, kingdom was really getting stuck in my throat and just wasn't resonating when it landed in my heart. It's like kingdom was not, I don't, I don't have a kingdom in me, right? But I I really was holding it in with spaciousness of like, okay, is this really what was trying to be conveyed? And I so I wanted to practice Lectio Divina around that word, kingdom. And so it was accompanied by some research because that word kingdom, when you go back to the Greek, is basilia or basilio. Those are the words. And when you sit with that word, another way to translate it, even a more accurate way to translate it from the Greek, is not kingdom, right? A which is ruled by a man, right? But it's sovereign power.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, I love that.
SPEAKER_03:So Christ is saying a sovereign power exists within every person, not a a a monarchy, right? Not not a community ruled by a man, right? Like a kingdom is is a human man rules that. Um, so there's a sense of hierarchy in that word. Whereas if you hear Christ saying sovereign power, that is sovereign power exists within every person, this to me also aligns more with the Christ we find in these scriptures that were excluded, because it was a Christ who was definitely challenging the unjust structures of power in in the empire, whereas the Christ that was canonized and constructed under the empire became a Christ that reinforced that patriarchy.
SPEAKER_02:It's helpful for me always to like contextualize these things with some timestamps too. And correct me if I'm wrong, but were the new New Testament, all of the writings that were taken away and taken out of the text, those were found just in the 1920s or 1940s. Is that is that correct?
SPEAKER_03:Yes, they were found. Many of them were found in 1945 after World War II in an area of Egypt called Nag Hammadi, although the the Gospel of Mary was not found among that treasure trove. Her gospel, which three fragments have been found of her gospel, which is phenomenal. I mean, that means that her gospel was basically the equivalent of a New York Times bestseller. It means that it was widely, widely read. And those those fragments were all found in different areas along the Nile as well in Egypt, but not at the Nagamadi findings. It was separate from that. And it wasn't published until it was actually first found in the late 1800s, but it wasn't published and made public available to the public until 1955, which is crazy. Insane.
SPEAKER_02:And I think it's just another good thing to acknowledge that the people who were translating that were still, I mean, we're still living in a patriarchal time, but 1940s, even more so. So of course they're gonna choose the translation of kingdom.
SPEAKER_04:Right.
SPEAKER_03:So, but in in her gospel, it's incredibly powerful that God is just referred to as the good, which I think is so accurate. It just feels, you know, my whole body just it there's like a chorus that resounds with God being referred to as the good, just capital G good in in her gospel. And the way Christ phrases that common statement in her gospel is the true human being exists within us. And and that word in the Greek means anthropos. And anthropos, if we like translate that directly from the Greek rather than true human being, you could also say that anthropos means fully human, fully divine. So the the being that is fully human and fully divine exists within every person, is what he's uh saying in the Gospel of Mary. And the importance that is being transmitted in the Gospel of Mary is that the fact that she's female doesn't make her less than or somehow, you know, subservient or less holy or less worthy than the male disciples. Because, of course, in the first century, uh the female body was considered subhuman, was considered, you know, women had the same rights as slaves, like they were property. So that's a radical, radical stance. Um, and so subversive and so phenomenal that Christ would give Mary teachings in particular, because she was, according to that culture, that system, unjust system of structure of power in the Roman Empire, she was considered less than. So here Christ is giving her a secret teaching so that the male disciples can learn to integrate one of the most phenomenal teachings that still has not been fully integrated, which is that we are radically equal and this the soul is not sexed, right? Like there is no such thing as like a sex or gender that is greater or less than anybody else. That just does that's a human egoic endeavor to create that hierarchy of existence. But the hierarchy does not exist in the spiritual world. That just isn't, and I feel that we all know this, or at least those of us who don't want to capitalize from the injustice know this. That that would, right? If if God is the good, is love, is a love that liberates, which any one of us who have had direct encounters with the divine, that's that's of course what the essence or the energy of the divine is, is this radical unity and this profound oneness.
SPEAKER_00:So right now, there's been such an uprising of consciousness around Mary Magdalene, and that she she brings these teachings, and she's not even interested in any sense of hierarchy. I just feel like she exists on a uh completely whole and courageous level. Do you feel like this is coming into our consciousness right now as a call to courage? Absolutely, and a call to embodiment.
SPEAKER_03:Call to embodiment because when she was eradicated from the spiritual authority within the church, you know, made into the prostitute, the body suffered. Being human, being fully human means we understand the body is the soul's chance to be here. But we have so created this sense of shame for being in a human body, you know, shame for what the body goes through and when the body is the soul's chance to be here. It is such a phenomenal opportunity to be able to be embodied. And so many of us spend so much time consumed with the torment of judging our body, of spending so much time trying to wish and change our body. And it's so difficult, especially with the amount of sexual assault and the amount of just sexism, misogyny, you know, how dangerous and hard it is to be in a female body. Um, there's so much disassociation that that many of us who are survivors, we we have to do in order to survive. But here's the thing, you know, for me, being spiritual has been about reclaiming the body again and again, coming home to the body. It's been the absolute opposite direction from what I was told or how being spiritual was introduced to me, where it's like, you know, wear white, chant, you know, deny the body, starve, don't listen to the body, all of that. For me, it's the exact opposite. It's really radically coming home to the body, being fully in embodied. That's when I began to truly not only hear the voice of my soul, but feel it. Feel the presence of my soul. And for so many of us, it's terrifying. It's terrifying to really come home to how much we already know, to how many answers we already have within us for what we want for our lives, for who we are, what what what we know, because that might challenge our existing systems, you know, of family that we we feel like we're depending on or others are depending on us to stay within. And that's part of why Thekla's story is so beloved to me, because she starts off this young teen girl who is forced to marry. And when she hears Paul, she overhears Paul talking about Christ, she refuses to move for three days and three nights. And almost all of us have heard Paul's Road to Damascus, you know, conversion story of, you know, he where where he's blinded for three days and three nights. But I mean, next to none of us have heard about Becca, much less heard her conversion story, which is essentially just sitting down in the middle of her life, in the middle of everything that's being expected of her simply because she's female. She sits down, she refuses to move, and she refuses to answer her mother and her fiance's questions. And to me, it's like just, you know, when when I mention that, just in the modern day, like there are very few women who can imagine being able to sit down for three hours, much less three days. Even 30 minutes, even 30 minutes with how much is demanded of us and how many expectations are placed on us, you know, with our roles that are attached to the fact that we are female. Now, many of those roles are sacred and holy and aligned for us. But there are those of us who are constricted by them and have never truly questioned is this what my soul is longing for? Is or am I doing this because I think if I don't do this, I won't be loved? Right. I'm doing this because I feel it's expected of me and it's the only way I will be valued in the world around me, is by fulfilling these traditional roles that are given to females. And Vecla allows us, she models for us what does it mean if I cut loose from all of those expectations, and my worth isn't in how I fulfill the expectations of others. My worth is anchored in the way that I answer my soul and what it's calling me to do. And that is just that's so radically liberating, you know, for for the 21st century, let alone the first century.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, you know, I wasn't raised as a Christian, even though I've been painting Christian mystics for the last 10 years. I wasn't you were the same, you weren't, yeah, yeah. But I find that just being raised in this culture, and as I started to explore Mary Magdalene and all her teachings and other saints, I realized. Oh, I'm carrying all this guilt and all this negativity, even though I wasn't raised with it. And because I thought, well, intellectually, I don't agree with any of that. I feel like women are equals. It's just been almost like uh a long process of um, you know, when you get stuck in a berry bush and you've got to take each thorn out one by one. It's been like that for me. It's like getting stuck out of the berry bush. And it's it's still, I mean, I'm 73 now, I'm still pulling out those thorns.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. I I love that description, that metaphor for um the way we internalize the patriarchy. That that is such a beautiful, and that you know, I'm the exact same. I I'm not a card-carrying Christian, and yet we don't ever have to enter a church or or belong to a church in order to be indoctrinated into the patriarchy and the patriarchal understanding of God is the father, and the father, and and then that means the divine transmission goes all the way back, you know, and is ultimate that it should really only be males who hold this ultimate power, you know, and that translates in cultures in such pervasive ways. It's mind-boggling that we it's very hard for us to even be able to see where some of those burrs, some of those thorns have landed in us and how deep, you know, they've they've settled into our system. And I think for me, one of the last ones that I've pulled out was only just recently. And it was around the time when I, you know, had been speaking about the acts of Paul and Thecla and teaching about Thecla and Mary Magdalene, and and really just in general, the detriment of what it has been for us as women to have these figures erased from consciousness, you know, erased from legitimacy, right? We don't have the gospel of Mary being taught in churches to this day. There are very few, if any, that I can name that will even mention the Gospel of Mary as being a legitimate script, like the it's scripture that is referred to as apocryphal, which that word means of doubtful authenticity. Oh gosh. And for me, that has been the hardest, the hardest thorn to take out of my spine because what how that has translated for me in my own life personally is that I will hear the voice of my soul and I will discount it. I will judge it of doubtful authenticity. And I think that is the greatest impact on having the erasure of the presence of these female figures who have so much to show and teach us still. Um, but I think the direct personal impact of them is that our soul comes through clearly at times in our life, but because of this pervasive, you know, that's in the air, that's in the water, for us to consider the divine feminine isn't just these voices like Mary's and Thekla's, it's also the voice of the soul, whether we're male, female, trans, you know, intersex. It's the voice of the soul inside us. That's the divine feminine. It's the interior world. And we have not been taught to trust that voice, to believe in it, and to honor it.
SPEAKER_00:You know what comes up for me, Megan, is sort of a I I can't even describe it, it's a fear. Uh, and and I think about that that we carry, you know, all the women that were burned at stakes and all the all the torture and everything that even though maybe that isn't happening quite in that way in this lifetime, at least not here yet, I still feel I'm carrying it. Like the first time I painted Lilith, I didn't want to name her, I felt fear around titling it Lilith.
SPEAKER_03:You know, that's something that I've spoken with women, you know, for decades is that in doing this work and in beginning to use that voice, right? So it's one thing to hear it, but the way that we respect it and believe in ourselves is to actually give voice to it, right? And to act on it. And so many women find that the barrier between those, you know, the hearing and the acting is that fear of persecution, and that the energy of it is so incredibly real. And for me, the only antidote has ever been sisterhood and community. That's the only antidote.
SPEAKER_00:And speaking, speaking out, even just like we are right now. And I found it's so hard in groups. I mean, I used to, my goodness, I'd rather have needles stuck in my eyes than speak publicly, but I've I've gotten over it. But being in groups and trying to get a group of women to speak is often very challenging because there's so much fear and judgment, self-judgment in there.
SPEAKER_03:And I think that the end of the acts in Paul of Paul and Thekla moved me so deeply because when Thekla baptizes herself, the scripture says, and the women all cried out in a loud voice as if from one mouth. And that line just echoed, you know, it just resounds inside of me because I think that's the only antidote when we're terrified to use our one voice. The only antidote is for us to understand that it's really meant to be a collective, that we use our voice to model what we want and hope and believe everyone is capable of doing, is sharing their truth as well. You know, that we're just the one drop of of an inevitable ocean, right? If love has already won, which I believe it has, um we we speak in order to model, it's it's not just on behalf of our own voice. It's that we understand that there is a collective we're speaking on behalf of, and that, you know, they they can silence one of us one at a time. They cannot silence all of us all at once. That's impossible. So there's a collective power that we can tap into where we're no longer this I, we're a we. And that's the only thing that has ever helped when I go to speak is I always say a prayer that helps me align with that reality that what I share, I share on behalf of all of those who have, you know, I just imagine like women going all the way back to Mary Magdalene and Thekla, you know, going through all the ages, women who were killed for speaking up, you know, and they're they're all lining up behind me. And then I also see all of those before me who will benefit from the fact that I'm speaking my truth and I'm doing it on behalf of the hope that they will share theirs.
SPEAKER_02:I feel like we need to just let that lily land for a moment.
SPEAKER_00:Oh um, I was wondering if you could tell a little bit more about the story of Thekla for our listeners because I did not know about her till I read your book. It was really uh mind-blowing, and she's she's been such a revelation and such a source of support. I I do Visio Divina with all my images. Yeah, I paint them, and I haven't been able to do that with her yet. Yeah, I just painted her, but you know, she's still vibrating for me, so I'm gonna wait a little bit.
SPEAKER_03:But um, yeah, if you can't she's been so fully erased from our collective imagination. Oh my goodness. So it's hard to it's hard for her to to come into clear form. So she taught alongside Paul, the apostle, and Paul, of course, is so greatly remembered and has definitely been a part of a pillar of Christianity, but we have completely forgotten the woman who taught alongside alongside him. And her name is Thekla, and she was a teen in the first century. She overhears Paul teaching about Christ. And as I mentioned, she goes through this conversion story, which is really important to us even today because it suggests that those, even those who aren't invited, right, to the like there's no such thing as like an elite circle being called. Um there's no such thing as um there being a certain set of criterion um that you have to meet externally to being called to speak on behalf of love. She did not fit the current criterion, and yet she was called. And that's very significant. And then also I think her story is really important to us again because she models to us the heroine's journey. We we've really had the hero's journey um engraved into us, especially through Joseph Campbell and, you know, through like the Homeric epics, we have the the Odyssey, right? And Odysseus is is trying to get from an island to his actual home where Penelope is waiting for him, you know, in the great Homer. But the reason why Thecla's story embodies something so different is that her journey, as I was studying the Axapol and Thecla during the pandemic, I noticed seven distinct spiritual stages that she goes through in her journey, in her scripture. And, you know, I write about them in the book, and I was really experiencing them within myself as well. And it includes a death, but the death, of course, is the death of the ego. It's the death of like the ways that we have thought we deserve love, you know, like I am a mother, thus I am useful, or I am a wife, or I am a, you know, all these different identities we can have, or egoic identities that really keep us sort of locked in a cycle that's destroying us, right? Like, like an idea of I'm unworthy of being fully loved or fully met. And so Thekla has this moment where her mother has suggested that she should be burned at the stake to set an example for other girls not to refuse to marry, as Thekla is, um, because it was against the law at that time for a girl not to marry. So she was breaking the law. So her own mother suggests she she should be burned at the stake. Now, her mother is embodying the patriarchal mother, right? Like the mother who enforces the patriarchy onto the daughter, right? You must conform, you must accept the scraps and crumbs of power that I accepted, right?
SPEAKER_02:Because what does it say about me if you don't accept it? Exactly.
SPEAKER_03:Exactly. That's her first mother. And so when Thekla is walking towards her death, she's stripped naked. And this to me is so profound because it goes back to a lot of other texts where Christ is talking about nakedness. And it's also an ancient Christian practice of egoic death, of stripping ourselves of our egoic identities in order to really encounter the soul, right? That's underneath all of these, you know, ideas of ourselves that are actually limited and sometimes not even ours. And so it's stripping us down to the truth. And what's so fascinating about that moment when here Thekla has been completely rejected by her mother, her fiance, the governor, the entire city, the young people in her community are like putting wood on the fire, right? So like her own friends are participating in her murder, and she walks through the crowd naked, and the governor weeps and marvels at the power in her. Now, that line really struck me. Now, the governor, who's supposed to represent considerable political power, right? He marvels at the power in Thecla. That to me is the scripture trying to tell us there is a power that's more ultimate than anything external to us, right? A power that can be decreed and taken from us, which is the power that he has as a governor. It can be stripped from him. She's modeling a power that's more supreme than that. It's the power that comes from within her. It's the power, the sovereign power that exists within every person that she aligns with when everything has been stripped from her. So it's for me, in that moment, she's embodying her soul. And ultimately, her process going through those seven spiritual um stages, the way that her story differs from the hero's journey is that the end is her going back to to face her mother, right? The one who tried to kill her. And to say, I am standing before you. So, like the daughter you could never see. And she says all that you could have wanted, like if it was money, you know, you could have had it through me, your daughter, right? Like by believing in me, in the power in me, by seeing me for who I am and supporting me, like you could have had everything you wanted through me. Look at me. I am your daughter. I'm standing before you. And it's that moment where she is fully embodied as herself. And though that which tried to destroy her could no longer touch her because she is so fully her own, right? She has become her own story. She is the author of her own narrative. She has fully embodied. And that's the difference between the hero's journey and the heroine's journey, is that this is a story of embodiment. And what she really models to us is that we are only as far from power as we are from our own embodiment, which is a spiritual message we've been missing for millennia.
SPEAKER_02:Part of Thecla's story that I loved so much is all of her interactions with the lioness. Yeah. Something that it made me think of, because you know, as I read about these women and and they start to come into my consciousness, you know, I'll be like, where have they showed up in my life previously? Or where have I seen those archetypes? And with Thekla, she was so written out of everything. There, you know, wasn't much of that coming up. And then I had this moment I was doing some pulls from the tarot, and the strength card came out, and I was like, Oh my god, this is Zecla. She is with the lion. Exactly. So for those who aren't familiar with it, the card that represents strength, it's an image of a woman with a lion at her feet, and she's just tending to the lion. The lion is like lovingly leaning against her. There's flowers and all this stuff. The infinity symbol. Yes. And that was such an aha for me with her to be like, This is where she one of the avenues where she was able to sneak in through whatever collective consciousness.
SPEAKER_03:And actually, I have chills. I have chills. That's the same for me. That I had a powerful poll with a friend of mine who's so beloved to me. And that's the card that came up.
SPEAKER_02:We gasped because we were like, it's well, when you see it and you read her story, there's just no, it's it's undeniable. There's no questioning it. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:We had just been talking about the lion and what that means to be courageous, which is to live from the heart, right? That's really what that word courage core is heart. That's the root word of courage. And in the world of the first century, only men were considered courageous. It was a masculine trait. So for Thakala to be fully embodying the lion, the courage, she is the one who is living from her heart. That is it's transcending gender. It's it's it's playing with who gets to embody what it means to be courageous. And we we had just been talking about that. And and I flipped that over. We like tears leapt into our eyes, and we were like, it's that I had chills and I had a feeling that that's what you were gonna say before you even said it, that that's where she came through. Cause that to me is is an image of her. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_02:And I've always that card has always been such a expander for me because it is just such a flip on what our our current culture considers quota. Exactly, strength.
SPEAKER_03:It's not like hairy, chested, brawny muscle, you know.
SPEAKER_02:Totally. It's not fighting, there's no war, there's no brutality, it's just this calm, peaceful presence.
SPEAKER_03:And contemplative, it's almost a contemplative. It's to me, it's this image of going inward, you know, and meeting with what's really true for us and aligning with that. That's that what the energy of that image is. So, and that's to me also the infinity symbol is it's connecting to what's ultimate from within us, which no one can keep us from ever. Which is why it's so subversive and dangerous, because there is no gatekeeper to the divine as much as the churches wanted to be that. And the church is many things, you know, for those listening, like the church is is also a source of strength and community and beauty for for so many people and you know, activism and the church's many, many things. It's just I invite everyone to see if maybe your church would invite Mary back into it or Thacala back into the story in in a way where they're not dismissed and they're not, they're not seen as apocryphal, you know, of doubtful authenticity, that they're seen actually as just as critical to the story as anyone else. That that's the day I hope for.
SPEAKER_00:It's the day I hope for too. And I keep thinking if we are able to be whole, if we can claim all these, reclaim all these parts of ourselves we've been taught to throw away. We're not going to be so easily toppled in the world. We'll be stronger to stand up to all the things that are coming our way.
SPEAKER_03:Absolutely. It's so, it's so critical. And, you know, for me, that's a part of why your artwork is so important. And for me, our ideas of the divine affect the status of women and girls the world over. It matters, you know, that the divine has really only primarily been envisioned and painted and depicted as white and masculine and male. Um, we can't have enough images of the divine feminine. We just can't because it's been so erased and so maligned. And especially that you have such a diversity of women that embody the divine is is so critical because represent representation matters. I spent time as a young adult on the Navajo reservation. And that's when I encountered my first image of Christ that really touched me, that like moved me to my knees. I was brought into a yurt where there was there were Christian services held on the res, and there was this image of Christ as a a Navajo man. And it just brought me to my knees because like after learning about at that time was my first exposure to the Christian boarding schools, you know, that systematically stole, you know, generations of Native Americans and indoctrinated them into this horrific version of Christianity that would suggest that they are less human because they are not Christian, right? Which has nothing to do with Christ's teachings, of course, right? That's just pure racism. And for me, seeing that image of Christ, that was my first image of Christ as a brown man, which of course he would have had to have been, right? Like he could not have been blonde, blue eyes, and white. Like that is just not that's not historically accurate and has never been. But also to see Christ depicted as the one who has been so oppressed by Christianity, that moved me so deeply. And that service really opened me up to the beginning of wondering, okay, wait, maybe the Christianity that I feared and have wanted so much not to have anything to do with is one version of the story, right? Like maybe there are other versions of this story that resonate with this unbelievable vat of honey I feel like I fall into when I actually meditate on Christ and not Jesus as he was everybody in the church, you know? And so that was the beginning of an unraveling that eventually led me to take such rigorous academic endeavors because I wanted to get at the root of how and why were these scriptures that included women's voices and included a Christ who included women. And she's sitting down. And the one that Sophie Strand used on the cover of her book, that one was sent to me maybe a decade ago. And I was, I got chills when I saw it. So, and that to me is like my body's version of communicating to me that there's a lot of holiness and truth. And, you know, it's it's it's sort of my body's barometer for truth or our you know, getting those uh goosebumps. So um I just really I feel like our our paths have intertwined because we're really transmitting somewhat of the same message, if that makes sense. That it's very different mediums, but but really an energy and essence is the same between us and is threading through us in different ways. But I just want to say that I I see you and I see the the love that's in your work and it's deeply moving and it's it's deeply medicinal, especially for these times.
SPEAKER_00:You know, for me too, make Megan, I I started um, I did that was my second painting of Mary Magdalene, and she that was the one that I started doing Visio Divina with, just asking, Who are you? Oh yeah. I'm coming from a place of just wanting to honor her because I'd been at a retreat where I saw a wonderful teacher, uh Kaylee Naspo, had a whole collection, maybe 200, 300 images of Magdalene that had been painted over the centuries. And so she left us on our first night there, she left us in a room just watching all these images, and I started crying because I felt like this woman has had so many things projected onto her. And who who was she really? And that was just my my doorway into trying to paint her to just from a standpoint of honoring her as a woman that represented all women, you know, and then wanting to know who she was and have a connection with her. And I felt literally lifted. I felt like I was stepping into a current of prayer, this current that had existed for centuries now, you know, all these people who have gone to her and been resourced by her. It it was just um, and I still that's the image I use to meditate on. It's um it's really astonishing. I'm wondering what your experience with iconography has been. If any, did you have you come across any have you come across any images of Thekla?
SPEAKER_03:There are a few online that I found, but there haven't been any that resonate. Um, and there are very, very few, but there's some within the Greek Orthodox Church of Thekla. Um sort of in the the traditional Byzantine, you know, formula. Um, I haven't seen anything that's like gives her her humanity in the way that you do, you know, which I think is so important is to hold the both, the both and fully human, fully divine, um, which I see in your artwork, but no, I haven't. And for me, iconography has been a big part of my journey because um, well, one, that image of Christ as a Navajo man. And then when I was working with pregnant teens later in San Francisco with a Catholic charities, there was an image, Robert Lentz, he's an iconographer, and there's an image of Mary Magdalene um that was at the Catholic charities that really mesmerized me. I mean, it like was alive, like the one where she's holding the white egg. She's holding the white egg and she's in the red Muslim and she's she's brown skinned, yeah, and she's holding and she's pointing to it. And I wasn't allowed in the nuns boardroom. That was like forbidden for me to go in there. It was like just for them, you know, and but that's where her icon was. And so I would sneak into the boardroom whenever oh my god, I love that. Just like stare at her. And again, I'm I'm raised by a flaming feminist. I was not raised Christian in the Midwest, like definitely not Catholic. So my obsession with iconography just was really, it's innate. It just seems to be innate because what it allows me is, which I know you can appreciate, that there's a level of transmission that happens in in iconography that's done in the way that you've just described, where you're surrendering inward to being guided to paint the image. It's almost the same way that I write at times. You know, I write in a way where something I feel like I'm transcribing. You know, I'm just I'm just writing down what I'm hearing, but what I'm hearing is coming through my heart, but from somewhere I could never point to, right? And isn't located within my body. So I write in that way sometimes, and the energy is more than me. Like when I return to it days or weeks or years later, I feel a sense of that energy being transmitted. The same is true in iconography. Like I can feel this energy.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I can, I can too. And it's interesting if I just surrender to it. I think that was partly why I asked you that opening question of do you trust your own intuitive process now? Is that where you go? You know. But um, when I when I'm painting the images like the vesica, I painted, uh, I haven't painted many, but I did paint one of Magdalene and Jesus next to each other, and their nimbuses created this vesica pisces, which I wasn't even aware of the vesica pisces at the time I painted that really.
SPEAKER_03:So it was it came through you, like the collecting unconscious. Yeah, exactly. That stuff happens all the time. Yeah, so powerful. But yes, that is that now I understand. I love when things end the way they began. So I love that you pointed back to that, the Lectio Divino. I didn't realize that that was what you were. Yes, I I have a practice of every time I before I write, there's a a prayer that I pray, and it connects me to that sense of listening inward and then just sort of transcribing what I hear from within.
SPEAKER_00:And you live in a little remote island, is that right?
SPEAKER_03:Yes, a tiny island off the coast of Florida, which I love and it's very nurturing for me as a mystic. Um, it's very nurturing of my my physical being. Like it's very easy to live here. I um I have this strange allergy to the cold, literally. Like I can't I break out into full body hives in cold weather. So I know it's very rare. It has some weird long name that the doctors gave me, but as they do. Yeah, as they do. But my my only hope of staying up north was to be on um antihistamines all winter long, which I wasn't willing to do. Um, so so it was it was prescriptive that I also come somewhere tropical because uh evidently my body can no longer tolerate the cold. So so I came down here for that reason, but I also have I have family here. And my my little sister who's so beloved to me, she doesn't entirely well. Here's the way I I would describe it. Um, like I would have gotten a letter to Hogwarts, she's a muggle, but she is so loving. Even even if she doesn't fully understand, you know, she completely accepts me. So so we're we're we're in slightly different worlds, but we love each other so fiercely. And so she's just down the street from me, and her daughter is the tiniest, most adorable witch ever. Like she so my sister always says, Oh my god, Megan, I had your daughter. So just recently, I mean Emmy is five now, and and we have this unbelievable relationship. And I always felt like I would have a daughter, and I only have one son. So it's like I it does feel like I knew that she would exist. I thought she would have actually been mine, but she's my niece. But she started saying just, you know, the way she talks about leprechauns and unicorns, she just said, mommy has a baby in her belly. And the reason why this was, I just sort of put that in the realm of leprechauns and unicorns is because my sister was adamant that she wouldn't have another child because she had preoclampsia and it was a very difficult labor and she's extremely high risk at this point and in her early 40s. So, you know, I I was like, Oh, really? You know, and we, you know, went about talking about it. And then sure enough, two weeks later, my little sister announced that she is pregnant. And I said to my little sister, Em's been telling me that you're pregnant for weeks. And Liz was like, How did she know? And I was like, She's tapped in. I know, oh, that's so wonderful. She's like a military. Oh my God, she is such, and she's got like the giant blue googly eyes, you know, and I just feel so honored to get to be like her witch aunt, you know, and I'm hoping to sort of keep the door open, you know, you know how the veils can can sort of descend and the door can close around seven, eight. Um, I'm just gonna do all I can to keep the door open and just to suggest to her, you know, you can be fully you and remain this this vibrant. Like I just try to validate whenever she sees or hears or understands something that sh isn't really possible for her to know or to understand. I just I always validate that that's entirely real and true and just try to hold her in that mystic spiritual light um and suggest to her that she's entirely invited to remain fully herself.
SPEAKER_00:And that will that will work, that will mean the world to her. So important. So remember, yeah. Even if you just have one person who says, trust your intuition, it's good. Right. Really makes a difference. Right.
SPEAKER_02:And we all take that encouragement from this conversation and let it ripple through us. Thank you so much, Megan. That was yeah.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, we could we could go on and on and maybe we'll call you again some other time and talk to you. It would be wonderful. But what a blessing to make this connection with you. And I feel like you're we're pilgrims on the path together.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:I always feel fed by conversations where it's you know, it's just aligned and it's just soul family. It's just finding each other again, you know, to support each other and and keep going, keep doing what we're we're doing. And so it's entirely mutual. Thank you so much for this.
SPEAKER_02:So to end our show, we like to do a little practice of sharing what we call a little gift or one of our little gifts. So just anything big, small, recent or not, that feels like a just I always think like a little kiss or wink from the universe that is present for you.
SPEAKER_03:I was invited to share on a substack that I adore called Letters from Love with Liz Gilbert. We love Liz Gilbert. Congratulations. The experience was so absolutely powerful. I've had this practice of the soul voice meditation, as I mentioned, and the idea is that you just go inward and you ask love, what would you have me know today? That's it. That's the assignment. And the practice for me, uh, I could cry. I mean, the the experience of it was just like I just sat down on my patio and just in one fell swoop, you know, I just I got out my red pen and I just asked that question, you know, from the heart very sincerely. And knowing, you know, how much I revere, respect, and love Liz Gilbert and all she's doing and all she has done for us. So I was listening with the depths of my own personal investment of like really wanting to hear and knowing that like her community of loved lets really creates this space, you know, this container to hear in a way that I I otherwise wouldn't have been able to. So I really I honored the opportunity and I I was so grateful for it. And I it was it just felt like love was present in a way that really changed me. I mean, it changed me because it felt like my soul was like pressed up against the back of my face, you know, it was like so and so loud. And I just in one swoop, you know, just I was I could hardly keep up with my little red pen. And I just, I just transcribed it and and sent it off. And it just, it really, it really changed me to to have written it and to have been a part of that project. So that to me right now is the most phenomenal gift. And it I still feel the wake, I'm still in the wake of it, you know, like I still feel it felt like a spiritual uh experience, really. And uh I'm I'm incredibly grateful for it and changed by it. So I highly recommend anyone who's listening to just um to practice that, you know, what would the voice of unconditional love have to say to you, you know, and then just just right away.
SPEAKER_00:I love that. And and talk about courageous voices, Liz Gilbert. Whoa, she's just been so what a what a sister for us all.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, so grateful.
SPEAKER_00:Well, my little gift is being here with my granddaughter. And um I I don't know if I mentioned this when I was talking before we started recording, but um, I'll just say it again is it was just so beautiful to lay out under the night stars the other night and watch the meteor showers with my my granddaughter, and we were just talking about our lives and things, but I you know it's those moments where you realize we are so incredibly blessed, you know, and it's these little things, those moments that really make all the difference.
SPEAKER_03:So that would be the infinite, the everyday, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, yes, yeah. Well, yeah, that was so special. Yes, so mine I'll share is um a little bit of a fangirl moment for you, Megan. So I got to travel to France earlier this year in April to go on pilgrimage to visit Magdalene's cave in the bomb. And also, you know, a fangirl to you, Grandma, because that was really inspired by your connection to Magdalene and my desire to more deeply know her as a means of knowing you more deeply. And somebody gifted me a copy of your book when I was when I told them that I was going there. Magdalene revealed. Magdalene Revealed, yes. And so I had it with me, and then I'm I'm an audiobook person, so I ended up downloading it on audiobook instead and listening to it. But the length of your book was the exact length of my travel time from Portland, Oregon to Marseille, France. So I just, I was like overcome. I just put it in and I listened for pretty much 14, 13 consecutive hours to your voice telling the story of Magdalene. And normally, you know, I'll do a bunch of other things. I'll like keep myself busy, but I just listened. I just sat there in my plane seat and kept kind of being surprised by the fact that I wasn't like pulling out my crochet or pulling out whatever other thing to do or getting the urge to like change to whatever music or podcast. Because I can be a little ADHD with that, but with my attention span. But I just was so transfixed by the story, her story and your story. And it was such a beautiful send-off into my own journey there and my own experience. And so thank you for all that you've done. I'm so grateful that you listened to yourself to go there. It was one of those very surprising kind of calls where it just the there was another trip that was happening, and this opportunity came up and the timing of it worked out perfectly because I was already gonna be in Europe and there was a million reasons not to do it. And um and the call was louder. Yep, exactly. So it happened and it was it was truly a life-changing experience. So yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Wow wonderful. I know. Well, thank you, thank you, and thank you to all the little giftors. Out there in the world, thank you for listening and joining us again. Yes, and we'll be back next week. Bye. We love you, little gifters. Keep coming back. Bye.
SPEAKER_02:If you enjoy this show, and I'll assume you do since you're listening, please rate and review us on Apple and Spotify. It would also be amazing if you could tell your friends and family about it. Word of mouth recommendations are the best marketing a podcast could wish for. To keep in touch, you can find us on Instagram at little giftspodcast, or you can send us a note at littlegiftspodcast at gmail.com. Every love note we get makes our day. And if you feel inspired to share, we would be so excited to hear about the little gifts that have shown up in all of your lives. To see or purchase Sue Ellen's artwork, you can find her on Facebook and Instagram at sue.parkinson. You can also visit her website at Sue Ellenparkinson.com. Our music is by the talented musician Robin O'Brien. Big thanks to Robin. Please subscribe to our show and go ahead and leave us that review while you're at it. Thanks again, and we'll be back next week.
