The Expansionist Podcast

Shelly Shepherd and Heather Drake
  • 5.0 (7)
  • Spirituality

Shelly Shepherd and Heather Drake invite you to listen in on a continuing conversation about expanding spirituality, the Divine Feminine, and the transforming impact of living attuned to Wisdom, Spirit and Love.#expansionisttheology #spirituality #spirit #spiritual #wisdom #love #Sophia #feminist #theology #community #table #expansion #fifthwaylove #deconstruction #Jesus #annointing #marymagdalene #feminism  #Jesuschrist #holyspirit #women #feminine  

  1. Jun 13

    Poetry As Prayer with guest Colette Lafia

    Send us Fan Mail Prayer can feel hollow or difficult when our lives get real. When grief lingers, desire stays unmet, or the words you used to say no longer ring true, you can start to wonder whether you’ve lost your way spiritually. We sit down with Colette Lafia, a creative and spiritual writer, retreat leader, and longtime school librarian, to offer another path: poetry as prayer, and prayer as a way of living from the inside of your own story. Colette shares how her book Leaving the Shore emerged from falling back in love with poetry and discovering it as a “threshold portal” into divine presence. We talk through her contemplative approach to Lectio Divina, a sacred reading practice that invites you to slow down, notice the word or image that tugs at you, and let it move through your body and heart. You’ll hear poems read aloud and experience how a single line can become an honest conversation with God, mystery, and the holy without forcing a neat conclusion. We also explore the spirituality of ordinary life: the dining table as an altar, the sacred traces held in daily objects, and the way longing can become a holy teacher. Colette reflects on infertility, accompaniment through illness, and why spiritual direction matters for people who sense “the more” but need a safe place to speak about it, including mystical experience. We close with a simple embodied invitation to begin with breath and trust an indwelling presence that is already here. If this conversation helps you, subscribe, share it with a friend, and leave a review so more listeners can find us.

    47 min

  2. May 29

    Love Like A Mother With Elizabeth Berget

    Send us Fan Mail A single late-night moment with a toddler sparked a question that can change how you pray: does God love us like a mother? We sit down with author Elizabeth Berget to talk about her book Love Like a Mother and the brave, careful work of expanding our understanding of God without losing our roots in scripture. If you’ve ever felt like the language you inherited for God was too small, too distant, or too tied to one kind of human experience, this conversation offers a bigger, more intimate picture. We dig into why “God as mother” can feel jarring at first, and how Elizabeth learned to hold the tension between spiritual experience and biblical authority. We talk about maternal imagery in Isaiah, the Spirit’s closeness in seasons of exile and pain, and why limiting God to a narrow set of metaphors can create unnecessary barriers, especially for people carrying mother wounds or father wounds. Along the way, we name the reality of pushback and fear when women claim authority to speak about theology, and we share why we still believe this expansion is faithful. Then we go embodied: motherhood as spiritual formation, the communion table and Eucharist through maternal eyes, and birth as a thin place where sacrifice and love become tangible. We also talk about mothering beyond biology, the kind of care that shows up in communities, and the slow practice of discernment, including how to notice what rings true in your body over time. Subscribe, share this with a friend who needs a gentler God, and leave a review so more people can find the Expansionist Podcast. What’s one image of God that has helped you heal?

    40 min

  3. May 20

    Women Practicing Resurrection

    Send us Fan Mail Resurrection can feel like a distant doctrine when the world is loud with loss, conflict, and exhaustion. Our conversation asks a more urgent question: what does it look like to practice resurrection when life is in ruins and hope feels thin? For us, resurrection is not something to watch from the sidelines. It’s an invitation to surrender, to let something real die, and to trust the Holy Spirit to bring life where we can’t manufacture it ourselves.  We talk about the Spirit as comforter and nurturer and why comfort is never a cute promise but a sign that pain is being taken seriously. From the Emmaus Road to Pentecost, we trace how the Spirit keeps breaking down “us vs them” and calling us back into oneness, wholeness, and love. That leads us into language: kingdom, queendom, kinship, and the ways religious words can either widen the table or tighten it into exclusion. If you’re searching for inclusive Christianity, Holy Spirit-led discernment, spiritual formation, and a faith that makes room for your body and your inner knowing, this conversation is for you.  We also linger at the communion table, naming how many people have been pushed out of the very place meant to heal. We imagine what an open table could mean, and we close with a breathtaking reading from the Book of Wisdom that describes Spirit as intelligent, holy, subtle, and “friendly to all.” If this stirs something in you, subscribe, share the show with a friend, and leave a review. What part of your life is asking for resurrection right now?

    35 min

  4. Apr 29

    St. Catherine Of Siena And The Mystical Life That Heals The World

    Send us Fan Mail She was born into a world marked by plague and upheaval, yet she found a kind of inner stillness strong enough to challenge popes and serve neighbors at the same time. We’re talking about St. Catherine of Siena, and we’re letting her life press on our assumptions about spirituality, authority, and what it means to love in public. We trace Catherine’s “cell” of contemplation as more than solitude, seeing it as the birthplace of self-knowledge, discernment, and a listening heart that can hear the voice above the noise. From there, the conversation moves into Christian mysticism with consequences: prayer that doesn’t split body from spirit, devotion that turns into embodied compassion, and a love of God that shows up as care for the sick, food for the hungry, and presence with grief. Catherine also refuses to stay quiet. We wrestle with her letters and political courage, her resistance to excessive wealth and abuse of power, and what her witness means for women’s sovereignty in the church today. Along the way, we name modern tensions around marginalization, LGBTQIA inclusion, and the ongoing question of women’s leadership and ordination. We end with a blessing inspired by Catherine that speaks directly to women who feel diminished, calling forth a steady inner fire that is meant to be seen. If this conversation helps you breathe deeper and stand taller, subscribe, share it with a friend, and leave a review so more people can find Expansionist Theology.

    28 min

  5. Apr 12

    Stop Proving And Start Telling

    Send us Fan Mail The resurrection story starts with a problem anyone can recognize: you’re carrying love, you’re carrying grief, and there’s a stone in the way. We step into Eastertide by following the women to the tomb, lingering over their honest question, “Who will roll away the stone?” and noticing the courage hidden in plain sight. They don’t wait for perfect certainty. They go anyway, and that single posture becomes a powerful spiritual practice for anyone facing loss, burnout, injustice, or a future that feels sealed shut. We also talk about what gets missed when we read scripture through the same lens we were handed years ago. Why are so many women blurred into “Mary,” and what changes when we insist that every person in the story matters? From there, we move into “go and tell” as a commissioning that has too often been stifled. We explore how resurrection is more than a claim to debate and becomes a lived, embodied reality: pockets of hope, bigger tables, companionship, and the quiet ways our bodies know truth before our minds can prove it. If you’ve ever wondered whether resurrection can be real when someone you love is still gone, you’re not alone. We hold that tension with tenderness, connect it to Hildegard’s greening and the cycles of nature, and offer a blessing for anyone who is going to the tomb with spices still in their hands. Subscribe, share this with a friend who needs hope, and leave a review. Where have you seen resurrection showing up lately?

    23 min

  6. Mar 26

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

    Send us Fan Mail 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?

    36 min

  7. Feb 23

    Name The Hold: A Conversation With Laurie Beth Jones

    Send us Fan Mail What if your spiritual life had a map you could actually see and use? We sit down with bestselling author Lori Beth Jones to explore the “21 holds of spiritual ascent,” a vivid framework that turns vague struggle into clear, actionable steps. Instead of abstract advice, Lori gives us memorable visuals: the social hold as a carousel that looks like motion but goes nowhere, the cargo hold as overstuffed schedules and judgments, the withhold as a famine of your own voice, and the chokehold that steals breath and agency. From there we cross the threshold—the first crack of light under a door—into upward movement. We talk about the tiny toehold that changes direction, the throwhold that requires trust, the sold hold that commits you to what’s next, and the bold hold that asks you to reach for the moving train. Lori expands on the gold hold, where values realign toward what lasts, and on the stronghold, wold hold, and behold—the places of support, clearing, and awe where you finally see you’ve been held all along. We connect these ideas to breath, voice, and the courage to take up space, especially for women taught to fold, shrink, or leave the table. Staying at the table becomes a practice of freedom. You’ll also hear how this framework becomes a practical game and spiritual practice, including the “wonderful what-if rabbit,” a playful prompt that opens imagination and reveals hidden thresholds. Heather shares a powerful blessing for climbers, and we each name a hold we’re releasing right now—like the cargo hold of an overloaded calendar—to make room for depth and creative work. If you’ve been craving language for where you are and a nudge toward your next step, this conversation offers both clarity and companionship for the climb. If this resonates, subscribe, share with a friend, and leave a review so more listeners can find the show. Then tell us: what hold are you naming today, and what toehold will you claim next?

    44 min

  8. Jan 29

    Free Lemons And Holy Attention

    Send us Fan Mail What if wonder isn’t a luxury but a way of seeing that heals how we live? Shelly and Heather open the door to a practice of holy attention, starting with a simple moment on a city sidewalk: a box labeled “Free Lemons.” From that humble gift flows a conversation about abundance, beauty, and the courage to notice what is already with us. We explore how awe differs from endless questioning, and how sensory prayer—touching, smelling, tasting—can reawaken the heart to God’s nearness and the dignity in our neighbors. We move from contemplation to action, reflecting on Jesus’ everyday goodness: sharing meals, binding wounds, and paying the cost for someone else’s healing. That picture reframes what church can be in public life—a dependable address for kindness, patience, and steady help. Along the way, we name the noise that hijacks our attention, from relentless alerts to manipulative marketing, and we learn a kind of “spiritual caller ID” to tell the difference between a sacred invitation and a hollow distraction. Fear shrinks the path, but love widens it; the narrow way turns out to be the focused, expansive path of unity in a tribal age. Around the table of belonging, even doubters and deniers find a seat. We remember that family is messy, yet held together by mercy, and that we’re invited to be light that points out goodness wherever it’s piled high—on street corners, in kitchens, in communities that choose service over spectacle. Come for the stories, stay for the gentle practices, and leave with a renewed desire to tell everyone where the goodness is. If this resonated, share it with a friend, subscribe for more conversations like this, and leave a review to help others find the show.

    38 min
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5
out of 5
7 Ratings

About

Shelly Shepherd and Heather Drake invite you to listen in on a continuing conversation about expanding spirituality, the Divine Feminine, and the transforming impact of living attuned to Wisdom, Spirit and Love.#expansionisttheology #spirituality #spirit #spiritual #wisdom #love #Sophia #feminist #theology #community #table #expansion #fifthwaylove #deconstruction #Jesus #annointing #marymagdalene #feminism  #Jesuschrist #holyspirit #women #feminine  

Information

  • Creator
    Shelly Shepherd and Heather Drake
  • Years Active
    2023 - 2026
  • Episodes
    54
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 The Expansionist Podcast
  • Show Website
    The Expansionist Podcast