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If you’ve ever felt like “being faithful” meant getting smaller, staying quiet, or handing over your God-given authority, this conversation is for you. We’re joined by writer, lay theologian, Christian mystic, and meditation teacher Chelsea Kim Long as she shares the heart behind her book Faithfully Dissident Daughter and a definition that stops people in their tracks: staying rooted in the love of God and the way of Christ while dissenting from distorted expressions of faith that harm, exclude, and diminish human dignity.

We dig into how women are trained, in both culture and church, to distrust their bodies and intuition, and why belonging can become a weapon when institutions decide who is “in” and who is “out.” We keep returning to a grounding question that helps untangle inherited shame: “Who told you that?” From there, we explore what happens when we stop organizing Christian faith around hierarchy and start imagining communities built on collaboration, shared leadership, and mutual care.

Chelsea also describes a real-life alternative: a neighborhood faith community with no building, no paid staff, and no belief tests, where meals, discussion, children’s formation, and honest spiritual practice count as church. We talk discernment, deconstruction, progressive Christianity, feminist theology, and the divine feminine, using the fruit of the Spirit as a practical way to evaluate what actually brings life, healing, and deeper connection with God.

If this resonates, listen, share it with a friend who’s wrestling with faith and belonging, and then subscribe, rate, and leave a review so more people can find these conversations. What part of your faith are you ready to reclaim?

For more information about our guest visit her website at chelseakimlong.com

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Mary Magdalene has been called a lot of things over the centuries, but the labels most people remember are often the ones that shrink her. We’re getting ready for her feast day by widening the lens and asking why so many of us feel, deep in our bones, that there’s more to her story and more to ours too.

We talk about Mary Magdalene as a tower of wisdom, an initiate, a mystic, and an apostle whose spiritual authority keeps challenging the old rules about who gets to speak for God. Along the way, we name the patriarchal smear campaign that blurred her legacy, and we share how reading beyond the usual script through the Gospel of Mary, the Gospel of Philip, and fresh scholarship (including conversations around Mary, Martha, and the Gospel of John) can feel less like “making something up” and more like taking years of grime off a beautiful icon.

The heart of the Magdalene tradition, for us, is inner authority and a return to love. We explore “Christ consciousness” as something that calls every body and every gender toward oneness, equality, and freedom, because until we’re all free, none of us are free. We also share a vivid story about red cardinals as a sign of presence, and how paying attention to nature can become a practical spiritual practice, not just a poetic idea.

If this sparks something in you, listen, share it with a friend, and subscribe so you don’t miss what we’re posting around her feast. After you listen, leave a review and tell us: where are you being invited to tell a better story?

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A rose petal on a walking path feels small until you realize it’s a practice of witness. We start with a Mary Magdalene feast day ritual, praying names into petals, anointing with oil, and letting ordinary beauty become a sign that love is still alive and moving through our days. From that grounded place, we ask a destabilizing question: what if the story we inherited left out more than we knew?

We talk about Elizabeth Schrader’s textual criticism research on the Gospel of John, including the claim that a scribe may have scratched out Mary’s name in John 11 and inserted Martha. That single manuscript detail opens up big conversations about biblical translation, authority, and the long history of women being minimized in Christian tradition. Holy imagination becomes our tool for truth telling, not as make-believe, but as a spiritual practice that helps us see the people pushed to the margins and imagine a more honest, more generous gospel.

From there, we widen into the divine feminine, the power of language, and the work of decolonizing scripture so it becomes good news for all people. We keep coming back to a practical takeaway: the kingdom of God is not just coming someday, it’s here right now, and the measure of our theology is whether it expands us into compassion, justice, and real belonging.

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Mary Magdalene doesn’t feel like a footnote when you finally let her stand where the text and the tradition say she belongs. We’re counting down to her feast day by talking about what it means to celebrate her in public and in practice, especially for those of us who grew up with only a small handful of church holidays and a much smaller view of women’s spiritual authority.

We explore Mary as an invitation to embodied faith, the kind of knowing that comes from within and stays with you through grief, joy, and change. That leads us straight to communion and the Eucharist: bread and cup as a living mystery of belonging, abundance, and belovedness. We share why we can’t stop thinking about the image of a long, unruly banqueting table where nobody earns their seat and nobody gets left out.

We also dig into why scholarship matters for real life. Newer research associated with Elizabeth Schrader raises serious questions about scribal edits in John and a Christological confession that may have originally been attributed to Mary Magdalene, not Martha. For us, that isn’t trivia, it’s a restoration of memory that reshapes how we see the early church, the “apostle to the apostles,” and the pattern of witness we’re invited to follow: stay, see, and then go tell.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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.