November 20, 2025 • 56 mins
“Our ideas of the Divine affect the status of women and girls across time and history, and they deeply influence how we see ourselves.”
Today, Devi welcomes the incomparable Meggan Watterson — feminist theologian, speaker, and author of Mary Magdalene Revealed and The Girl Who Baptized Herself. Together, they explore the divine power of sacred femininity, the wisdom of higher consciousness, and the reclamation of women’s spiritual authority.
With warmth and clarity, Meggan shares stories of lost scriptures, the erasure of women’s voices in early Christianity, and the radical love embodied by figures like Mary Magdalene and Tekla, stories that challenge old narratives and invite us into a more expansive, inclusive understanding of the divine.
This episode gently unpacks the religious trauma many carry, offering an empowering reminder that spiritual truth lives within us. Meggan speaks to the beauty of feminine embodiment, the courage it takes to listen to our inner knowing, and the healing found in reconnecting with the sacred within.
To close, Meggan offers a simple but profound three-breath meditation — a grounding practice that helps us return to our hearts, our truth, and divine love.
Connect with Meggan Watterson
Website: MegganWatterson
Instagram: @MegganWatterson
Read: Mary Magdalene Revealed and The Girl Who Baptized Herself.
✺
Connect with Devi Brown:
Website: https://devibrownwellbeing.com/
Living In Wisdom Book: https://www.devibrown.com/book
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/devibrown/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Take a deep breath in through your nose.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Holds it.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Now, release slowly again, deep in, helle.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Hold release, repeating internally to yourself as you connect to
my voice. I am deeply well. I am deeply well.
(01:22):
I am deeply I'm Debbie Brown. And this is the
Deeply Well Podcast. Welcome to Deeply Well, a soft place
(01:43):
to land on your journey. A podcast for those that
are curious, creative, and ready to expand in higher consciousness
and self care. This is where we heal, this is
where we transcend. Welcome back to the show. I am
so grateful you're here. I'm Debbie Brown. Today's conversation really
(02:03):
takes us into the heart of the sacred feminine.
Speaker 4 (02:08):
We are going to be exploring.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
The deeper truths that live within us all. And I
am joined by a world renowned author that really has
just in such a pioneering way, led the charged around
sacred femininity and embodiment. Today's guest is Megan Waterson, a
renowned feminist theologian and the Wall Street Journal best selling
(02:33):
author of Mary Magdalene. Revealed she has a Master of
Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School and a Master of
Divinity from Union Theological Seminary at Columbia University. She created
the House of Mary Magdalen, a spiritual community that studies
sacred texts left out of the traditional canon. Her work
(02:55):
has appeared in media outlets such as The New York Times,
The Huntington Post, tedex Women, and Marie Claire. This past summer,
she just released her latest book, The Girl Who Baptized
Herself How a lost scripture about a saint named Thekla
reveals the power of knowing our worth? And I want
(03:18):
to give you a little bit more about this book
before I fully bring Megan in. This book is the
riveting exploration of a nearly lost first century scripture that
tells the story of a courageous saint named Thekla and
offers us a road map to knowing our worth. A
teenage girl named Thekla is sitting at her bedroom window
(03:39):
listening to a man share stories nearby. Her mother and
fiance order her to stop, but Thekla, trapped in a
world that expects her to marry and have children, refuses.
This man, Paul is talking about a world she wants
to believe in, an inner world of freedom to define
her own life, and he's talking about a kind of
(04:02):
love she hasn't known before, a love that asks her
to be true to who she is within. For Megan Waterson,
a Harvard Train feminist theologian, Thekla's story in the Acts
of Paul and Thekla has everything to do with power.
Theckler's refusal to be controlled, as well as the authority
she reclaims by baptizing herself reads like a lost gospel
(04:25):
for finding our own source of power within, a power
that allows us to know who we are and to
make choices based on that knowing. This hidden scripture suggests
that Christianity before the fourth century was about deifying the patriarchy,
not defying it, but early Church fathers excluded the Acts
of Paul and Thekla, along with other sacred texts such
(04:47):
as the Gospel of Mary from the New Testament. Waterson
synthesizes scripture, memoir, and politics to illuminate a story that
has been left out of the cannon for far too long,
one that follows a girl freeing herself from a life
predicated on the expectations of others, a path that made
her feel unworthy. Decklo's story offers us a path to
(05:11):
take back the power we often give to others and
live based on the truth of who we are.
Speaker 4 (05:19):
Wow, welcome to the show, Megan, love you.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
I'm so grateful to be here with you.
Speaker 4 (05:26):
I'm so excited to have you. I am such a fan.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
Of your work and the way that you have I mean,
just like brought.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
These ancient.
Speaker 4 (05:38):
Faith filled.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
I don't even know how to describe it, Like it
is a new feminine archetype.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
It is a new.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
Way that is actually the old way of being feminine
back into the world. I mean, wow, Like, how do
you feel with this as your mission?
Speaker 2 (06:01):
I do feel very fortunate that it has always been
loud in me and clear that this is the work
that I'm meant to do. I think what became clear
to me, especially early on, is that anger and rage
(06:21):
were really important information for me. It was like a
red flag in a good way, like a bull, you know.
I understood, for example, when I first went to church
as a little girl, and I broke out in hives
when I read the New Testament for the first time,
because I was sensing the missing stories, you know, the
(06:45):
stories that I would eventually find years and years later
in Divinity school. But I sensed that they were missing,
and the idea that God is the Father and the
Father only, and that this male God then somehow gave
this holy creed for an exclusively male succession of divine
authority going all the way back to Christ. I just
(07:08):
in my little girl body, I felt that this was
not true. And the rage at that time came up,
as you know, the hives breaking out in hives, and
I had to leave. You know, my body really led me.
And every time that flare up would happen again, that
(07:28):
sense of rage, rage as information, rage as galvanizing me
and showing me the right direction, I would listen to
it because it flared up again when I was in
college and there was, you know, this very angry man
wearing a billboard, you know, on both sides. It was
(07:49):
like sandwiched between two billboards with quotes that he felt
justified his homophobia, you know, and he was screaming about
that we're all going to hell, and you know that
same sex is sinful and all of those you know,
ideas that he felt justified because of the scripture that
(08:13):
was all around him. And again, as I was nearing
him as a teenager in my late teens in college,
I felt that same sense of knowing that this is
not love to me, this is not God. I just
didn't yet have the scripture that justified my faith of
(08:36):
knowing that this is not the truth, this is not
the story that I know that my body somehow that
my heart knows. So it led me again. And the
other time that I felt that knowing so loudly was
volunteering on a Navajo reservation, working with children, and the
(09:01):
Christian missionaries who were housing me to be on the reservation,
they you know, would slide these pamphlets underneath my door.
It's not funny, but but like I you know, I
didn't know what else to do with it, but to
there were those pamphlets that like you know, have the
woman in the flames, you know, screaming out yeah. Like
(09:25):
because they believed that unless I believed in the Christ
that they believed in, I was going to burn in hell.
You know that that I had to announce Christ as
my savior in the very sort of you know, fundamental
Christian way or I was going to go to help.
And I kept explaining that that I did sense Christ,
(09:49):
I did love Christ, but that I know that that's
not true, Like I know that that's I'm not afraid
of that in the way that they were, and for me,
their presence there on the reservation was so incredibly troubling
(10:12):
given the history of the genocide and the boarding schools,
the Christian boarding schools, which you know just only now
is really coming to more mass consciousness of that erasure
of a whole culture and the way that Christianity played
(10:33):
a pivotal role in that genocide. And so this is
what I was confronting them about. You know that this
is not I don't believe in a christ that would
have wanted this, that would believe that. And so again
it was that sacred rage, that honest indignation. That's how
(10:56):
William Blake refers to it. The voice, the voice of
honest indignation is the voice of God. You know. It's
that sense that when you know or recognize love, you
have to speak on behalf of it. And so in
those three moments that really stand out for me in
my life, it's that there was some sort of knowing,
(11:19):
but it was physical, you know, it was a part
of what it meant to be embodied that I recognized it,
which is really the opposite direction of what we're taught
in more traditional ideas of being spiritual. It's that you
want to transcend the body, deny the body, silence the body,
(11:43):
and listen to the soul. For me, the soul only
became audible once I was fully embodied, So it was
the opposite direction, and that was the voice that was
guiding me. Mmmmm wow.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
Yeah, things that I mean, there are just so many
points and things that I want to dive in.
Speaker 4 (12:05):
And say about this that is so powerful.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
You know.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
First, one of the things I just kind of want
to anchor is like it's always been fascinating to me
that when you study Christianity across history, it's actually.
Speaker 4 (12:16):
Like so incredibly violent.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
Like that is like it goes like fundamentally against what
the core kind of archetype, yes, what it means to
be a Christian right.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Right, And that confused me profoundly as a child and
then a young adult because what was I sensing inside
me about Christ that felt the exact opposite to anything
of that. And so then when I got to seminary finally,
it took me a long time to get to actually
(12:52):
studying Christianity because I felt like I had been so
burned by it and then it literally set me on fire.
I first studied, like everything else, you know, the divine feminine,
all the world religions, because it was almost like I
had to sort of buffer myself or prepare myself for
(13:12):
figuring out, Okay, how and why was the feminine or
the divine feminine, the female saints within Christianity, why were
they so erased as well? But I sort of buffered
myself leading up to it. But the history blew me
away when I got to seminary what I found that out,
(13:33):
which is what everybody can know. I mean, this isn't
like hidden information. The Christianity that existed before the fourth century,
right before Constantine converted it into the empire's religion, was
a radical movement that was defying the patriarchy. It was
(14:00):
defying the emperor exactly what it was, standing up right
against the systems of unjust power in the world around them,
like as Christ showed them. And after the fourth century,
Christianity became patriarchal and it became the Empire's religion. So
(14:22):
this is when and where it became. It really became
a tradition that was justifying the power of the elite
through this institution of God. So then those who held
(14:43):
the most amount of power were given it to them
by divine decree.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
Wow. Wow wow, and it's like we gosh, do we
still see that? You know? The way its WEAPONI is
and absolutely the way it's used for patriotism and patriarchy, absolutely,
but it's really in some areas and some people really
hurting people, you know. So this past weekend I was
(15:14):
in New Jersey for the Mental Wealth Expo, which is
this really incredible thing that my brother Charlotte Mane the
God puts on every year. It was our fourth annual
and it's all about mental health and it's all about
connecting people with services and also just having really kind
of consciousness expanding conversations and the community about mental health
(15:36):
and mental illness and the things that affect us. And
so this year I created a panel that I hosted
and we had my dear friend, doctor Teddy Reeves and
who works at the Smithsonian African American Museum and he's
a theologian and also former pastor Carl Lentz. It was
a phenomenal conversation. The panel was called Religious Trauma, and
(16:02):
so we were speaking to the audience from the lens
of having experienced, whether you knew what or not, religious
trauma or something that blocks you from your connection with God.
And for so many people, I mean that even that
concept has never been heard of. But as people start
(16:22):
to hear about it more and more, they're finding where
that actually settles within them. You know, we heard from
some people who had been a part of had one
religious background and you know, they were JW and left JW,
and they were talking about their experiences there and you
know how they were no longer in contact with their family.
Speaker 4 (16:44):
So many stories, so many.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
Stories, and we were talking about how you know, one
of the things that is so insidious and awful about
religious trauma is.
Speaker 4 (16:53):
Like it cuts you at the.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
Core fundamental level of your humanity. Like if you can
create question or shame or distance between another person and
their ability to have faith and their ability to have
a higher power, Like it's just that what could be
more manipulative, Like that is the greatest manipulation of all time.
(17:18):
One of the things that I'm getting to is, I
remember we were talking about all different kinds of trauma,
whether it was abuses within the church, within the family,
and I remember doctor Teddy Reeves said he said, but
let's talk about one of the first greatest traumas against women,
and it's the fact that in our churches we are
telling women that they cannot be pastors, we are telling
(17:42):
women that they cannot lead in the church. And you know,
these were his words based on his study, but saying that,
you know, a misinterpreted part of the Bible that's asking
women to be silent, right, And he's like, they were
just loud.
Speaker 4 (17:57):
In the moment.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
He was just shushing the audio in front of him
and it was being recorded, you know, but that didn't
mean that women cannot lead in the church and have
deep connection to God. And it's just like, I think,
like so much of what you're saying, It's like that
is the core of the trauma that has been begun
(18:20):
when women were left out of scripture and their work
was completely erased from what they brought to the world
with faith, with God, with love and through to now
this idea in some churches that you can do everything else,
you can take care of the men, but you there
(18:42):
is no way God is talking to you. You can't
share any of that with the people. And it's just like, wow,
you know, hearing the way that changes forms, but has
remained over centuries.
Speaker 4 (18:55):
Is a mind blowing.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
And first of all, I'm so grateful that he said it.
I don't know if this was your experience, but my
whole body relaxes when someone outside of me owns it
and says it. And I don't have to be the one,
you know, fighting and researching and you know, screaming from
(19:18):
the corners of the world. This has a profound impact
the world over, because our ideas of the divine affect
the status of women and girls throughout time, through history,
and more importantly, affect our own ideas of ourselves.
Speaker 4 (19:38):
And so much things.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
To be able to really listen to that voice of
truth inside of us and believe it. And that quote
one Timothy is attributed to Paul, and of course Paul
in the Acts of Paul and Thuckla, which the Girl
who Baptized Herself is about. Scholars now say that that
was absolutely not Paul who wrote that. It's attributed to Paul,
(20:04):
but it's very difficult to say that it was actually
anything he said. And what's so interesting is the complete
erasure of texts like the Gospel of Mary Magdalene and
the Acts of Paul and Thecla. This happened around the
fourth century. It began when Christianity became patriarchal. So if
it was going to become patriarchal, we had to erase
(20:27):
the bishops who convene under Constantine the fourth century. They
had to erase all of these stories about these women
who were in exceptional places of spiritual authority, like Mary
Magdalene and like Thecla. Becla, in her story baptizes herself.
(20:48):
And that erasure is so profound because we don't even
know who Paul is is without seeing who he was
to Thecla. He was a mentor to her. Becla ministered
alongside Paul, and we all remember Paul, but almost no
(21:13):
one even knows Becla's name, much less her story, and
that she was really like the female counterpart to Paul
in the way that Mary Magdalen was the counterpart to Christ.
But we've lost that embodiment, that modeling, that visual affirmation
(21:33):
for all of us that God is here too in
the female form.
Speaker 4 (21:38):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
And it's so important for us to feel that and
to know that, because it helps us then to be
able to understand that these you know, illusions, these ideas
that it's more sacred to be male. You know. It's
(21:59):
that the so is more sacred than the body. That
you know, all of these ideas, of these these sort
of dualities that the hierarchies right, those aren't real. And
on a very deep level, we all know this. We
all know this. The body is the soul's chance to
be here. I love the way we need this flesh
(22:22):
as much as we need the spirit. It's it's both,
and we need the female as much as we need
the male, and we need all expressions of sex and
gender because the soul isn't sext you know. So those
of us who are non binary, are trans, are are
more in touch with that genderless soul inside of us.
(22:44):
You know that that essence of who we are, which
is the aspect of us that will exist after this
human form and existed before it. So that to me
is so encouraging and inspiring and empowering to hear that,
(23:06):
And I hope so many more brothers really own that
knowledge and speak that knowledge for all of our sake.
This isn't a you know us in them or a
this is for all of us because it only benefits
(23:28):
all of us, For every single one of us to
be back in touch with that guidance, you know, that
voice of love is how I refer to it, the
soul voice inside of us. We all benefit from that
healing deeply.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
Well.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
I know people ponder this for their entire lives throughout history,
but it's just so kind of deep and also odd
and strange and complex to think about the propaganda against
women and their connection to God and faith, and like
something that I think about a lot is you know,
(24:14):
and I have one million percent identify as walking the
path of Christ and seeking to have a Christ's mind
and the teachings of Christ and Christ's mastery on earth
and the Divine Mother is a huge guide for me
in my life. And something one that I always thought
(24:35):
was strange is that more information was not really shared
about Mary as a woman and as a mother and
as her life because it's like, if you are raising
the Christ, if you're raising young Yeshua, and we're not
talking about how you molded him to rise into his
destiny and what was he studying? What paths did she
(24:58):
create for him? And what was that sacred relationship? Really,
like like we have the moments of the sacred right,
like we have the moments like.
Speaker 4 (25:07):
Her giving birth.
Speaker 3 (25:09):
To him and jes like the oh my God, you
know the power of that story, and then how she
is experiencing his crucifixion. But it's like, where is the actual,
like profound presence of her in his life mentioned anywhere else,
or how she was feeling and.
Speaker 4 (25:29):
Talking to God about this herself.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
So that part has always been like, yeah, that doesn't
it's incomplete.
Speaker 4 (25:38):
And then also I wonder, you know, is really what
is in it for the.
Speaker 3 (25:46):
People throughout history that try to take God out of
the body, that try to take away and actually create
walls around the experience of feeling God on earth, and
you know, kind of for everyone. What I mean by
that is, you know, when you look at some other religions,
(26:07):
like even Catholicism, you know, the Muslim religion, a lot
of it is really connected to certain physical rituals that
I recognize now as putting you into a certain kind
of meditative or contemplative state, right where with the power
of meditation, you're creating space for your consciousness to elevate,
(26:31):
which means you know, having like divine connection and communion
and even yeah, physical ritual holding a rosary. What it is,
you know, very similar to mala bedes and going one
by one, but it is to create space and pause
in your life that is strictly dedicated to like a
(26:53):
full bodied devotion to God. And I think in Christianity
that is a lot different. They're obviously still prayer, still scripture,
but there is this distance about. It's like you have
to pass through somewhere else or someone else right to
have God removed yet once removed, And it's just I've
(27:15):
always been curious about that.
Speaker 4 (27:17):
So just any any thoughts.
Speaker 3 (27:18):
You have from like, I mean, your immense lifetime of
study on this.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
Well, first, I've also always found it curious the way
that Mary, the Mother of God was stripped of her
humanity in her story, and how convenient that would be
then for those of us who would want to draw
strength from her, as women who have physically given birth,
(27:47):
who've had sex and have physically given birth, to be
able to like fully identify with her and to siphon
a sense of the sacred through her story. What happened was,
by the sixth century, as Christianity was becoming more institutionalized,
she became Tiatkos. A series of counsels began to happen
(28:11):
beginning in the fourth century under Constantine that was creating
the patriarchal version of Christianity. And if Mary gave birth
to Christ, this would give women this sense of exaltation
in a sense, a sense of power. But if Mary
(28:35):
is stripped of her humanity, then it's unattainable for a
human woman to ever truly identify with her. So by
the sixth century she was named tiatikast, she was named
the Immaculate Virgin, right, which I mean, how many of
us right identify with that? Then? So what we're doing
(28:59):
by giving birth, by really, you know, most closely mimicking
the divine power to give life, this is this makes
us somehow more unfit her positions of spiritual authority. I
don't think so that's wild, right, Like what kind of
spiritual jiu jitsu just happened that the fact that I,
(29:23):
this body, this form that I'm in, can give birth
to a male, How did somehow that disqualify this body
then from being able to be pope? Like that doesn't
make any sense to me, but it does under that
structure where these figures in history lost their humanity, they're
(29:47):
not She wasn't fully human and fully divine, which is
really the emphasis on a lot of these gospels that
were left out of the story in the fourth century
were ordered to be destroyed, the Gospel of Philip, the
Gospel of Thomas. This really emphasized our capacity as humans.
(30:11):
What it meant was that we're a soul and a
body both. That's the ultimate paradox that we are. We're both.
We're not just human meaning flesh. We're not just this body.
We are this body, but we are also one hundred percent,
not fifty to fifty, one hundred percent. Also we are
(30:31):
an eternal soul, so we're both. But in the process
of you know, the formation of Christianity under the patriarchy,
it became a real effort to divest these figures Christ
Mary of their humanity. But then Mary Magdalene was divested
(30:53):
of her divinity. By the sixth century, she was referred
to as the penitent prostitute, which she was not. This
was a fiction created and again the purpose was to
make certain that she was disqualified from It justified the
exclusion of her leadership within the history of Christianity because
(31:14):
she was the prostitute. She wasn't, you know, And that
sort of power play is also seen in the second
question that you brought up about, you know, having the
access to the divine once removed, like we have to
(31:35):
go through our priest, we have to be absolved, or
we have to receive guidance. Of course, it's phenomenal to
have spiritual teachers. It's phenomenal to have spiritual guidance. But
here's the part that we've been missing, and it's the
part that I refer to as the divine feminine, the
divine masculine, the divine feminine. We need both and right
(31:59):
and the divine feminine aspect of Christianity is our capacity
to go inward through meditation and prayer and hear what's
actually true and right and meant for us. That way,
if there's a spiritual teacher outside of us, in a
position of exceptional power and authority, we can listen to them.
(32:22):
And also we can refuse to deny and ignore what
we are hearing inside of our heart, which could be saying,
this man in the robes of God is actually really
dangerous and harmful for me.
Speaker 4 (32:38):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
And we've been missing that aspect, which is what has
made our churches and places of worship a breeding ground
for sexual assault and misuse of power, because we are
missing that other half of the story, which is present
in the Gospel of Mary, about knowing from the Greek gnosis,
(33:04):
which means knowledge gained from direct experience. So this isn't
something that anyone outside of us is teaching us or
telling us. Nosis Knowing is what we go inward to hear.
Speaker 3 (33:18):
Hmm.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
And what's so fascinating to me, I think evidence of
you know, the deepest wound of that erasure of those
texts like the Gospel of Mary, the Acts of Paul
and Thuchla, the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip,
all these scriptures were leading us and instructing us on
how to hear that inner voice the Kingdom of God
(33:40):
is within, and those scriptures were Now those scriptures in
the fourth century were labeled as apocrypha. That word translates
of doubtful authenticity. Now, the lasting wound of that erasure
is that we hear often we see a vision, or
(34:01):
we hear some truth. Sometimes it comes in a very
like crazy way. In a crazy moment, you're stopped at
a red light and suddenly you hear something, but you
know what you're hearing is love guiding you. But the
real wound is that we hear it and we don't
(34:24):
believe it. We label it as of doubtful authenticity. We
don't trust ourselves, We don't believe in ourselves, even when
the voice of love is like so loud and trying
to guide us, and we don't believe it. Because so
many of us, and this is really really at the
(34:46):
heart of everything, we don't understand our worth. We think
that we are unworthy of such proximity to the divine.
And the reason this is all so significant is that
if our access to the divine is outside of us,
(35:06):
then we are completely disempowered. We are completely at the
power of whoever it is we believe is really guiding us.
Or if the voice of love, if the voice of
the divine can be accessed directly from within us through
spiritual practice, through moments of just grace. I mean, some
(35:29):
people never meditate a moment in their life, but like
just as they get hit by a car, or like
just as you know some beloved in their life dies,
they hear something and they know it's the truth. But
when we understand that worth is not earned, worth is
(35:51):
simply claimed that our worth in being human is inherent.
Then we understand that there are no gates to God.
How could there be? How could there be? There have
never been a set of criterion, you know, like here
(36:15):
are all here are the list of things you have
to do, and here's the way you have to look,
and this is what you have to be in order
to hear God. How could that ever be true? How
could that ever be true? For me? What's true is
that love is love, is love is love, God is love.
And there could never be a fence around that. There
(36:36):
could never be a padlock on that door. That door
would have to open inward, and that door would have
to be in our own heart.
Speaker 3 (36:48):
Oh my goodness, it's just it is so, it's so
it's the paradox, the living paradox, because it's like this
is so much to really, i mean, so many layers
of what we have to unlearn and take back and
really reject in history, you know, and at the same
(37:10):
time feels like the most absolute natural thing, you know.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
And it's like.
Speaker 3 (37:18):
So many words to talk about what that feeling is. Right,
I think the main one we use often in society
is like intuition, right, and like you know, a woman's intuition,
a mother's intuition, or you know, just that you kind
of know, or for some of the girlies out there,
the ones that are like I just be knowing, I
just be knowing, you know, like, yeah, that kind of
a thing. And so often throughout history we've known women
(37:42):
as being the seers, you know, and without the title,
kind of the prophets and the lovers and the healers.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
You know.
Speaker 4 (37:52):
Talk to me about feminine embodiment.
Speaker 2 (37:59):
It's so critical too in everything that we've been talking about,
you know, this unlearning. I think one of the most
critical things for us to understand, given so much of culture,
so much religion, no matter what religion we're in, is
modeling that to be female is somehow less than makes
(38:23):
us intrinsically less worthy of positions of power and what yes,
somehow also work courses. You know.
Speaker 3 (38:33):
It's like we are positioned as being slightly less, you know,
a little defective in some way, yet at the same
time where the grand multitaskers of our lives and we
are expected to do absolutely everything and hold the emotional weight,
the spiritual weight, the amount of mental and emotional labor
(38:56):
we give it, and their studies to support this. I'm
not just speaking in theory. There are studies to support
how different our brains are from men in the sense
that we are carrying the weight of our households and
our partners and our lives literally inside of.
Speaker 2 (39:12):
Us, and yet we're expected to receive scraps yeah for it,
you know, and to be okay with that scraps of power.
Speaker 3 (39:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:24):
But I think what's so interesting about that embodiment piece
for me is that traditionally, so much of spiritual practice
and so much of regardless of the tradition, religions throughout
history have really scapegoaded the body, and the emphasis has
(39:50):
been to transcend the body and deny the body to
wear white to you know, as opposed to like our mensies,
like the blood like somehow makes us you know, uh, unholy.
The fact that we bleed like the mensies is a
(40:10):
is in a holy time. It's like what sets us apart.
And so there are all these aspects of religion. Starvation,
you know. I like to say that a monk, like
a male monk's very spiritual day of selfless service, you know, silence,
(40:33):
denying the body by starving or you know, and wearing
robes and just just all of that kind of denial
of the body is like a normal Tuesday for a woman,
like that sense of the oppression that's placed on women's
bodies and the denial, especially the starvation, the know, this
(41:01):
emphasis to like really want to remove ourselves from the
body in order to be closer to the divine. This,
I would argue, has been a systematic way for us
to not find our power. Because what when I started
(41:26):
really to practice meditation, what I found was that further up,
you know, that sense of ascension is actually deeper in
so it's the opposite direction. And for me, as someone
who has encountered sexual assault, you know, I have situations
(41:50):
of my father driving with me drunk, you know, moments
where I had to disassociate in order to survive. What
I've found is that that disassociation from the body is
the most disempowering state to be in, and that healing
for me was in the opposite direction of how spiritual
(42:12):
trajectory usually encourages. You know, it's not more and more
out of the body, it's deeper and deeper in the
body is where I could hear with clarity the voice
of love. My encounters with Christ or knowing truth within
me was about embodiment, and the reason why this is
so important for us to understand is that we are
(42:38):
only as far from power as we are from our
own embodiment. When we are fully in our body, this
is when we can hear and know and really understand
our worth, not from something we're trying to prove or
demonstrate to someone else true worth. What I mean by powers,
(43:01):
I mean I mean love. Like we especially as women,
are sold the story that we have to spend exorbitant
amounts of time, energy and money on finding love. Right
This is like it impressed upon us like from day one.
But we have to find love, and genuinely we usually
(43:23):
all ordinally really want it. We want to find love.
Here's here's the thing, though, If we return fully to
our body, when we are fully embodied, we are with love.
Love is here inside of us. Love looks out from
behind our eyes. And that's why so many of us
(43:45):
can't find it is because we're looking for it out
in the world around us, in someone right, who for
most of us, keeps leaving you know, or like, keeps
disappointing or keeps you know, not being able to reflect
that hydrant amount of love that we crave and we desire.
(44:07):
And the thing is is that that's what's here within us.
That's what's here within the heart. Love is what we
find when we return fully to the bodies. It's it's
not ultimately, it can for for many of us, and
I've seen it happen. For some. It can be mirrored
and it can be found. But the point is that
(44:28):
it's mirrored that the truest So it's not our source.
The most powerful place for us to be is to
source love from inside of us. Right, the truest form
of power is love, right, the love that is love,
that is love, that limitless love that comes from within
(44:51):
the heart. And to allow us then to understand, we
have choices, right, we can say no to the scraps
were being offered outside of us because we know we
will always be meant with love. Because love is right
here inside of us. It's going to go wherever we go.
We cannot be separate from it. We just have to
(45:13):
get still and quiet and dare to turn inward, which
is not easy, right, That's not easily done. It can
be difficult, terrifying, it's confronting. Yeah, because we have to
really face ourselves, and then when we go inward and
really hear what's true and right for us, the other
(45:34):
aspect of it is responsible then for owning it and
living in deeply well.
Speaker 3 (45:47):
Something I'm so curious about when you were in these spaces.
I mean, you went to Harvard Divinity School, you did
seminary at Columbia University. These are you know, some of
our great institutions in the world, in the country, and
you were.
Speaker 4 (46:06):
Finding these these.
Speaker 3 (46:10):
Writings, you were kind of being given that deeper view
into religion over time and into these stories. Were any
of the men around you noticing that?
Speaker 2 (46:25):
I often got why are you here? Because you know,
it was very clear that I wasn't going to be ordained,
like there wasn't a church that was going to take
me under its wing, because I really wanted to practice
the form of Christianity that existed before the fourth century,
before Mary Nybaln was became the prostitute. You know, where
(46:49):
Thekla existed, and you know, there isn't a church as
far as I know that exists like that. So I
often got why are you here? But why I was there? Why?
It was very important for me to be at those
specific institutions is because I had read the Gospel of
(47:13):
Mary before I got there. And at the end of
Mary's Gospel, after it opens with Peter asking her, sister,
we know the Savior loved you more than all other women.
Tell us the things that you know which we don't
because we haven't heard them, and Mary Magdalene says, I
will teach you about what is hidden from you. Then
(47:36):
she goes on to describe to the disciples, the male disciples,
what Christ taught her, which was that he taught her
how to receive Him from within her. And then at
the end of it, Peter doesn't believe her. So that
hit me so deep when I first read that, I
(48:00):
and sobbed and sobbed. I sobbed because it felt so
visceral and real to me. I felt like I knew
that moment, and I knew so many women who knew
that moment, who were telling the truth, and they were
not believed. And so that hit me so profoundly that
(48:22):
I understood, if I'm going to write about these texts
that were not only systematically erased, but disparaged and disbelieved, yeah,
so completely. I needed to have the education, the acumen
(48:42):
to be able to speak from a place of saying
this is valid, this is true. And also as someone
who often doubts herself and questions her own intelligence, her
own capacity to write. That's something I've struggled with most
of my life. I mean, it has to do with
(49:04):
being a survivor, and it has to do with being
in a culture that sees me as as less than
just inherently, so, as someone who contends with that, I
knew that if I put myself through that, I would
also forge that sense of believing in myself so that
(49:29):
when I met with which I knew I would People
who like Peter would not believe me when I wrote
Mary Magdalene Revealed or the Girl who Baptized Herself? Who
would call me, you know, false prophet or who would
you know say that what I'm writing about is not true.
(49:52):
I had the courage and the belief in myself and
my work in order to stand it. So it had
great intention and purpose for the sake of all of us. Right, Yeah,
who might be changed from hearing it?
Speaker 3 (50:10):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (50:11):
Wow? Wow wow wow.
Speaker 3 (50:16):
Megan Waterson her latest book, The Girl Who Baptized Herself
How a lost scripture about a saint named Thekla reveals
the power of knowing our worth. That book is available everywhere.
And also her classic that is world renowned is Mary
(50:36):
Magdalene Revealed the First Apostle, her feminist gospel and the
Christianity we haven't tried yet. Before I end every episode,
I like to extend to our guests an opportunity to
share what I call soul work. So it is something
that everyone who heard this episode can really utilize today
(50:57):
in the coming days to integrate everything that they heard.
Speaker 2 (51:01):
It can be a practice that you have.
Speaker 3 (51:03):
It can be a quote, it can be a prompt,
but anything that kind of makes it physical and real.
Speaker 2 (51:11):
Love this. I give you the floor. I love this.
I love that you include this. So it's called the
three Breaths, and it's what I recommend most in terms
of soul work, because for me, it's what allows you
then to be able to encounter what might be soul
(51:34):
for you. And it's it's deceptively simple. It's literally just
three intentional breaths. But it's something that you can do.
It's concrete right now or at any moment when you
are feeling disembodied or distressed, you know, so you can
be at the group, like the grocery store, you can
be waiting in traffic, you can be anywhere, and it's
(51:58):
something that you can do so that helps you embody
and anchor more fully into the heart. So it's just
like this. You close your eyes if you're able to,
but you don't have to just close your eyes, and
you're going to breathe normally all throughout this meditation. You're
(52:19):
going to take your first intentional breath very deep, and
with this breath, you're going to descend into the heart. Now,
the mystics refer to the heart as the mediator between
the worlds. So sink deep down beneath the surface noise
of the egoic mind and all that it might be
(52:43):
derailing and deliminate you with just ideas and stories that
are truly just illusions about you. Try to sink beneath
that noise, like as if that those are waves on
the surface of the ocean. You want to go deep
down to where it's still and calm no matter what,
(53:05):
to where it's dark and quiet, like the womb. So
sink down deep into the body, and then take a
second intentional breath, and with this breath you're connecting to
that spark, that true self, that love, that is love,
(53:25):
That is love that waits for you to return to
it always, that exists within you, that will never leave,
That is the soul of who you are. And just
try to allow yourself to imagine merging with it, and
(53:46):
when and if you're ever in a space to ask
it a question like a little icebreaker, is what would
you have me know in this moment? And then you
can sit there and hang out and listen to the answer. Otherwise,
just take a little sip of that infinite, that invisible
(54:12):
light of heaven, which is how the trap is. Monk
Thomas Merton refers to it spiritual eye of the heart,
to see it open, and then take a third intentional breath,
drenching yourself in gratitude just forgetting to be here, and
(54:36):
then open your eyes and know that you will be
guided and hopefully more connected to that love that resides
within you.
Speaker 3 (54:49):
That was really beautiful.
Speaker 1 (54:50):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (54:51):
It's very simple, but it's transformational.
Speaker 3 (54:54):
Yeah, yeah, that is so beautiful. Megan Waters Theon, thank
you so much for joining us today on Deeply Well,
thank you, thank you join us next week now mis Day.
The content presented on Deeply Well serves solely for educational
(55:16):
and informational purposes. It should not be considered a replacement
for personalized medical or mental health guidance, and does not
constitute a provider patient relationship. As always, it is advisable
to consult with your healthcare provider or health team for
any specific concerns or questions that you may have. Connect
(55:37):
with me on social at Debbie Brown. That's Twitter and Instagram,
or you can go to my website Debbie Brown dot com.
And if you're listening to the show on Apple Podcasts,
don't forget. Please rate, review, and subscribe and send this
episode to a friend.
Speaker 2 (55:53):
Deeply Well is.
Speaker 3 (55:54):
A production of iHeartRadio and The Black Effect Network. It's
produced by Jacques Thomas, Samantha Timmy and me Debbie Brown.
The Beautiful Soundbath You Heard That's by Jarrelyn Glass from
Crystal Cadence. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio
app or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Take a deep breath in through your nose.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Holds it.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Now, release slowly again, deep in, helle.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Hold release, repeating internally to yourself as you connect to
my voice. I am deeply well. I am deeply well.
(01:22):
I am deeply I'm Debbie Brown. And this is the
Deeply Well Podcast. Welcome to Deeply Well, a soft place
(01:43):
to land on your journey. A podcast for those that
are curious, creative, and ready to expand in higher consciousness
and self care. This is where we heal, this is
where we transcend. Welcome back to the show. I am
so grateful you're here. I'm Debbie Brown. Today's conversation really
(02:03):
takes us into the heart of the sacred feminine.
Speaker 4 (02:08):
We are going to be exploring.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
The deeper truths that live within us all. And I
am joined by a world renowned author that really has
just in such a pioneering way, led the charged around
sacred femininity and embodiment. Today's guest is Megan Waterson, a
renowned feminist theologian and the Wall Street Journal best selling
(02:33):
author of Mary Magdalene. Revealed she has a Master of
Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School and a Master of
Divinity from Union Theological Seminary at Columbia University. She created
the House of Mary Magdalen, a spiritual community that studies
sacred texts left out of the traditional canon. Her work
(02:55):
has appeared in media outlets such as The New York Times,
The Huntington Post, tedex Women, and Marie Claire. This past summer,
she just released her latest book, The Girl Who Baptized
Herself How a lost scripture about a saint named Thekla
reveals the power of knowing our worth? And I want
(03:18):
to give you a little bit more about this book
before I fully bring Megan in. This book is the
riveting exploration of a nearly lost first century scripture that
tells the story of a courageous saint named Thekla and
offers us a road map to knowing our worth. A
teenage girl named Thekla is sitting at her bedroom window
(03:39):
listening to a man share stories nearby. Her mother and
fiance order her to stop, but Thekla, trapped in a
world that expects her to marry and have children, refuses.
This man, Paul is talking about a world she wants
to believe in, an inner world of freedom to define
her own life, and he's talking about a kind of
(04:02):
love she hasn't known before, a love that asks her
to be true to who she is within. For Megan Waterson,
a Harvard Train feminist theologian, Thekla's story in the Acts
of Paul and Thekla has everything to do with power.
Theckler's refusal to be controlled, as well as the authority
she reclaims by baptizing herself reads like a lost gospel
(04:25):
for finding our own source of power within, a power
that allows us to know who we are and to
make choices based on that knowing. This hidden scripture suggests
that Christianity before the fourth century was about deifying the patriarchy,
not defying it, but early Church fathers excluded the Acts
of Paul and Thekla, along with other sacred texts such
(04:47):
as the Gospel of Mary from the New Testament. Waterson
synthesizes scripture, memoir, and politics to illuminate a story that
has been left out of the cannon for far too long,
one that follows a girl freeing herself from a life
predicated on the expectations of others, a path that made
her feel unworthy. Decklo's story offers us a path to
(05:11):
take back the power we often give to others and
live based on the truth of who we are.
Speaker 4 (05:19):
Wow, welcome to the show, Megan, love you.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
I'm so grateful to be here with you.
Speaker 4 (05:26):
I'm so excited to have you. I am such a fan.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
Of your work and the way that you have I mean,
just like brought.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
These ancient.
Speaker 4 (05:38):
Faith filled.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
I don't even know how to describe it, Like it
is a new feminine archetype.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
It is a new.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
Way that is actually the old way of being feminine
back into the world. I mean, wow, Like, how do
you feel with this as your mission?
Speaker 2 (06:01):
I do feel very fortunate that it has always been
loud in me and clear that this is the work
that I'm meant to do. I think what became clear
to me, especially early on, is that anger and rage
(06:21):
were really important information for me. It was like a
red flag in a good way, like a bull, you know.
I understood, for example, when I first went to church
as a little girl, and I broke out in hives
when I read the New Testament for the first time,
because I was sensing the missing stories, you know, the
(06:45):
stories that I would eventually find years and years later
in Divinity school. But I sensed that they were missing,
and the idea that God is the Father and the
Father only, and that this male God then somehow gave
this holy creed for an exclusively male succession of divine
authority going all the way back to Christ. I just
(07:08):
in my little girl body, I felt that this was
not true. And the rage at that time came up,
as you know, the hives breaking out in hives, and
I had to leave. You know, my body really led me.
And every time that flare up would happen again, that
(07:28):
sense of rage, rage as information, rage as galvanizing me
and showing me the right direction, I would listen to
it because it flared up again when I was in
college and there was, you know, this very angry man
wearing a billboard, you know, on both sides. It was
(07:49):
like sandwiched between two billboards with quotes that he felt
justified his homophobia, you know, and he was screaming about
that we're all going to hell, and you know that
same sex is sinful and all of those you know,
ideas that he felt justified because of the scripture that
(08:13):
was all around him. And again, as I was nearing
him as a teenager in my late teens in college,
I felt that same sense of knowing that this is
not love to me, this is not God. I just
didn't yet have the scripture that justified my faith of
(08:36):
knowing that this is not the truth, this is not
the story that I know that my body somehow that
my heart knows. So it led me again. And the
other time that I felt that knowing so loudly was
volunteering on a Navajo reservation, working with children, and the
(09:01):
Christian missionaries who were housing me to be on the reservation,
they you know, would slide these pamphlets underneath my door.
It's not funny, but but like I you know, I
didn't know what else to do with it, but to
there were those pamphlets that like you know, have the
woman in the flames, you know, screaming out yeah. Like
(09:25):
because they believed that unless I believed in the Christ
that they believed in, I was going to burn in hell.
You know that that I had to announce Christ as
my savior in the very sort of you know, fundamental
Christian way or I was going to go to help.
And I kept explaining that that I did sense Christ,
(09:49):
I did love Christ, but that I know that that's
not true, Like I know that that's I'm not afraid
of that in the way that they were, and for me,
their presence there on the reservation was so incredibly troubling
(10:12):
given the history of the genocide and the boarding schools,
the Christian boarding schools, which you know just only now
is really coming to more mass consciousness of that erasure
of a whole culture and the way that Christianity played
(10:33):
a pivotal role in that genocide. And so this is
what I was confronting them about. You know that this
is not I don't believe in a christ that would
have wanted this, that would believe that. And so again
it was that sacred rage, that honest indignation. That's how
(10:56):
William Blake refers to it. The voice, the voice of
honest indignation is the voice of God. You know. It's
that sense that when you know or recognize love, you
have to speak on behalf of it. And so in
those three moments that really stand out for me in
my life, it's that there was some sort of knowing,
(11:19):
but it was physical, you know, it was a part
of what it meant to be embodied that I recognized it,
which is really the opposite direction of what we're taught
in more traditional ideas of being spiritual. It's that you
want to transcend the body, deny the body, silence the body,
(11:43):
and listen to the soul. For me, the soul only
became audible once I was fully embodied, So it was
the opposite direction, and that was the voice that was
guiding me. Mmmmm wow.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
Yeah, things that I mean, there are just so many
points and things that I want to dive in.
Speaker 4 (12:05):
And say about this that is so powerful.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
You know.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
First, one of the things I just kind of want
to anchor is like it's always been fascinating to me
that when you study Christianity across history, it's actually.
Speaker 4 (12:16):
Like so incredibly violent.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
Like that is like it goes like fundamentally against what
the core kind of archetype, yes, what it means to
be a Christian right.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Right, And that confused me profoundly as a child and
then a young adult because what was I sensing inside
me about Christ that felt the exact opposite to anything
of that. And so then when I got to seminary finally,
it took me a long time to get to actually
(12:52):
studying Christianity because I felt like I had been so
burned by it and then it literally set me on fire.
I first studied, like everything else, you know, the divine feminine,
all the world religions, because it was almost like I
had to sort of buffer myself or prepare myself for
(13:12):
figuring out, Okay, how and why was the feminine or
the divine feminine, the female saints within Christianity, why were
they so erased as well? But I sort of buffered
myself leading up to it. But the history blew me
away when I got to seminary what I found that out,
(13:33):
which is what everybody can know. I mean, this isn't
like hidden information. The Christianity that existed before the fourth century,
right before Constantine converted it into the empire's religion, was
a radical movement that was defying the patriarchy. It was
(14:00):
defying the emperor exactly what it was, standing up right
against the systems of unjust power in the world around them,
like as Christ showed them. And after the fourth century,
Christianity became patriarchal and it became the Empire's religion. So
(14:22):
this is when and where it became. It really became
a tradition that was justifying the power of the elite
through this institution of God. So then those who held
(14:43):
the most amount of power were given it to them
by divine decree.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
Wow. Wow wow, and it's like we gosh, do we
still see that? You know? The way its WEAPONI is
and absolutely the way it's used for patriotism and patriarchy, absolutely,
but it's really in some areas and some people really
hurting people, you know. So this past weekend I was
(15:14):
in New Jersey for the Mental Wealth Expo, which is
this really incredible thing that my brother Charlotte Mane the
God puts on every year. It was our fourth annual
and it's all about mental health and it's all about
connecting people with services and also just having really kind
of consciousness expanding conversations and the community about mental health
(15:36):
and mental illness and the things that affect us. And
so this year I created a panel that I hosted
and we had my dear friend, doctor Teddy Reeves and
who works at the Smithsonian African American Museum and he's
a theologian and also former pastor Carl Lentz. It was
a phenomenal conversation. The panel was called Religious Trauma, and
(16:02):
so we were speaking to the audience from the lens
of having experienced, whether you knew what or not, religious
trauma or something that blocks you from your connection with God.
And for so many people, I mean that even that
concept has never been heard of. But as people start
(16:22):
to hear about it more and more, they're finding where
that actually settles within them. You know, we heard from
some people who had been a part of had one
religious background and you know, they were JW and left JW,
and they were talking about their experiences there and you
know how they were no longer in contact with their family.
Speaker 4 (16:44):
So many stories, so many.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
Stories, and we were talking about how you know, one
of the things that is so insidious and awful about
religious trauma is.
Speaker 4 (16:53):
Like it cuts you at the.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
Core fundamental level of your humanity. Like if you can
create question or shame or distance between another person and
their ability to have faith and their ability to have
a higher power, Like it's just that what could be
more manipulative, Like that is the greatest manipulation of all time.
(17:18):
One of the things that I'm getting to is, I
remember we were talking about all different kinds of trauma,
whether it was abuses within the church, within the family,
and I remember doctor Teddy Reeves said he said, but
let's talk about one of the first greatest traumas against women,
and it's the fact that in our churches we are
telling women that they cannot be pastors, we are telling
(17:42):
women that they cannot lead in the church. And you know,
these were his words based on his study, but saying that,
you know, a misinterpreted part of the Bible that's asking
women to be silent, right, And he's like, they were
just loud.
Speaker 4 (17:57):
In the moment.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
He was just shushing the audio in front of him
and it was being recorded, you know, but that didn't
mean that women cannot lead in the church and have
deep connection to God. And it's just like, I think,
like so much of what you're saying, It's like that
is the core of the trauma that has been begun
(18:20):
when women were left out of scripture and their work
was completely erased from what they brought to the world
with faith, with God, with love and through to now
this idea in some churches that you can do everything else,
you can take care of the men, but you there
(18:42):
is no way God is talking to you. You can't
share any of that with the people. And it's just like, wow,
you know, hearing the way that changes forms, but has
remained over centuries.
Speaker 4 (18:55):
Is a mind blowing.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
And first of all, I'm so grateful that he said it.
I don't know if this was your experience, but my
whole body relaxes when someone outside of me owns it
and says it. And I don't have to be the one,
you know, fighting and researching and you know, screaming from
(19:18):
the corners of the world. This has a profound impact
the world over, because our ideas of the divine affect
the status of women and girls throughout time, through history,
and more importantly, affect our own ideas of ourselves.
Speaker 4 (19:38):
And so much things.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
To be able to really listen to that voice of
truth inside of us and believe it. And that quote
one Timothy is attributed to Paul, and of course Paul
in the Acts of Paul and Thuckla, which the Girl
who Baptized Herself is about. Scholars now say that that
was absolutely not Paul who wrote that. It's attributed to Paul,
(20:04):
but it's very difficult to say that it was actually
anything he said. And what's so interesting is the complete
erasure of texts like the Gospel of Mary Magdalene and
the Acts of Paul and Thecla. This happened around the
fourth century. It began when Christianity became patriarchal. So if
it was going to become patriarchal, we had to erase
(20:27):
the bishops who convene under Constantine the fourth century. They
had to erase all of these stories about these women
who were in exceptional places of spiritual authority, like Mary
Magdalene and like Thecla. Becla, in her story baptizes herself.
(20:48):
And that erasure is so profound because we don't even
know who Paul is is without seeing who he was
to Thecla. He was a mentor to her. Becla ministered
alongside Paul, and we all remember Paul, but almost no
(21:13):
one even knows Becla's name, much less her story, and
that she was really like the female counterpart to Paul
in the way that Mary Magdalen was the counterpart to Christ.
But we've lost that embodiment, that modeling, that visual affirmation
(21:33):
for all of us that God is here too in
the female form.
Speaker 4 (21:38):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
And it's so important for us to feel that and
to know that, because it helps us then to be
able to understand that these you know, illusions, these ideas
that it's more sacred to be male. You know. It's
(21:59):
that the so is more sacred than the body. That
you know, all of these ideas, of these these sort
of dualities that the hierarchies right, those aren't real. And
on a very deep level, we all know this. We
all know this. The body is the soul's chance to
be here. I love the way we need this flesh
(22:22):
as much as we need the spirit. It's it's both,
and we need the female as much as we need
the male, and we need all expressions of sex and
gender because the soul isn't sext you know. So those
of us who are non binary, are trans, are are
more in touch with that genderless soul inside of us.
(22:44):
You know that that essence of who we are, which
is the aspect of us that will exist after this
human form and existed before it. So that to me
is so encouraging and inspiring and empowering to hear that,
(23:06):
And I hope so many more brothers really own that
knowledge and speak that knowledge for all of our sake.
This isn't a you know us in them or a
this is for all of us because it only benefits
(23:28):
all of us, For every single one of us to
be back in touch with that guidance, you know, that
voice of love is how I refer to it, the
soul voice inside of us. We all benefit from that
healing deeply.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
Well.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
I know people ponder this for their entire lives throughout history,
but it's just so kind of deep and also odd
and strange and complex to think about the propaganda against
women and their connection to God and faith, and like
something that I think about a lot is you know,
(24:14):
and I have one million percent identify as walking the
path of Christ and seeking to have a Christ's mind
and the teachings of Christ and Christ's mastery on earth
and the Divine Mother is a huge guide for me
in my life. And something one that I always thought
(24:35):
was strange is that more information was not really shared
about Mary as a woman and as a mother and
as her life because it's like, if you are raising
the Christ, if you're raising young Yeshua, and we're not
talking about how you molded him to rise into his
destiny and what was he studying? What paths did she
(24:58):
create for him? And what was that sacred relationship? Really,
like like we have the moments of the sacred right,
like we have the moments like.
Speaker 4 (25:07):
Her giving birth.
Speaker 3 (25:09):
To him and jes like the oh my God, you
know the power of that story, and then how she
is experiencing his crucifixion. But it's like, where is the actual,
like profound presence of her in his life mentioned anywhere else,
or how she was feeling and.
Speaker 4 (25:29):
Talking to God about this herself.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
So that part has always been like, yeah, that doesn't
it's incomplete.
Speaker 4 (25:38):
And then also I wonder, you know, is really what
is in it for the.
Speaker 3 (25:46):
People throughout history that try to take God out of
the body, that try to take away and actually create
walls around the experience of feeling God on earth, and
you know, kind of for everyone. What I mean by
that is, you know, when you look at some other religions,
(26:07):
like even Catholicism, you know, the Muslim religion, a lot
of it is really connected to certain physical rituals that
I recognize now as putting you into a certain kind
of meditative or contemplative state, right where with the power
of meditation, you're creating space for your consciousness to elevate,
(26:31):
which means you know, having like divine connection and communion
and even yeah, physical ritual holding a rosary. What it is,
you know, very similar to mala bedes and going one
by one, but it is to create space and pause
in your life that is strictly dedicated to like a
(26:53):
full bodied devotion to God. And I think in Christianity
that is a lot different. They're obviously still prayer, still scripture,
but there is this distance about. It's like you have
to pass through somewhere else or someone else right to
have God removed yet once removed, And it's just I've
(27:15):
always been curious about that.
Speaker 4 (27:17):
So just any any thoughts.
Speaker 3 (27:18):
You have from like, I mean, your immense lifetime of
study on this.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
Well, first, I've also always found it curious the way
that Mary, the Mother of God was stripped of her
humanity in her story, and how convenient that would be
then for those of us who would want to draw
strength from her, as women who have physically given birth,
(27:47):
who've had sex and have physically given birth, to be
able to like fully identify with her and to siphon
a sense of the sacred through her story. What happened was,
by the sixth century, as Christianity was becoming more institutionalized,
she became Tiatkos. A series of counsels began to happen
(28:11):
beginning in the fourth century under Constantine that was creating
the patriarchal version of Christianity. And if Mary gave birth
to Christ, this would give women this sense of exaltation
in a sense, a sense of power. But if Mary
(28:35):
is stripped of her humanity, then it's unattainable for a
human woman to ever truly identify with her. So by
the sixth century she was named tiatikast, she was named
the Immaculate Virgin, right, which I mean, how many of
us right identify with that? Then? So what we're doing
(28:59):
by giving birth, by really, you know, most closely mimicking
the divine power to give life, this is this makes
us somehow more unfit her positions of spiritual authority. I
don't think so that's wild, right, Like what kind of
spiritual jiu jitsu just happened that the fact that I,
(29:23):
this body, this form that I'm in, can give birth
to a male, How did somehow that disqualify this body
then from being able to be pope? Like that doesn't
make any sense to me, but it does under that
structure where these figures in history lost their humanity, they're
(29:47):
not She wasn't fully human and fully divine, which is
really the emphasis on a lot of these gospels that
were left out of the story in the fourth century
were ordered to be destroyed, the Gospel of Philip, the
Gospel of Thomas. This really emphasized our capacity as humans.
(30:11):
What it meant was that we're a soul and a
body both. That's the ultimate paradox that we are. We're both.
We're not just human meaning flesh. We're not just this body.
We are this body, but we are also one hundred percent,
not fifty to fifty, one hundred percent. Also we are
(30:31):
an eternal soul, so we're both. But in the process
of you know, the formation of Christianity under the patriarchy,
it became a real effort to divest these figures Christ
Mary of their humanity. But then Mary Magdalene was divested
(30:53):
of her divinity. By the sixth century, she was referred
to as the penitent prostitute, which she was not. This
was a fiction created and again the purpose was to
make certain that she was disqualified from It justified the
exclusion of her leadership within the history of Christianity because
(31:14):
she was the prostitute. She wasn't, you know, And that
sort of power play is also seen in the second
question that you brought up about, you know, having the
access to the divine once removed, like we have to
(31:35):
go through our priest, we have to be absolved, or
we have to receive guidance. Of course, it's phenomenal to
have spiritual teachers. It's phenomenal to have spiritual guidance. But
here's the part that we've been missing, and it's the
part that I refer to as the divine feminine, the
divine masculine, the divine feminine. We need both and right
(31:59):
and the divine feminine aspect of Christianity is our capacity
to go inward through meditation and prayer and hear what's
actually true and right and meant for us. That way,
if there's a spiritual teacher outside of us, in a
position of exceptional power and authority, we can listen to them.
(32:22):
And also we can refuse to deny and ignore what
we are hearing inside of our heart, which could be saying,
this man in the robes of God is actually really
dangerous and harmful for me.
Speaker 4 (32:38):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
And we've been missing that aspect, which is what has
made our churches and places of worship a breeding ground
for sexual assault and misuse of power, because we are
missing that other half of the story, which is present
in the Gospel of Mary, about knowing from the Greek gnosis,
(33:04):
which means knowledge gained from direct experience. So this isn't
something that anyone outside of us is teaching us or
telling us. Nosis Knowing is what we go inward to hear.
Speaker 3 (33:18):
Hmm.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
And what's so fascinating to me, I think evidence of
you know, the deepest wound of that erasure of those
texts like the Gospel of Mary, the Acts of Paul
and Thuchla, the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip,
all these scriptures were leading us and instructing us on
how to hear that inner voice the Kingdom of God
(33:40):
is within, and those scriptures were Now those scriptures in
the fourth century were labeled as apocrypha. That word translates
of doubtful authenticity. Now, the lasting wound of that erasure
is that we hear often we see a vision, or
(34:01):
we hear some truth. Sometimes it comes in a very
like crazy way. In a crazy moment, you're stopped at
a red light and suddenly you hear something, but you
know what you're hearing is love guiding you. But the
real wound is that we hear it and we don't
(34:24):
believe it. We label it as of doubtful authenticity. We
don't trust ourselves, We don't believe in ourselves, even when
the voice of love is like so loud and trying
to guide us, and we don't believe it. Because so
many of us, and this is really really at the
(34:46):
heart of everything, we don't understand our worth. We think
that we are unworthy of such proximity to the divine.
And the reason this is all so significant is that
if our access to the divine is outside of us,
(35:06):
then we are completely disempowered. We are completely at the
power of whoever it is we believe is really guiding us.
Or if the voice of love, if the voice of
the divine can be accessed directly from within us through
spiritual practice, through moments of just grace. I mean, some
(35:29):
people never meditate a moment in their life, but like
just as they get hit by a car, or like
just as you know some beloved in their life dies,
they hear something and they know it's the truth. But
when we understand that worth is not earned, worth is
(35:51):
simply claimed that our worth in being human is inherent.
Then we understand that there are no gates to God.
How could there be? How could there be? There have
never been a set of criterion, you know, like here
(36:15):
are all here are the list of things you have
to do, and here's the way you have to look,
and this is what you have to be in order
to hear God. How could that ever be true? How
could that ever be true? For me? What's true is
that love is love, is love is love, God is love.
And there could never be a fence around that. There
(36:36):
could never be a padlock on that door. That door
would have to open inward, and that door would have
to be in our own heart.
Speaker 3 (36:48):
Oh my goodness, it's just it is so, it's so
it's the paradox, the living paradox, because it's like this
is so much to really, i mean, so many layers
of what we have to unlearn and take back and
really reject in history, you know, and at the same
(37:10):
time feels like the most absolute natural thing, you know.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
And it's like.
Speaker 3 (37:18):
So many words to talk about what that feeling is. Right,
I think the main one we use often in society
is like intuition, right, and like you know, a woman's intuition,
a mother's intuition, or you know, just that you kind
of know, or for some of the girlies out there,
the ones that are like I just be knowing, I
just be knowing, you know, like, yeah, that kind of
a thing. And so often throughout history we've known women
(37:42):
as being the seers, you know, and without the title,
kind of the prophets and the lovers and the healers.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
You know.
Speaker 4 (37:52):
Talk to me about feminine embodiment.
Speaker 2 (37:59):
It's so critical too in everything that we've been talking about,
you know, this unlearning. I think one of the most
critical things for us to understand, given so much of culture,
so much religion, no matter what religion we're in, is
modeling that to be female is somehow less than makes
(38:23):
us intrinsically less worthy of positions of power and what yes,
somehow also work courses. You know.
Speaker 3 (38:33):
It's like we are positioned as being slightly less, you know,
a little defective in some way, yet at the same
time where the grand multitaskers of our lives and we
are expected to do absolutely everything and hold the emotional weight,
the spiritual weight, the amount of mental and emotional labor
(38:56):
we give it, and their studies to support this. I'm
not just speaking in theory. There are studies to support
how different our brains are from men in the sense
that we are carrying the weight of our households and
our partners and our lives literally inside of.
Speaker 2 (39:12):
Us, and yet we're expected to receive scraps yeah for it,
you know, and to be okay with that scraps of power.
Speaker 3 (39:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:24):
But I think what's so interesting about that embodiment piece
for me is that traditionally, so much of spiritual practice
and so much of regardless of the tradition, religions throughout
history have really scapegoaded the body, and the emphasis has
(39:50):
been to transcend the body and deny the body to
wear white to you know, as opposed to like our mensies,
like the blood like somehow makes us you know, uh, unholy.
The fact that we bleed like the mensies is a
(40:10):
is in a holy time. It's like what sets us apart.
And so there are all these aspects of religion. Starvation,
you know. I like to say that a monk, like
a male monk's very spiritual day of selfless service, you know, silence,
(40:33):
denying the body by starving or you know, and wearing
robes and just just all of that kind of denial
of the body is like a normal Tuesday for a woman,
like that sense of the oppression that's placed on women's
bodies and the denial, especially the starvation, the know, this
(41:01):
emphasis to like really want to remove ourselves from the
body in order to be closer to the divine. This,
I would argue, has been a systematic way for us
to not find our power. Because what when I started
(41:26):
really to practice meditation, what I found was that further up,
you know, that sense of ascension is actually deeper in
so it's the opposite direction. And for me, as someone
who has encountered sexual assault, you know, I have situations
(41:50):
of my father driving with me drunk, you know, moments
where I had to disassociate in order to survive. What
I've found is that that disassociation from the body is
the most disempowering state to be in, and that healing
for me was in the opposite direction of how spiritual
(42:12):
trajectory usually encourages. You know, it's not more and more
out of the body, it's deeper and deeper in the
body is where I could hear with clarity the voice
of love. My encounters with Christ or knowing truth within
me was about embodiment, and the reason why this is
so important for us to understand is that we are
(42:38):
only as far from power as we are from our
own embodiment. When we are fully in our body, this
is when we can hear and know and really understand
our worth, not from something we're trying to prove or
demonstrate to someone else true worth. What I mean by powers,
(43:01):
I mean I mean love. Like we especially as women,
are sold the story that we have to spend exorbitant
amounts of time, energy and money on finding love. Right
This is like it impressed upon us like from day one.
But we have to find love, and genuinely we usually
(43:23):
all ordinally really want it. We want to find love.
Here's here's the thing, though, If we return fully to
our body, when we are fully embodied, we are with love.
Love is here inside of us. Love looks out from
behind our eyes. And that's why so many of us
(43:45):
can't find it is because we're looking for it out
in the world around us, in someone right, who for
most of us, keeps leaving you know, or like, keeps
disappointing or keeps you know, not being able to reflect
that hydrant amount of love that we crave and we desire.
(44:07):
And the thing is is that that's what's here within us.
That's what's here within the heart. Love is what we
find when we return fully to the bodies. It's it's
not ultimately, it can for for many of us, and
I've seen it happen. For some. It can be mirrored
and it can be found. But the point is that
(44:28):
it's mirrored that the truest So it's not our source.
The most powerful place for us to be is to
source love from inside of us. Right, the truest form
of power is love, right, the love that is love,
that is love, that limitless love that comes from within
(44:51):
the heart. And to allow us then to understand, we
have choices, right, we can say no to the scraps
were being offered outside of us because we know we
will always be meant with love. Because love is right
here inside of us. It's going to go wherever we go.
We cannot be separate from it. We just have to
(45:13):
get still and quiet and dare to turn inward, which
is not easy, right, That's not easily done. It can
be difficult, terrifying, it's confronting. Yeah, because we have to
really face ourselves, and then when we go inward and
really hear what's true and right for us, the other
(45:34):
aspect of it is responsible then for owning it and
living in deeply well.
Speaker 3 (45:47):
Something I'm so curious about when you were in these spaces.
I mean, you went to Harvard Divinity School, you did
seminary at Columbia University. These are you know, some of
our great institutions in the world, in the country, and
you were.
Speaker 4 (46:06):
Finding these these.
Speaker 3 (46:10):
Writings, you were kind of being given that deeper view
into religion over time and into these stories. Were any
of the men around you noticing that?
Speaker 2 (46:25):
I often got why are you here? Because you know,
it was very clear that I wasn't going to be ordained,
like there wasn't a church that was going to take
me under its wing, because I really wanted to practice
the form of Christianity that existed before the fourth century,
before Mary Nybaln was became the prostitute. You know, where
(46:49):
Thekla existed, and you know, there isn't a church as
far as I know that exists like that. So I
often got why are you here? But why I was there? Why?
It was very important for me to be at those
specific institutions is because I had read the Gospel of
(47:13):
Mary before I got there. And at the end of
Mary's Gospel, after it opens with Peter asking her, sister,
we know the Savior loved you more than all other women.
Tell us the things that you know which we don't
because we haven't heard them, and Mary Magdalene says, I
will teach you about what is hidden from you. Then
(47:36):
she goes on to describe to the disciples, the male disciples,
what Christ taught her, which was that he taught her
how to receive Him from within her. And then at
the end of it, Peter doesn't believe her. So that
hit me so deep when I first read that, I
(48:00):
and sobbed and sobbed. I sobbed because it felt so
visceral and real to me. I felt like I knew
that moment, and I knew so many women who knew
that moment, who were telling the truth, and they were
not believed. And so that hit me so profoundly that
(48:22):
I understood, if I'm going to write about these texts
that were not only systematically erased, but disparaged and disbelieved, yeah,
so completely. I needed to have the education, the acumen
(48:42):
to be able to speak from a place of saying
this is valid, this is true. And also as someone
who often doubts herself and questions her own intelligence, her
own capacity to write. That's something I've struggled with most
of my life. I mean, it has to do with
(49:04):
being a survivor, and it has to do with being
in a culture that sees me as as less than
just inherently, so, as someone who contends with that, I
knew that if I put myself through that, I would
also forge that sense of believing in myself so that
(49:29):
when I met with which I knew I would People
who like Peter would not believe me when I wrote
Mary Magdalene Revealed or the Girl who Baptized Herself? Who
would call me, you know, false prophet or who would
you know say that what I'm writing about is not true.
(49:52):
I had the courage and the belief in myself and
my work in order to stand it. So it had
great intention and purpose for the sake of all of us. Right, Yeah,
who might be changed from hearing it?
Speaker 3 (50:10):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (50:11):
Wow? Wow wow wow.
Speaker 3 (50:16):
Megan Waterson her latest book, The Girl Who Baptized Herself
How a lost scripture about a saint named Thekla reveals
the power of knowing our worth. That book is available everywhere.
And also her classic that is world renowned is Mary
(50:36):
Magdalene Revealed the First Apostle, her feminist gospel and the
Christianity we haven't tried yet. Before I end every episode,
I like to extend to our guests an opportunity to
share what I call soul work. So it is something
that everyone who heard this episode can really utilize today
(50:57):
in the coming days to integrate everything that they heard.
Speaker 2 (51:01):
It can be a practice that you have.
Speaker 3 (51:03):
It can be a quote, it can be a prompt,
but anything that kind of makes it physical and real.
Speaker 2 (51:11):
Love this. I give you the floor. I love this.
I love that you include this. So it's called the
three Breaths, and it's what I recommend most in terms
of soul work, because for me, it's what allows you
then to be able to encounter what might be soul
(51:34):
for you. And it's it's deceptively simple. It's literally just
three intentional breaths. But it's something that you can do.
It's concrete right now or at any moment when you
are feeling disembodied or distressed, you know, so you can
be at the group, like the grocery store, you can
be waiting in traffic, you can be anywhere, and it's
(51:58):
something that you can do so that helps you embody
and anchor more fully into the heart. So it's just
like this. You close your eyes if you're able to,
but you don't have to just close your eyes, and
you're going to breathe normally all throughout this meditation. You're
(52:19):
going to take your first intentional breath very deep, and
with this breath, you're going to descend into the heart. Now,
the mystics refer to the heart as the mediator between
the worlds. So sink deep down beneath the surface noise
of the egoic mind and all that it might be
(52:43):
derailing and deliminate you with just ideas and stories that
are truly just illusions about you. Try to sink beneath
that noise, like as if that those are waves on
the surface of the ocean. You want to go deep
down to where it's still and calm no matter what,
(53:05):
to where it's dark and quiet, like the womb. So
sink down deep into the body, and then take a
second intentional breath, and with this breath you're connecting to
that spark, that true self, that love, that is love,
(53:25):
That is love that waits for you to return to
it always, that exists within you, that will never leave,
That is the soul of who you are. And just
try to allow yourself to imagine merging with it, and
(53:46):
when and if you're ever in a space to ask
it a question like a little icebreaker, is what would
you have me know in this moment? And then you
can sit there and hang out and listen to the answer. Otherwise,
just take a little sip of that infinite, that invisible
(54:12):
light of heaven, which is how the trap is. Monk
Thomas Merton refers to it spiritual eye of the heart,
to see it open, and then take a third intentional breath,
drenching yourself in gratitude just forgetting to be here, and
(54:36):
then open your eyes and know that you will be
guided and hopefully more connected to that love that resides
within you.
Speaker 3 (54:49):
That was really beautiful.
Speaker 1 (54:50):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (54:51):
It's very simple, but it's transformational.
Speaker 3 (54:54):
Yeah, yeah, that is so beautiful. Megan Waters Theon, thank
you so much for joining us today on Deeply Well,
thank you, thank you join us next week now mis Day.
The content presented on Deeply Well serves solely for educational
(55:16):
and informational purposes. It should not be considered a replacement
for personalized medical or mental health guidance, and does not
constitute a provider patient relationship. As always, it is advisable
to consult with your healthcare provider or health team for
any specific concerns or questions that you may have. Connect
(55:37):
with me on social at Debbie Brown. That's Twitter and Instagram,
or you can go to my website Debbie Brown dot com.
And if you're listening to the show on Apple Podcasts,
don't forget. Please rate, review, and subscribe and send this
episode to a friend.
Speaker 2 (55:53):
Deeply Well is.
Speaker 3 (55:54):
A production of iHeartRadio and The Black Effect Network. It's
produced by Jacques Thomas, Samantha Timmy and me Debbie Brown.
The Beautiful Soundbath You Heard That's by Jarrelyn Glass from
Crystal Cadence. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio
app or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Host
Devi Brown
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