← We Can Do Hard Things
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- [00:00]
Glennon Doyle
Well, Pod Squad, when we were dreaming up this season of we can do hard things, this conversation that we're about to share with you was one of the most important tent poles to us of this entire season. We knew in our bones that you needed to hear this conversation. And I think it just blew every expectation that I had for it. Out of the water. I feel changed.
- [00:27]
Abby Wambach
Yeah.
- [00:28]
Glennon Doyle
If you've ever felt like something is missing that you can't quite identify. Yep, you are right. And during this conversation, you're going to find out what was missing and how to reclaim it and change your life with it.
- [00:46]
Abby Wambach
I know that there are many like women theologians of this world, but there is something about this conversation that was really important in this moment of my life. To hear from a woman about theology, about Christianity, about power empire, I just, I cannot, I cannot tell you how much that changed me.
- [01:10]
Glennon Doyle
Yeah, I think this is the conversation we need right now. I stand by that. Listen and you can tell us what you think. So there's only one person who could have a conversation, this world and life changing with us in this moment about this topic, and that is Megan Watterson. Megan Watterson is a Harvard trained feminist theologian and the best selling author of Mary Magdalene Revealed. Megan's most recent book, the Girl who Baptized Herself, is about the 1st century Saint Thecla and how the scripture that contains her story reads like a manual for defying the patriarchy and following the voice of our own soul. Buckle up, Pod Squad, let's go. So, Megan Watterson. So we were talking this morning when we are planning a season of this show, we actually plan it pretty carefully and we have this idea that each episode will kind of speak to the, to the last and speak to people where they are and sort of be helpful, whether that's in a comforting, helpful way or a challenging, helpful way, because both are equally important. Yes, we don't want to make people too comfortable and we don't want to make people too challenged. Just both. And one of the sort of like a book, like when you're writing a book and you want each chapter to kind of stand alone and speak to a moment and then all flow together. And when we were planning this season, this episode, this conversation with you was just like a tent pole for many reasons. One, I just think you're magic. I can't imagine anyone who's been preparing for a moment better than you in terms of your work. Finding and insisting upon getting voices of people who have been silenced throughout time, in particular women to the people. And I want you to explain that in a second. But I just want the Pod Squad to hear before we begin that Megan's life work has largely been about finding gospels written by and about women who were purposefully left out or cut out of biblical scripture by governments who wanted to ensure that people started conflating empire with religion and did not want any gospel or information in scripture that would cause people to not fall in line with empire. Okay, so, Pod Squad, if you're picking up what we're laying down, it's important that you listen to this conversation not as a study about the past, but a study about the present. We are in a time where voices, important voices, voices from the margins, voices of women, all kinds of voices, are being erased, taken out of museums, suppressed. And that is a tactic as old as time. Okay. In fact, it happened in the creation of the best selling book of all time, the Bible. So, Megan Watterson, introduce yourself however the hell you introduce yourself these days. I don't. I'm fascinated to hear and tell us about your work and why it matters and tell us about how this Bible was created.
- [05:10]
Megan Watterson
Let me start by describing the divine feminine, which I think is important. It's the images and the stories, the voices of the embodiment of the divine in the female form. And that's throughout the world religions and all throughout time. So, you know, stories of the goddess Inanna, which date all the way back to 4000 BC or the goddess Kali in Hinduism, the female Buddha, Vajra Yogini within Buddhism, all of these images and stories of what the divine is according to the female form. And it's also, of course, the female mystics and theologians and saints all throughout world religion. It is also the divine feminine is the spiritual practice of going inward in contemplative prayer or meditation and connecting to the divine feminine from within the body, no matter who we are. The impact of that erasure is so incredibly profound for me as a feminist theologian. I like to describe it as a corrective lens. So it's as if by only having mainly the majority of the masculine and the male version of the divine, we are seeing God or love or the divine like a cyclops. And the divine feminine allows for this corrective lens, right? For the collective other eye to open so we can see the divine more fully. So, for example, within the Christian tradition, we can take the example of Mary Magdalene. So the first, the erasure of her gospel, which began to happen in the 4th century, which when a whole group of scriptures were labeled apocryphal by the Empire under Constantine, a group of male bishops decided that the gospel of Mary was apocryphal, which that word means of doubtful authenticity. So her teachings in her gospel is labeled in the 4th century as of doubtful authenticity. And then by the 6th century within the church that's forming, which is deifying the patriarchy, right from the fourth century onward, by the sixth century, Mary Magdalene is labeled the penitent prostitute. So she goes from being a spiritual leader within the early Christ movement before the 4th century to being the penitent prostitute within the Christianity forming under Constantine. And so her position as a spiritual leader is then pulled into question. And the justification for the exclusive male succession of divine authority going all the way back to Christ is then solidified by this detrimental decree of Mary Magdalene as a penitent prostitute. The other side of that, of course, is also that the teachings that our gospel contains, which is like a roadmap to us being able to hear that voice of the divine within us, that aspect of what it means to be human for all of us, then even if we in meditation or through our own contemplative prayer or, you know, whatever our practice is, if we encounter the voice of love, if we encounter what we understand directly within us as this voice of truth or voice of love, we doubt it, we question its authenticity, right? So we are impacted then we internalize that impact of silencing the female and feminine presence of the divine. We internalize that then by silencing our own truth and understanding of what the divine is from within us.
- [09:20]
Abby Wambach
Okay, just listen to you talk for hours.
- [09:24]
Megan Watterson
Oh my gosh.
- [09:26]
Glennon Doyle
Okay, so if you are a woman anywhere throughout history and you have witnessed life and love and experience and told about it, and have been dismissed using any kind of word, apocryphal, I guess, was the word before. Now there's, let's just narcissist, neurotic, dyslexic.
- [09:53]
Megan Watterson
The whore, the prostitute, or crazy. Just crazy usually works.
- [09:57]
Glennon Doyle
But what Megan is saying, please hear, is that when that happens to a woman, it is a message that then radiates to every woman who hears it to also silence herself to also. This is the internalized misogyny and self sufficient silencing that comes when we watch woman after woman after woman be dismissed and silenced.
- [10:21]
Unknown Guest or Co-host
Can I just, just, just so I understand from like a lay person's perspective of like 101 Bible stuff to tell me if I'm understanding what you're saying. So like Jesus comes, has the whole thing, it is threatening to the empire. So the empire Kills him, then that everyone wrote the stories. Mary Magdalene's stories were as old as the rest of the stories that are currently in our Bible. They're not like new editions, they're as old as that. Then in the 4th century, Constantine is like, hey, lots of people following this. I might want to co opt it instead of being against the empire to be for the empire. So I am going to take out the parts that are not good for me, not aligned with the power authority I'm trying to make through the empire. So Mary's gospel is threatening because A, it shows that she was an original leader, that messes up our narrative, we have to get rid of that. And B, because it says look inward, we don't want anyone looking inward, we want them looking to us for power. So they go and literally take these out of the Bible. Like where they, they take them out, they call them bad. Then 200 years later they say, and to further discredit her, she was a. But, but that is all new, the all of that. Where does it, where does it go? Like where, when they take it out, who witnesses it taking out, where does it go for the thousands of years.
- [11:52]
Megan Watterson
In between, right underground, literally, it was buried. So there was an edict that went out for all of this scripture that, that like the Gospel of Mary, that sets a precedent for female leadership within the earliest form of Christianity, right? That proves that there's a precedent. So not only the gospel of Mary, but also the acts of Paul and Thecla, because that shows thecla baptizing herself and being one of the earliest ministers of Christ. So those have to go. But then also the scriptures that are really giving us those roadmaps and those affirmations of the fact that, that we can hear the voice of love, the voice of God, the divine, directly from within our own heart, those have to go. So like the Gospel of Philip, the Gospel of Thomas, these are really the story of Christ that didn't win out, right? It's a story of Christ that is saying power in its most ultimate form, love exists within every single one of us and no one can deny us access to it, no matter who we are. And that was threatening of course, to the emperor and to the empire, because that decentralized power, right, power belonged then to these small bands, these groups of the earliest Christians who mostly comprised those who were the most oppressed. So when that edict went out gratefully, there were these rebellious monks who refused to destroy the scripture and they literally buried the scripture in urns in the Egyptian desert or Some of them, like the Gospel of Mary, was also found in urns in caves. So, I mean, just the symbolism and the metaphor here is so exquisite on another level, because it's like that information was also buried within us. It. Because what I want to make clear is that I don't think we have ever lost this information because this information is ultimately accessed from within us. So we don't actually even need that Scripture. It's phenomenal that we have it now. It was found for the most part after 1945, after World War II, at Nag Hammadi in a treasure trove of many of these scriptures were uncovered. But the Gospel of Mary wasn't there in that discovery. It was found in several different places along the Nile. Her scripture was found. And this. I mean, to have three versions of the Gospel of Mary from the first and second century tells us this was like a New York Times bestseller. This was something that was really popular for. For that to have survived from antiquity and for those monks to defy the decree, you know, for them to be destroyed meant that there were those who really considered this information sacred and refused to destroy it.
- [14:57]
Glennon Doyle
Based on your understanding of Mary Magdalene and who she was, can you just tell us, give us a Mary Magdalene for dummies from your perspective, for. For anyone who may not be familiar with her life and story.
- [15:11]
Megan Watterson
If we take her scripture seriously, which is what I do, and we read it as an example of what this. Earlier communities of Christianity, before it became a patriarchal tradition from the 4th century onward, if we look at her scripture and take it seriously, it's really a. A metaphysical map to how we can get past the egoic layers that confuse and derail us from being able to have clarity within ourself and really know what love is. The presence of love is. So Mary in her gospel, my favorite part of her gospel is that, well, there's so many. But, but let me first say. So Peter asks Mary at the beginning of her gospel. He calls her sister, which. That's indicating to us the kind of community these earlier Christians were trying to practice. Women and girls had no rights. They were considered property in the first century. So the male body was the only body that was considered whole. Like one in itself was the male body in the. In the Roman Empire. So for Peter, a male, to refer to Mary as his sister is really indicating this radical equality that they're practicing, that they are considering each other family, that they're taking care of one another. So Peter calls her sister, and he says, we know the Savior Loved you more than all other women. And tell us the words that you know that we don't because we haven't heard them. And then Mary says, I will teach you about what has been hidden from you. And she goes into this explanation of a vision she has of Christ, which is my favorite. This is chapter seven. So Christ comes to her in a vision, and she says, she asks Christ, how is it that I'm able to perceive you?
- [17:19]
Glennon Doyle
Right?
- [17:20]
Megan Watterson
Like, is it with the soul or with the spirit? And Christ first says to her, blessed are you for not wavering at seeing me. For where the mind is, there is the treasure. Now, the reason why this is so exciting, you can see the theological geek in me get excited. But this is so exciting. I really spent all of seminary with that word mind, which doesn't mean mind in the modern sense of it. That word mind, where the mind is, there is the treasure. This is what Christ is saying to Mary. That word N o u s nus from the Greek, actually means the spiritual eye of the heart. So where that vision is, that clarity, that spiritual eye of the heart, there is the treasure. And he is saying, blessed are you for not wavering at seeing me. Because she believes in this vision she's having inside of herself, right? So it's sort of indicating that there are those that might receive a vision within them or have some direct idea of love, presence of love within them. But then they doubt it. They question it.
- [18:27]
Unknown Guest or Co-host
They think it's apocryphal of doubtful. Like, how ironic is that is the most beautiful thing about her is she doesn't doubt herself. And then she's deemed doubtful.
- [18:36]
Megan Watterson
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So she doesn't doubt it. And then she. She. And this is what I love her for. Like, she's not afraid to roll down the window and ask for directions. She's like. She's like, how is it that I'm able to see you? From what aperture, what aspect of me is able to perceive this vision of you from within my heart? And that's when Christ says, it is neither with the soul nor the spirit, but the mind. So he repeats mind twice in that chapter seven. But the mind that exists between the two, and we know that word for mind is new spiritual eye of the heart. Or the Trappist monk Thomas Merton, he described the new as a diamond blazing with the invisible light of heaven. So this is Christ giving Mary these explicit directions on how we can perceive the divine directly from within us. Now, in each of those three versions that we have of the Gospel of Mary, the next four pages are missing. So Christ's full answer to how we're able to perceive this vision, which is like the most tremendous question and the most powerful answer we could live into, is missing. It begins again with this whole description of the powers, which I think for those of us who have studied her gospel, it's really indicating that it's important to somehow clarify, right? Distinguish between what's ego and what's soul. And that's really emphasizing that. But. So Mary is someone within the earliest form of the church that Christ gave secret teachings to with how to receive a vision of him from within him before he passed. And I feel deeply that it was intentional that he give these teachings to a woman for the very reasons that I opened with about the divine feminine. Because not only is this a female who's receiving these teachings, but she is. She has perfected, mastered this capacity to be able to see from within her own heart, to receive what's true for her from within her. So she's embodied those teachings fully. And then of course, we know from the scriptures that weren't taken out of the New Testament, we know that she was the one that he rose to, right? Like, that wasn't for me, that she was at the empty tomb. That wasn't a right place, right time situation. That wasn't like an accident. That was because she was the one who could see him. She was the one who could perceive him.
- [21:20]
Glennon Doyle
So we're always taught the gospels or all of these stories like they're a movie, like this is what happened and then he showed up and then da, da, da. And it's all like a bunch of plot, like action story driven. But when we're talking about Mary perceiving Jesus or God and saying, how am I perceiving you? It is very likely that this is not Mary running into Jesus at 7:11 and going, I see you, I'm perceiving you. It very much more could look like a woman now sitting in her home and, and feeling an inner knowing, nudging or a voice or a pull in one way or another, a woman just sitting on her couch or in the kitchen or in her work and just feeling something and saying, is that real? Is this? And then I'm thinking about when you're talking about Jesus teaching Mary how to perceive him, really to prepare her for separation through death, right? Likely I'm thinking about my friends Andrea and Meg and how before Andrea died, allegedly, Meg and Andrea talked to each other over and over again about how Meg would perceive Andrea after they Were quote unquote, separated by death. That this experience, because I've always thought Jesus is God 100%, I am like, I worship the guy, okay? In the way that everyone is God. There is something about these enlightened beings who were not different than we are, but were able to perceive in a way that we cannot yet because of the ego, their oneness with the divine that is exactly the same as our oneness with the divine. And so to me, Jesus and Mary are like Andrea and Meg right now, just like trusting the mind, the spiritual mind through connection. Go ahead.
- [23:23]
Megan Watterson
Right. And it's the embodiment of the truth that love never dies, love never ends. Love is that bridge between this world and whatever might be next. And it's that moment when Mary perceives Christ. And Christ, the first word he says when he resurrects is Mary is her name. To me, that moment is the affirmation of the embodiment of his teachings in her because she's able to perceive him. And it's the model for us of the power of human love, right? That it never ends and that it's this bridge between us and that we all have access to that.
- [24:06]
Glennon Doyle
And now it's time to thank the companies who allow you to listen to we can do hard things for free.
- [24:12]
Unknown Guest or Co-host
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- [24:28]
Abby Wambach
Right? And I am one of the only members of my huge family that doesn't live in my hometown. So it's hard sometimes because I have so many nieces and nephews I love so much. Even though I can't always be with them on their special moments or days, I am always thinking of them. So for me to be able to send them money with Zelle to let them know I am thinking of them and I love them and I'm going to celebrate with them for the good times and the bad times. Maybe send pizza money, take their buddy to a game, maybe go to a show, pretty much anything. It lets me feel a part of their everyday lives.
- [25:07]
Megan Watterson
It's so true.
- [25:08]
Unknown Guest or Co-host
And I remember during my surgery a time when someone saying, what do you need? Just felt like something else I needed to think about and decide. And I didn't know what we wanted to eat next Tuesday. And I certainly didn't want to add that to my list of things I needed to think about. And so at Those times, receiving money with Zell from my friends for meals was the best, best gift they could give us because it made every day a little less stressful.
- [25:33]
Glennon Doyle
Yeah. So if you want to help someone, then instead of asking them to do the work, to tell you what they need, send them the help so they can just get what they need from paying back to showing up. Zelle helps you support the people you care about. When it counts, send money with Zell. I just want to go straight to something that I bet gets you in so much trouble. What does there is no such thing as sin mean?
- [26:05]
Megan Watterson
At the beginning of Mary's gospel, Christ is. Is instructing the disciples. And one of the questions that Peter asked is about sin. And Christ begins by saying there is no such thing as sin. Christ goes on to explain that it's our misunderstanding of identifying with the ego, like so identifying with some aspect of the ego that we forget that we're also a soul. So that sin is not original, it is not intrinsic, it's not in our bones. It does not go back to the story of Eve. Sin is this missing the mark, Right? It's misunderstanding the ego for the soul.
- [26:57]
Glennon Doyle
What is the ego? When you say the ego, what is it that you mean? What are we misunderstanding ourselves to be? And who are we really?
- [27:03]
Megan Watterson
We're love, you know, Cut, cut to the end right there.
- [27:08]
Abby Wambach
We're love.
- [27:10]
Megan Watterson
In the Gospel of Mary, which I absolutely love and appreciate. It's sort of like the delineation of the seven powers within the Gospel of Mary is so helpful for me as a human being. I read them like the ingredients labeled, you know, on food. It's like, this is what it means when you have a body, when you are human. What it means to be fully human is that you are meant to. To experience and encounter all of these climates. That's how mystic and priest Cynthia Bourgeau refers to those seven powers in the Gospel of Mary. She refers to them as climate. So there are these aspects of the ego, of. Of the part of us that won't survive death, right? It's the part of us that's here while we have a body and we're meant to. To feel them. It's not wrong, it's not a mistake. Every time we are aware, for example, one of the powers, the seventh power is rage. So every time we find ourselves in the power of rage, it's an opportunity to bring love to where it's never been before. Right? So it's this opportunity when we, when we bring our consciousness. Because when you're in an egoic state, you're often unconscious that you're in it. It's like a habituated. You move into it and you don't even know you're there. So I'm in this state of rage. And the practice, right, the opportunity here is to awaken while in that stage, not to like feel shame and to berate ourselves. And it's the opportunity then to actually embody it and listen to it. What does this rage have to tell me, like to really feel it and to know why I'm experiencing it and then before I act to release it. Right. Because I don't want to act from the ego. I'm just gonna conjure up more egoic responses. I'm just going to, I'm gonna perpetuate old patterns. If I act from that place. What I wanna do is take that climate seriously, really listen to it. Cause there's a, a reason why I'm in it. Receive that rage as information and then allow it to release which that practice goes all the way back to the first century and really is indicated within the Gospel of Mary. It's referred to as the kenotic path. And that's the Greek word for self release or self emptying love. So it's a love that allows us to let go of those stories that that rage is telling right after we've heard it and took it seriously. It's releasing that to allow something more infinite, more expansive, more limitless, the voice of love to return. And then that's when we go to take action is from that place.
- [30:17]
Unknown Guest or Co-host
So in Mary's gospel, what you just discussed, the seven powers most people will know as the seven deadly sins. So when you know Mary is the perceiving master, the eye of the heart fully embodied, she becomes a whore.
- [30:40]
Abby Wambach
Right?
- [30:40]
Unknown Guest or Co-host
Seven powers become seven deadly sins. So how does that happen?
- [30:47]
Glennon Doyle
I know.
- [30:48]
Megan Watterson
And her name is completely like the origin of that in her gospel is completely removed like she is. That wisdom is taken. It's then distorted and ascribed to something that's a deadly sin, which is not how it began. And it's co opted into this idea of why we should feel shame and, and how this is a part of. To be human is lowly and that's not how it's originally described.
- [31:17]
Unknown Guest or Co-host
Which to me feels like a parallel to the she's a whore thing. Where it's like if you are going to rely on your body, if you think like the. The power of yourself comes from your ability to go within and to trust your body, you're You're a slut. Like that whole, I'm going to put shame on your body and your desires and your feelings, right?
- [31:42]
Megan Watterson
So her, she was just used as a symbol, as an example for the way that the body was scapegoated as well.
- [31:51]
Unknown Guest or Co-host
Right.
- [31:52]
Megan Watterson
Within that, within that movement of the erasure of the divine feminine, the body is suspect as well. And so we have this erasure of the original source of where this really, it's just instruction, an opportunity for what it means. Like while we have a body. This is great. The Gospel of Philip says you must awaken while in this body, for everything exists in it, resurrect in this life. Right? So that's a very different understanding of resurrection and of the significance and importance of the body. The body is the soul's chance to be here then in that understanding. But so what happens is there's this complete erasure and you know, belittling of Mary and her teachings and the co opting of the whole seven deadly sins. But then we see which. This is so fascinating for me, right, Because I was obsessed with that word new. All throughout seminary and divinity school I was obsessed with it and I followed the thread, thread of it and it took me into this contemplative practice, this ancient practice called hesychism. And this practice was essentially, it involved the seven powers, there were eight, but it involved the vices and how to clarify them within the heart. And the focus of this, of the hesicus, which comes from the Greek stillness or silence, right. So the, the object was to, the goal was to go inward, to focus all of the consciousness into the heart in order to be in a constant dialogue with the divine from within. And a lot of these mystics really, you could call them these contemplative Christians, they referred to this word new. So there's that word mind from the Gospel of Mary after it's been erased. But they're practicing what the Gospel of Mary is teaching and they describe it. One of them, St. Isaac of Syria, his he says, enter the treasure house, enter your inner treasure house and you will find the treasure house of heaven. So there's that word treasure from the Gospel of Mary and there's that word new. And then one of my favorite hesitates, John Cassian, after he's in Egypt being a hesychist for a while, then he travels to France and he goes to an area of France that is referred to as the sacred mountain, St. Bon. And he consecrates this cave in the mountain that legends say Mary Magdalene lived out the last 30 years of her life. So here's a hesychist bringing these teachings and really honoring Mary Magdalene in a way that she's erased within the formal church.
- [35:00]
Glennon Doyle
And.
- [35:01]
Megan Watterson
And he, you know, he brings those ideas to the west, to France. And her legend then is that after the crucifixion, after testifying before the court of Tiberius Caesar and then crossing the Mediterranean because she was being persecuted by the Roman Empire, she went into the caves in the south of France and with the druids who protected her. So that's the sort of circle of her teachings and its erasure, but also it's hidden preservation as well.
- [35:42]
Abby Wambach
I just want to say one thing. Number one, thank you for doing all of the work. Like, your ability to learn, research, and synth, synthesize this information is so important to me personally, because I think that I have so much stuff from the Church that I'm still, like, constantly working out. Number one and two, like, the joy that you clearly. And the passion that you clearly have, like, it is just, like, so lovely to see somebody love what they love. And. And it's so obvious. So that's it. That's all I've got. I just am. I could just literally sit here, listen to you talk about this for the entire day. Thank you.
- [36:29]
Glennon Doyle
Okay, so this for dummies. If the gospels that were cut out, Mary Magdalene Gospel, the Gospel of Thomas. I know there were several others. The themes in these gospels that were most threatening because. Because I've read everything you've ever written. And what I understand from the most threatening parts of these gospels, that would be threatening to an empire trying to consolidate power and suppress a group of oppressed people, that there is no hierarchy, that there is no gender, that there is no rules to closeness to divinity, number one. Number two, that you can go inward to find God, that God is inside of you. And by the way, this is in the red letter from Jesus, too. I mean, Jesus himself said, the kingdom of God is not out there, it's inside of you. But. Right. That's kind of glossed over. Emphasis on that. And then the other thing I'm hearing you say that I haven't thought about until today is this idea that is so important to power, that this life doesn't matter, that you will live, but it will be after you're dead. So it's okay to suffer now. It's okay to not need equality now. It's okay to not need freedom. Right now. The best thing you can do is just be quiet and suffer. Well, because your Chance of salvation is actually directly tied to how well you suffer right now. That is an excellent message for people trying to keep money and power to themselves and not to people. But what I'm hearing you say is that there's an emphasis in these gospels of awaken now, live now. There is no other. Like right now is when to come alive. My sister just told me before you came on that the definition of salvation is what?
- [38:20]
Megan Watterson
To be made more alive.
- [38:22]
Glennon Doyle
Now, that's not what I was taught.
- [38:24]
Unknown Guest or Co-host
Say that again. Salvation means.
- [38:27]
Megan Watterson
Salvation in its original context meant to be made more alive.
- [38:32]
Glennon Doyle
Okay. I thought it meant to just stay dead so that after you die, you can be alive.
- [38:39]
Megan Watterson
Right. So all the power then in that is what happens outside of us, right? Something rather than us saving ourselves, being. Being complicit and having. Having a participation in our own salvation.
- [38:54]
Glennon Doyle
So are those the main themes? And is there anything else? No hierarchy, no gender, everybody's equal. Direct connection with God, no middlemen. Inward, not outward. To find God and be alive now, not later.
- [39:06]
Megan Watterson
Yes.
- [39:07]
Glennon Doyle
Is there anything else?
- [39:08]
Megan Watterson
Well, and that when you can encounter the divine directly from within, you know love, right? From the Greek word gnosis, meaning from direct experience. So that way you can identify all that is not love. If you know love, you can't be convinced outside of you by someone, even in a position of, you know, power and authority, you can't be convinced or manipulated that that is love, right? Like, if you know love, you're empowered. To me, it's the ultimate form of power, is that knowledge of love and that proximity to love, that we are love and can be guided by it. The really, the reason I had to become a theologian, I really, really wanted to work directly with children. I wanted to be. I would say my ego really wanted the affirmation that I received by working with children directly. I loved that, right? Like everybody. Everybody's like, oh, that's such good work. And, you know, and it did. It felt like that. But I also felt like I was hiding. And for me, the calling came every single time. I was so enraged. And it was physical, it was visceral. I was so enraged when someone was saying or using God, using Christ as a justification for their bigotry. You know, whether it was as a little girl when I encountered it in the New Testament and I saw the misogyny, I didn't have the words for it yet, but I broke out into hives, you know, because it was like. I was like, what? How it's only the Father and. And there's nothing Else. And this somehow gives this divine decree for an exclusively male succession of divine authority. I just, it, it was, you know, and, and then when I was working with Navajo children on reservation, I encountered the genocide in, you know, that Christianity justified the erasure of a culture, the Christian boarding schools. And it was like, nearing a fire, you know, and my rage, I didn't experience rage anywhere else like that in my life. It was this rage that was so ancient, it was like, this is not love. That's, you know, and I didn't have the language yet. I didn't have the scholarship, but I had this visceral knowing, this is not love. And then another moment was at Smith when I was studying world religions because, like, I was still trying to recover from my exposure to the New Testament, right? And the hives. And so I was studying everything other than Christianity. I was, like, trying to avoid it. So I was studying the divine feminine in the world religions in college, and there was this man on our campus proselytizing. I called him Angry Billboard Man. You know, he had, like, all of the scripture that justified his homophobia, like Leviticus 18, you know, it's just all over. And he was calling us sinners and, you know, saying, we're going to burn in hell. And again, it was that same visceral awareness, this knowing that I was actually just as convicted as he was. I just didn't have the scripture that justified my faith. My knowing, I, I. It was never presented to me, right? And so that was the hunger that, that was the inner knowing for me to then go into seminary, go into divinity school and find these missing scriptures that do tell a story about Christ that is one of love and is one of being that love. Now, like in the Acts of Pa, her proximity to Christ absolutely liberates her from any of the patriarchal confines of what it means to be a female. That's why it's so important that we have these stories and we have these voices, because it brings us this story of love, this love story about Christ that didn't win out.
- [43:45]
Glennon Doyle
Megan, what did Mary Magdalene call God?
- [43:50]
Megan Watterson
The good, Just the good. In the Gospel of Mary, I find this so exquisite. In the Gospel of Mary, God is a masculine word for the divine, descriptor of the divine, because there's also the Goddess. But in the Gospel of Mary, it's just good, capital G. The good is also a part of us. So we are a part of the good. We're not separate from it. So good is something that is inherent. It's not something that we have to prove or, you know, perform. Goodness is not performative. Goodness is inherent. It's innate.
- [44:31]
Glennon Doyle
So, Pod Squad, a while back, I told you that my daughter convinced me to get the word good tattooed on my arm. And it's a long story. And I woke up and was like, why do I have the word good tattooed on my body? Like, I just wanted my kid to think I was cool, so I went with her and did it. Um, and I told that story, I think, in one of my newsletters. And Megan wrote back to me on the newsletter and said, mary, Mag, you have good on you. Because the Gospel of Mary defines God as good. And I just want to say, when I. I have two things tattooed on me. One is be still and the other is good. Okay? And when I think, when I put those together in my body in Pod Squad practice this. When I say be still and know that I am God, I feel like someone is like, I'm a soldier and there's a sergeant, and someone is telling me to be still and that I should trust their direction regardless of how it makes me feel. Just be still and know that I am God. There's no vibe attached to God, meaning God can be whatever in power says God means there's nothing attached to it now. Now listen to this. Be still and know that I am good.
- [46:00]
Abby Wambach
That's good.
- [46:01]
Glennon Doyle
There is a mountain. There is a chasm difference in my body. When I think about the difference between God saying to me, be still and know that I am God, and saying to me, be still and know that I am good. And in this moment, that's what I need. I need God. God's brand is muddled right now. And I need that assurance that I can trust. Because the moral arc of justice is like. Because there is some sort of quality that is running things here, right? And that. That is goodness. So that little O just makes that can't be hijacked.
- [46:51]
Megan Watterson
Like, Right.
- [46:52]
Glennon Doyle
The administration right now cannot. They can take God and make it mean anything they want it to, but I'm not sure that they can take good.
- [46:59]
Megan Watterson
Yeah, they can't mean anything.
- [47:01]
Glennon Doyle
That's why they chose great.
- [47:04]
Megan Watterson
They can't change our perception of it. And I think this is why it's so important to have that both and to have this checks and balances where it's like, yes, okay, we can have a voice of spiritual authority outside of us. And also, we need to not discount that voice of truth and love that we hear within us, right? So that we can know when something is not actually the voice of love for us.
- [47:33]
Glennon Doyle
And now it's time for our ads.
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Unknown Guest or Co-host
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- [51:12]
Unknown Guest or Co-host
The origins of we can do hard things were once just a dream of community and connection and expression. That dream turned into the podcast you are listening to today. Starting your own business is a dream lots of us share, but too many of us let it remain just a dream. Don't hold yourself back thinking what if I don't have the skills? What if I can't do it alone? Turn those what ifs into why nots with Shopify by your side. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10% of all e commerce in the US from giant corporate household names to brands just getting started. You can choose from hundreds of beautiful templates to build your store, use AI tools to write product descriptions and enhance your photos, and even launch email or social campaigns that make it look like you've got a full marketing team behind you. Take it from me, if you're launching your own business, you do not want to do it alone. There are tools that can help. We used Shopify to sell our we can do Hard things merch on our book tour. We gave 100% of the proceeds of the merch away to nonprofits, and Shopify helped us to do all all of that easily and seamlessly turn those dreams into and give them the best shot at success with Shopify. Sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.comhardthings go to shopify.comhardthings shopify.com hardthings. There was a part that I thought was so interesting. Can you speak to the true human piece and what that means to you in terms of both God and ourselves?
- [53:05]
Megan Watterson
Its repetition in the Gospel of Mary goes to the Greek word anthropos and that word is referring to this understanding that to be human means to have all of these egoic powers, right? To be fully human is to be an ego, the whole mess of it. And also it means having a soul. It means being connected to that voice of love that is eternal, that will survive the death of. Of the ego, right? So it's an aspect of us that we can encounter and know now within the body that will survive the body. So we're both. That's what it means to be. That's the totality of that word anthropos, is that we're fully human and fully divine. And why it was so radical, that idea within the first century is because, again, women were not considered fully human. They were subhuman. They had absolutely no rights, and they did not determine what happened to their bodies, much less their lives. They could not vote. They were not in places of political or spiritual authority. So for these radical band of Christians to be referring to each other and considering each other brothers and sisters and full human, whether they were male or female, is to say that the true human understands that it isn't about the external. You know, no matter our sex or gender or presentation, it's that we are fully human and fully divine. And that's what makes us the true human being. It's not. It's not deciding and delimiting what we can be and become simply because we're male or female. That's not what determines. Determines our capacity to be able to be a spiritual leader. Simply that, you know, we're male. It's that we have this full understanding and embodiment of this idea that we're fully human, meaning we have all of these egoic powers. And also we are a soul. And we're doing the work to try to decipher between the two, right? Not perfectly and not permanently. It's not a permanent state state. It's something that we're perpetually working on because that's the whole point of being here. That's the whole point.
- [55:37]
Glennon Doyle
Megan, what do you think in your sweetheart, when you lay down at bed, in bed, not your theologian talking self, but yourself, what do you think happens when after we die, what's your best guess?
- [55:50]
Megan Watterson
I think it's the experience, the little sips of it that I've had in this lifetime I would describe as mercy. And mercy to me, is this. Like it can't be contrived, right? Like you can't contrive mercy. You can create the conditions for mercy to arrive. The experience of mercy for me is this utter and complete collapse between me and love. That distance between me and love vanishes. That's mercy. And I think that that's what happens when we're no longer in the body, is that there's no distance between us and love. The presence of love. And that presence of love, for me, is what we can experience when we have those moments of just not being so hard on ourselves. Like, you know, we get so caught up in these states of the ego, we get so hard on ourselves that we come up with all of these excuses for why we're not worthy of love. Right? Or why we don't deserve love yet, or what we have to do in order to experience the full presence of love within us. This is not a love that's arriving from outside of us, right? This is like the call is coming from inside the house, right? This is. This is the presence of love that we meet with from within us, that no one can keep from us. And so mercy is this experience of like, suddenly all those egoic stories and ideas, all these things that we think we did wrong or we think proves why we're not worthy of love, they just vanish, you know? And unfortunately, it's usually only for a moment. We get like a. A brief sip of it. This brief moment of, like, all of the reasons why we think we're not worthy of love, they just suddenly disappear. And the presence of love is just merged. It's just seeing out through our eyes. You know, we're just. We're one with it. It's just that union with that presence of love. And I think that that's what happens.
- [58:09]
Glennon Doyle
And.
- [58:09]
Megan Watterson
And I feel like I know that.
- [58:12]
Glennon Doyle
Yeah. Yes.
- [58:17]
Megan Watterson
And that's where words end, you know? Yes, I know.
- [58:21]
Glennon Doyle
And mystics in every religion have been saying that this is not just. This is what mystics. I mean, you're talking, and I'm thinking of the Rumi poem, or maybe it was Haviz, but that our job is not to search for love, but just to remove all the obstacles between us. And love inside of us right now is exactly what you're talking about. Can you talk to us about Thecla? She is. You've said learning about Thecla changed your life. So I need to know why. Who she is and why she matters so much right now.
- [58:54]
Megan Watterson
The story of Thecla, we find in the acts of Paul and Thecla, which was among one of those many scriptures that was silence that was hidden in the fourth century and labeled apocrypha of doubtful authenticity. Right, because this involves a woman who. A girl who begins really trapped within the circumstances of what it meant to be a female in the first century. Which was basically she. Her mother was. Who is really the embodiment of the patriarchy. Her mother is forcing her to marry and she doesn't want to. And by the end of her story, she baptizes herself. So the acts of Paul and Thecla, for me, as a theologian, were so it was so incredibly important to encounter her story because this is a sort of Road to Damascus moment. This is a conversion story we haven't heard before. Many of us who've had any kind of exposure to Christianity. I wasn't raised Christian, but I had all of these experiences of knowing love or knowing Christ that really made me not a pain. But like, my mom didn't know what to do with me as a feminist. And so, you know, she had to just sort of put me into a Unitarian church to, like, answer my questions and. But it's like, what little. And I left, you know, right after having those hives with the New Testament. So I left church really quickly. I only had this really minimal exposure to Christianity. But I had heard of Paul especially later as a feminist theologian, because he's attributed with saying in 1 Timothy that women should remain silent. Right, right. And that they. They are not to be teachers, they ought not speak. So that's Paul. And we, we know his conversion story, like so many of us have heard his road to Damascus. And he falls down and he's blinded. And then he hears the voice of Christ asking him, you know, why are you persecuting me? And then when he. His vision returns, which I think is so symbolic and powerful, after three days and three nights, he understands what Christ is really all about. And so with Thecla, the beginning of her story, she's sitting in this red brick house and she is stuck in a situation that is really contemporary. You know, it's not just first century. She's stuck in this situation where she has to live a life based on the fact that she's female. All these external expectations of her simply because she's female. She has to marry, she has to become a mother, she has to become a dutiful wife. So she's sitting there by her window in this little red brick house, and she overhears the stories of Paul about the beloved that he's making sweet for everyone listening. And thecla, for three days and three nights, refuses to move. So she's essentially here using meditation, contemplation as an act of resistance. She's refusing to continue on with her life as she knows it, and she's insisting on going inward and really Asking the most important question any of us could ever ask. What is it that I desire, right? External to all of these expectations that have been pressed upon me, impressed upon me since the moment I'm born, simply because I'm female, what do I as a soul in my heart, what is it that I desire for this life? And she goes inward for three days and three nights. And when she emerges, she absolutely leaves this whole previous life that was expected of her and starts moving in the direction of her soul, moving in the direction of how she feels called to live out her life as a minister, which wasn't possible at that time.
- [63:16]
Glennon Doyle
So then what? Then what?
- [63:18]
Abby Wambach
Then what happens?
- [63:19]
Megan Watterson
Yeah, exactly.
- [63:20]
Glennon Doyle
I'm like. And then.
- [63:21]
Unknown Guest or Co-host
And then her mom's like, to death. You go, okay, so tell that part.
- [63:26]
Megan Watterson
When everyone around us abandons us and betrays us, when everyone is committed to misunderstanding us, and we're literally crucified. So her mother suggests to the governor that thecla be burned at the stake for refusing to become a bride, which was against the law at that time. And thecla is stripped, which I see as both literal and symbolic, but she's stripped, and she has to walk through the crowd. So this whole community that's disowning her, she has to walk through the crowd naked. And this is what's so fascinating, is that the scripture says that the governor marveled at the power in her when she walks by naked. Now, the reason why I find that so powerful is that here we have symbolically, metaphorically, an example of what happens when you strip away all of those egoic powers, right? All those identifies, all those identities, those reasons why thecla may have, you know, considered herself worthy right within her society, as it's sort of like the crumbs of proximal power that the patriarchy was offering her is as a mother, as a wife, she's refusing all of that. She's stripping all of that. And she's standing in a power love within her as she's walking naked toward the pyre. Because this is the life of her own choosing. This is the soul that's guiding her. And this is the moment when she's realizing that this is a power that no one can take from her. This is all that's left when we're stripped of all of those reasons why we think we're loved, right? But this is when she's actually being love itself. And the governor marvels at the power in her. Here he is with the one who supposedly has the power, but he's Marveling at the power in her because his power can be taken, hers cannot.
- [65:38]
Abby Wambach
Yes.
- [65:41]
Glennon Doyle
It'S like Elphaba.
- [65:43]
Abby Wambach
Hold on. And then she goes and gets burned at the stake.
- [65:45]
Glennon Doyle
No, just keep going. Keep going. Preach. Megan Waters.
- [65:50]
Megan Watterson
Literally, what happens, you know, this.
- [65:52]
Glennon Doyle
This is.
- [65:52]
Megan Watterson
For me, this is very much the story of the Phoenix. For those of us who really identify with that, you know, like periods in our life where we go through a trauma, a crisis, you know, something that really pulls into question all of these. All of these identities that have constituted our worth in the world, right? When they're either pulled from us or when we are betrayed by someone, we go through a fire, you know. And so Thecla, in her story, she climbs upon the pyre and she makes the sign of the cross. So that moment is her saying, my faith has triumphed, right? Like, my way of seeing and being in the world has triumphed in this moment, despite the external circumstances around me. And what ends up happening is that there's like some sort of torrential storm and downpour lightning.
- [66:46]
Glennon Doyle
This.
- [66:46]
Megan Watterson
This crazy. And it puts out the fire and Thecla's saved. And when she climbs down from that pyre, she exists now as only the soul that survived it. So now she's living as an example, a model for all of us of what it can be like to move through the world by being guided from.
- [67:07]
Unknown Guest or Co-host
Within and tell about the women in the cinema.
- [67:10]
Megan Watterson
She continues to go through trials, you know, throughout her story, which I think is really important for us because, you know, I think we like to think of the spiritual path as, like, one and done, you know, like, it would.
- [67:25]
Unknown Guest or Co-host
Be better that way.
- [67:27]
Megan Watterson
Like, you burned the stake once and then that's over. You have your street cred, and then that's it. Like, now you're realized, and you don't have to keep doing it over and over again. But I just think it's more. It's also more realistic. Like, this is just the way it is. It's that we're constantly tested and we constantly. It's really. The whole point is that we keep, after practicing being able to discern the voice of the soul, we have to keep practicing collapsing that proximity between us and love within us, the presence of love within us. So mercy, we have to keep working on that. So Thecla is tested many times. And one of the tests is that she is now following Paul, and they're in Antioch, and this very powerful politician tries to assault her in the street. Just take her as his bride without her consent. Paul kind of Freaks out and washes her hands of her, like, pretends he doesn't know who he is. He's like, I'm out. You know, like, this is too, this is too, this is too much for me. So he leaves. And so she, she is in a position multiple times throughout her story where she is called upon to save herself. So she fights off this assault. And in a sweeping example of first century gaslighting, she is then punished for trying to protect herself from this sexual assault. She's punished. She's ordered to be killed in the arena by wild animals. And she's paraded through the streets. Again with the stripping, the nakedness. She's paraded through the streets wearing the word sacrilege, she enters into the arena. This is really, really, really, really important in the course of this process. Process, Thecla now finds, because, you know, she's been called upon to save herself again and again, to keep solidifying this way of being in the world, right? Of, of, of listening to her soul, of being guided from within her. And she meets then at, at the end of her story, during this last trial, a queen who had recently lost her daughter. And this queen takes her in and protects her. And when Thecla is marched off, you know, into the arena to be, you know, thrown to the wild animals, her new mother, the queen, refuses to be separated from her. She holds her hand, she walks with her. And so in the arena, the queen is separated from Thecla and she, she, you know, at first has this lion, which is really, really important. If we look into the context of the first century, the lion represented courage, but it also represented Christ's protection. And courage in the Roman understanding of courage was a masculine trait. And this is really interesting when we look at the acts of Paul and Thecla and we look at the kind of trajectory of feckless presentation of herself, she goes from being a girl to really presenting in a masculine way, so claiming her sense of gender and identity. By the end of the scripture, she cuts her hair short, she wears the robes more commonly worn by men, and then she's aligned with this masculine understanding and protection of courage. So what's interesting is that scholars of these first several hundred years of Christianity, what they relate is that these early communities were using gender as a way to challenge the empire, that this, you know, really entrenched, embedded idea that a woman, a girl, a female meant this, this and this and had to present, you know, know, in a certain way, and that a man, a masculine, meant this, this and that. They were Challenging that. So men wore their hair long, women cut their hair short. They were really playing with gender within their sense of identity as. As communities in the first century. So that's really significant that this lion first is defending thecla, goes out, tries to kill this bear, and then this male lion kills the lioness. And so in a moment of when thecla is again going to be set upon by other wild animals, she goes inward, right? She prays, and then she notices this pit of water in the arena. And this is really phenomenal and controversial because in this moment, she decides to baptize herself. And she had asked Paul earlier in her scripture to give her the seal of Christ and no trial would touch her. She asked him to baptize her, but he doesn't, right? He says that she's not ready yet. And so now she understands that that is actually something that spiritual authority is something that she can claim from within. And so she, with that water, says, in the name of Jesus Christ, I baptize myself. And then it's like the women in the arena, in that moment, they recognize what's going on. It's like they awake from their stupor, and they understand that all along this is about so much more than just thecla, right? That this is about the ways that they have been participating in their own oppression by not standing with her and fighting for her. So in that moment, the scripture says. And the women all cried out in a loud voice, as if from one mouth. So they participate in thecla's efforts to save herself. They're super scrappy, which is what I love. They grab whatever they happen to have on them. Rose petal, cardamom, nard. They throw it into the arena, and they lull the wild animals to sleep. So there is this formula here in this scripture from the first century, a playbook for us now, that when we unify together, right? No amount of powerlessness is without power once unified, really. And that's. And that's. And that's her story. And that's her. And the fact that it exists, okay, the fact that she baptizes herself and then leader, a little bit later, she goes back to her hometown, and Paul's like, you know, he gives her this commission to go and preach the word of God, which really, she. She's not really asking for anymore. She's already acting on it. She's already doing it. But he. He gives her that formal commission. And the reason why this is so significant is that even to this day, female priests and ministers aren't validated because it said that there isn't a precedent for female leadership within the church. And the fact is, is that there is. It's right here in this scripture. It's just that this scripture was edited out because it is proof and evidence of a precedence for female leadership in the church.
- [75:00]
Glennon Doyle
So what does it mean when you think about this moment in that, like, what does. Why did it change your life to learn about thecla and what does it mean beyond the literal for women to baptize themselves?
- [75:14]
Megan Watterson
For me, it's to believe that voice of love within you and to follow it, to believe it enough to actually take action on it. You know, I think that every institution, every person has to go through that kenotic process, that path of really becoming clear of what love is asking us to do in this moment. And it's as if no matter our discipline, you know, like how I see that moment in the arena is the possibility I see it now is that no matter our discipline, no matter where we are in the globe, no matter, you know, what, what angle, you know, we're going to be coming from, if we unify in a voice, as if from one mouth, we will change the world. In that moment. We, we have that capacity to act on the behalf of really this other half of the story. We have that capacity to be able to merge with because that voice of love is more than us. It's not just asking us individually what to do in our lifetime. It's guiding us to a sense of a collective answer to our times. Because that's what it has to be. It's not an individual answer. It has to come from this collective. But the trick is we find that within us, within each of us and believing in it.
- [76:54]
Glennon Doyle
And now it's time to thank the companies who allow you to listen to People can do Hard Things for free.
- [77:00]
Abby Wambach
Okay, how excited are we for the new Wicked for Good movie? Oh, very. But there's more reason to be excited. Wicked fans everywhere know what Oz looks like. And now, for the first time ever, you will know what it smells like. Because the new Gain Wicked for Good limited edition laundry collection lets fans experience the magic and joy of Oz with three new scents. The new Gain Wicked for Good collection lets fans get sent to Oz. Love that. With three enchanting limited edition scents designed to transport you to the world of Oz. My favorite is the Gain Detergent Flings in Fantabulous Floral because when the laundry comes out, it smells just delightful. And that's important because Good Smelling laundry adds a little kick. See what I did there for good to what would otherwise be just a chore. Because when you smell good things, you just feel better. And it's important to get the good wherever you can, including laundry. So for Wicked fans and gainiacs alike, this limited edition collaboration will immerse you into the Wicked universe through scent, inviting you to experience the magic and joy with every sniff. The Gain Wicked for Good collection is available online and in retailers nationwide. Thanks Gain for supporting we can do hard things high Pod Squad Abby here. I'm here with my friend and co host of our new show. Welcome to the Party.
- [78:33]
Megan Watterson
Hi Pod Squad.
- [78:35]
Abby Wambach
We would love to invite you over to check out our new show. Welcome to the Party. It's really about the sports. For those of you who might not be sports folks, focused or centric, but it's also about celebrating and uplifting the stories around athletes and leaders across soccer, basketball, hockey, softball, the Olympics, you name it. It is our mission to bring the joy and love of sport and these women to all of you.
- [79:05]
Megan Watterson
If you don't know all of them.
- [79:06]
Abby Wambach
It'S okay because we'll explain it to you. So check us out on YouTube, Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. We have new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday. You will not be disappointed. Thank you Pod Squad and one of these days we're going to do a the Sports episode with Glennon.
- [79:21]
Glennon Doyle
So come and find us leading into the holidays.
- [79:24]
Abby Wambach
Yay.
- [79:24]
Glennon Doyle
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- [80:38]
Unknown Guest or Co-host
Megan do you have any practice that helps you to see through the eye of the heart?
- [80:45]
Megan Watterson
So I refer to it as the Soul Voice meditation, but it's really just My take on the hesicus practice of going inward now, when I started doing that as a seminarian, well, one, I'm female, and with breasts, it was like. Because what they do is they curve forward over their hearts. And so my back and my neck were killing. Like, when you do that for hours, it just. It didn't work. And also I felt that the most important thing was in terms of that yogic posture, the most important thing was understanding that the body has worth, that the body is as worthy as the soul. And so holding this understanding first is really important, that the body is the soul's chance to be here. Giving the body back, that, you know, because that's such an ancient wound, that's such a healing that needs to happen multiple times all throughout our lifetime is seeing the body again as beloved, as sacred. And so I start by really having that moment of awareness that the body is the soul's choice to be here. The body for me never lies. And then I take one intentional breath to go inward to the heart. I continue to breathe normally all throughout the meditation. I didn't say that once. And that led to a lot of issues. But, like, so you continue. Continue to breathe normally all throughout the meditation. But you. What I mean by an intentional breath is that you're. You're really locating your consciousness and you're intending for that consciousness, consciousness to drop down inward here in this meditation. Further up is farther in. So ascension isn't going up and beyond the body. Ascend. Ascension is going deeper and more fully. It's being more fully embodied. So then you take a second breath in order to merge with the soul or the new, the spiritual eye of the heart. However, you know, for some people, the word soul doesn't land. So you can just. The voice of love, the presence of love, true self, like capital S, like, however, resonates with you, but this aspect of you that is going to exist beyond this physical form, that whatever that feels like or however that arrives for you, it's merging with that. And then for me, sometimes it's hanging out there for a very long time. If I'm really grappling with something, I ask questions from there and I listen. When. When I was first practicing the Soul Voice meditation, I wrote it out with a red pen. I changed from, like black ink to red red to sort of symbolize the voice of the soul. And, like, when I first started hearing it, I would take this deep breath. I would go into my heart, and then, you know, I sort of felt like I was channeling and it freaked me out. Like, it felt like a voice that wasn't mine because it was so. You know, it was just so human and so. But so divine and so practical and just not what my mind would have ever come up with. It felt like it was. And then over time, I understood that actually that was me, right? I wasn't like. I wasn't channeling some. Like, I really did. I had a fear for a little bit that I was gonna, like, become, you know, some sort of, like, Long island medium or something like that, because that I was, you know, I was tapping into, like, some. Some other entity and. But it. It really is, because that voice of truth within us is just so clear. And so we. We. We know it because it knows itself completely. There's no. There's no urgency. There's no explanation. It's just. It arrives with this. Just this sense of completion. It's like every single statement is a full sentence. And. And there's just this awareness of love all throughout it that's so expansive, even if it's telling me something really terrifying. So that moment happens within the heart with the second breath, and then the third breath is just about surfacing again and hopefully more fully, feeling more embodied. Right? Like seeing out more fully with the eyes of love or more clearly from the spiritual eye of the heart. So that's my. That's my practice.
- [85:14]
Glennon Doyle
The whole idea of, you know, when I was reading about thecla and all the time she went through with the crowds and the persecution and the screaming and the, you know, Jesus the same and all of that. And the story of the Phoenix, if we think about this in our own lives, there's a way of looking at it that is very like, the world is abandoning me. The world is against me. I did not feel that energy in thecla when I was reading it. And I felt like for us, there is a different way to experience those sorts of moments when you are guided by an innerness. And the tragedy of only being guided by an innerness is that no one else can hear it. So you are either crazy or it's just. It's just a situation, right? And so often people who are guided by an innerness are a threat to the way other people are doing things. And that sometimes in this story manifests as a screaming stadium. But however it manifests from, for you, there is a way that THECLA seemed to respond to it and that Jesus with the forgive them for they know not what they do moment, which is less of, you are abandoning me. And More of, oh, we are listening to different music. We have different ear pods in. And I am listening to one voice, and you all are listening to a completely different other voice, and it's just different music. But there is something about people who are guided from innerness, that it's unshakable because it's direct, but it doesn't have to. In our. In our lives, when we're being guided to do something, to make a decision, to do something weird, to do something that goes against the grain of conditioning, that is all egoic. All the decisions being made outside of ourselves by structures that is not full of. Doesn't have to be full of disgust. It's like, not that they're abandoning us, it's just that they're loyal to something else.
- [87:21]
Megan Watterson
Right, Right.
- [87:22]
Glennon Doyle
And there's such a. The. That feels like the power that that King was seeing, which is just that she has different earpods in.
- [87:32]
Megan Watterson
Right.
- [87:33]
Abby Wambach
The Governor.
- [87:33]
Glennon Doyle
Yeah, right, the Governor. So it's just a way. I just wanted to mention that in terms of. We don't have to think of everyone in our life who doesn't understand what we're doing as against us. There's just a distance there that can just be more peaceful and less binary, I guess.
- [87:55]
Megan Watterson
Yeah. Yeah. And I think personally, what thecla's story was modeling for me was that I could. In terms of baptizing myself, I was able to see the ways that I had siphoned my own sense of personal agency and power over to other people throughout my life. And really, I think the opportunity of being human and the practice of merging with the presence of love is really about being able to choose again what is right for us, what is meant for us.
- [88:36]
Glennon Doyle
Right?
- [88:37]
Megan Watterson
Is that. That luxury of choice. And because when we're traumatized, we don't have that luxury of choice. We're trapped in a pattern that just keeps repeating itself again and again and again. And if we're able with extremes, amount of mercy and embodiment, right? The practice of embodying, if we're able to see. See that the truest source of power has always actually existed within us.
- [89:08]
Glennon Doyle
Right?
- [89:08]
Megan Watterson
Like Dorothy from the wizard of Oz, Ruby slippers. It's like we always had that power within us to claim the life that we desire, this one little life that we get. It's so. It's so incredibly empowering to realize that we are only ever as far from power as we are from our own embodiment. And that's really what Thela. That's what thecla's modeling to us.
- [89:37]
Glennon Doyle
We are only as far from power as we are from our own embodiment.
- [89:42]
Abby Wambach
Whoopsies.
- [89:42]
Glennon Doyle
I am okay. Megan, is there anything before we tell everyone how, if they haven't already, how to find you? I mean, the reason why I trust so much helping people find Megan is because Megan just helps people find themselves. That is. That is what you do. Is there anything else that you want to say before we end?
- [90:07]
Megan Watterson
I think, you know, the part of thecla's story with the patriarchal version of the mother really exemplified in the first mother, who wants to, you know, crucify her or burn her at the stake, and then the queen mother, when thecla triumphs, when the women in the arena come and help save her, the queen comes into the arena, and we have this moment that I see like a movie, you know, of this triumph of the feminine, really, when they embrace, when the queen and thecla, who's living her life based on what her soul desires, she's fully loved. This is the reclamation of the feminine, the female freed from the patriarchy, right? This is thecla encountering unconditional love, freed from any expectations of what it means to be a girl according to the patriarchy. So this is really this triumphant moment where we're freeing ourselves as women, we're freeing ourselves as mothers and daughters from this confining and constricting idea that we have to indoctrinate our daughters into the patriarchy and that we have to relate to each other as if power is limited, as if we just have to fight for scraps of power. What this gospel is showing us is that here in this story about an encounter with Christ, thecla is liberated to such an extent. Extent that she meets with this embodiment of unconditional love that's freed from the patriarchy. This is really an example of this ancient healing of the feminine for within ourselves, right? Believing, not discounting anymore, this voice of love that we hear within us and can be guided from, but also not discounting each other, trusting each other. So trusting that voice and trusting each other and the power that we have to be able to embody and embody love in a way that it's never been shown before.
- [92:24]
Glennon Doyle
It's a double rejection of doubt. It's. I don't. You can't overemphasize. You can't underestimate the importance of what Megan just said, which is that when we discount women, it doesn't just make us doubt ourselves, it makes us doubt each other. They not only take from us our power, our inner power. But they take from us the power of each other, of sisterhood, of connection, of the collective. That is what this does to us.
- [92:56]
Abby Wambach
I want to ask a follow up question from something that you said earlier in this conversation around the four, four pages of Mary's gospel being missing. Where are they? And is that like, I don't know, there's something that's very connected to me about that part of those missing pages to what's happening right now and all the things that I might feel like are missing in me. Like what? Can you briefly tell us that story and like, what the deal is there?
- [93:26]
Megan Watterson
Well, I mean, I think they exist. I. And I think there's hope. There's always hope that they'll surface because all of these buried words surfaced, you know, so there's always the hope of that. But I also love, I love how things are literal and things are metaphorical. Like, I love how things are always both. And so when I embrace that part, those missing pages, for me, that's my call. To be able to, to know and remember that that presence of love is for me, is meant for me is the truth of really who I am, no matter what anyone tells me outside of me and no matter what I might encounter personally in my life, you know, people and situations that are telling me I'm not love. That's my work to do. Those are my pages to fill in in my life.
- [94:21]
Abby Wambach
That's right.
- [94:21]
Megan Watterson
To figure out how to continue to be a presence of love even in the absence of, of it. And so, so that's, that's my, that's my practice and that's my calling.
- [94:33]
Glennon Doyle
The rest is still unwritten. It's a very like Natasha moment and it'd be very much like a, a, a woman teacher, theologian to be like, the rest is yours. One more pages for you to write, Megan.
- [94:50]
Abby Wambach
Yeah.
- [94:51]
Glennon Doyle
Wower's sake. Wowzers. Pod Squad. We will obviously leave you with all of the information you need to find Megan and her work and her books. They are life changing. And Megan, have you ever thought about, you know, how dudes are always like, you know, just interpreting scripture and then putting out versions of Bibles that they interpreted? And you know how like sometimes when we get new information, we get supplemental material? Have you considered creating a supplemental brochure for churches who are to, to pass out along with the Bible, a corrective lens?
- [95:39]
Abby Wambach
Yes.
- [95:40]
Glennon Doyle
And I mean the whole thing, just these few that they can put, they can slide on top of the Bible as a supplemental experience. Yes. No, that's wise.
- [95:53]
Megan Watterson
That's wise.
- [95:55]
Unknown Guest or Co-host
You'll only need a several million of those. If you could get on that real quick, a quick print run of those would be helpful. So the Mary Magdalene revealed. Gorgeous.
- [96:05]
Glennon Doyle
Gorgeous.
- [96:06]
Unknown Guest or Co-host
Gorgeous. And the girl who baptized herself. That's the one on thecla. Absolutely incredible. Scholarly, personal. Gorgeous. Required reading.
- [96:20]
Glennon Doyle
That's right.
- [96:21]
Abby Wambach
Thank you.
- [96:22]
Glennon Doyle
Megan, we love you so much. We're so deeply grateful for you.
- [96:25]
Megan Watterson
I love you three so much. I'm so grateful to you. And I love the Pod Squad. I am a pod squatter. I love us. We make us. We make me more courageous in the world to do the work I have to do. Thank you.
- [96:41]
Glennon Doyle
See you next time. Podsquad We Can Do Hard Things is an independent production podcast brought to you by Treat Media. Treat Media makes art for humans who want to stay human. And you can follow us. We can do hard things on Instagram and we can do hard things show on TikTok.