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What if communion is less about rules and more about a living practice that heals our hunger for belonging? We sit down to reframe the table as a place of remembrance, courage, and everyday resistance—where bread meets body wisdom and wine meets shared responsibility. Starting with a growing pantry of rituals—anointing oil, candlelight, silence, movement, Celtic prayers, tea in warm hands, thresholds, altars, and blessings—we explore how simple practices become portals to presence without caging the mystery.

Our conversation traces a journey from fear to curiosity. We name the ways many of us were taught to gatekeep the sacred and how we’ve unlearned exclusion to embrace an open table. “As often as you do this” becomes a call to embodied storytelling: recalling meals, friendships, and the women who tended the sacred. We talk about communion as an inclusive act—bread as the food of the poor, wine as the drink of the privileged—and how the table trains us to make room, wait for each other, and carry love into the street.

This episode closes with a full blessing for the table: come as you are, unmasked and honest; receive what is given; rise sent to live what love has taught. If you’ve felt shut out of the sacrament or hungry for a practice that meets real life, you’ll find language, courage, and practical ways to host open tables in your home, church, or neighborhood. Subscribe, share with a friend who needs a seat, and leave a review to help more people find a table where they belong.

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A single change of light can restory a whole room—and a whole life. We open the new year inside Epiphany’s gentle glow, trading the harsh glare of judgment for the candlelit mercy that helps us see what’s been true all along: we are held, invited, and free to go home by another route. Shelly and Heather explore how sacred rhythms, awe, and unhurried attention can shift our perspective from scarcity to abundance, from self-critique to compassionate awareness.

We draw on the Magi’s journey as a living pattern: follow the star together, arrive in joy, offer what you carry, and then refuse the old path back to fear or control. That “different way home” speaks to anyone told they don’t belong—including LGBTQ listeners—affirming that home is found where love, not empire, names us. Along the way, we unpack the difference between womb-like rest and harmful darkness, and why curiosity loosens the knot between judgment and certainty.

You’ll hear simple, profound practices: breath prayers to calm the body, lighting a candle to mark sacred attention, stepping outside to recover awe under a night sky, and asking better questions about where your light is coming from in any moment. We invite women especially to claim 2026 as a year of telling a better story—shifting the source of light so beauty, dignity, and hope come into view. We close with a blessing for Epiphany that softens judgment, widens the heart, and teaches us to carry light that is gentle, brave, and generous.

If this conversation brightened something in you, share it with a friend, subscribe for more, and leave a review to help others find the light. For resources and community, visit expansionisttheology.com.

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What if the holiest things in your life aren’t on an altar but on your kitchen shelf, folded in a quilt, or humming across your lawn? We sit down with Reverend Lori Brock—priest, author, and competitive equestrian—and uncover how ordinary objects become gateways to grace.

Lori shares how a simple question from a priest cracked open a vocation she had never seen modeled for women. That thread runs through our whole conversation: why representation matters for girls in the pews, how to unlearn the secular–sacred split, and what it means to name our homes as holy ground. We dig into her practice of “letting objects testify,” a mindful way to ask not if something is sacred but how it is sacred—whether it’s an inherited skillet, a vacation ornament, or a quiet electric lawn mower that turns yard work into prayer.

Advent frames the spiritual terrain: waiting is uncomfortable, thresholds are tight, and anger can be holy because it leads us to buried grief or long-silenced power. Lori’s stories with horses bring this to earth. Grooming, hoof picks, and the trust of a prey animal reveal a living catechism of vulnerability, consent, and care. Along the way, we talk about misogyny dressed up as theology, the courage of women at the first Easter, and how to discern which objects to keep, which to bless and release, and which to let teach us one last time.

Come for the theology you can hold in your hands and leave with a practice you can live today. If this conversation stirred something in you, share it with a friend, subscribe for more expansive faith talks, and leave a review to help others find the show.

Laurie M. Brock is an Episcopal priest, competitive equestrian, and author of three books. During her time in seminary, she worked as a chaplain in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 and has continued her work in trauma chaplaincy with the Lexington Police Department in Kentucky. She is a retreat leader and guest essayist for several online and in-print devotionals.

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