Sense of Soul - Ministry to Meditation

Episode Date: December 24, 2021

Happy Holidays! Today we have a dynamic speaker and fascinating woman, Rev. Dr. Hillary Raining, she is an Episcopal priest, author, yoga teacher, bee keeper, professor, mother and spiritual director who has decades of experience helping people on their spiritual path. Trained at Yale & Drew University, Hillary’s passion is to help others find their voice and bring it to the world. In this episode, Hillary shares with us about her Native American ancestry roots and how she carries that dear, day to day in her ministry and meditation.  She also enlightens us about how the cycles throughout our daily lives, related to work, relationships, school, home projects, our bodies and even our own spirituality how this  same pattern is true for a woman’s menstrual cycle, and/or for those who have a memory of their menstrual cycle. The concept of ‘cycle syncing. Hillary is a published writer whose work can be found in many different sectors and media—inducing print, academia, and the on web. Her first book, “Joy in Confession,” which had its roots in her doctoral thesis, helps people answer God’s call to healing and transformation and also “Faith with a Twist - A 30 Day Yoga Journey,” AVAILABLE NOW, anywhere you purchase books!  Find all of her amazingness at www.hillaryraining.com Follow her journey on FB https://www.facebook.com/thehiveapiary/ You can find Hillary’s weekly sermons at St. Christopher’s Website. Additional teachings of Hillary’s are always being added to The Hive which is a sacred space Hillary created to speak to deep and meaningful topics in a way that fostered conversation and community. Don’t forget to rate, follow and leave us a comment! Please go check out our Sense of Soul’s merch and workshops including Shanna’s CLEAR ancestry workshop and learn more about us @ www.mysenseofsoul.com! Exclusively NOW on Sense of Soul Patreon you can also listen to Shanna’s mini-series about her ancestral journey, “Untangled Roots” and Mande’s mini series about her two NDE’s! https://www.patreon.com/senseofsoul NEW!! SENSE OF SOUL’S NETWORK OF LIGHTWORKERS! Announcing our first Amazing Affliate, join the founder and director of the Intuitive Path Academy, Kawena Charlot for her amazing, 8 week Intuitive Meditation Class at the link below! Sign up now! https://www.mysenseofsoul.com/sense-of-soul-affiliates-page

Welcome to the Sense of Soul podcast. We are your hosts, Shanna and Mandy. Grab your coffee, open your mind, heart, and soul. It's time to awaken. Today we have with us the Reverend Dr. Hilary Reining, who is an Episcopal priest, author, yoga teacher, beekeeper, professor, and spiritual director who has decades of experience helping people on their spiritual path from ancestry to meditation to yoga to ministry. We cannot wait to talk to her about all of this. Hi, hello. How are you? Good. How are you? Doing well. Thank you. Glad to be here. Thank you for the honor of getting to meet you all and talking with y'all. It's great to be with you. Yes. Nice to meet you too. And first of all, I have to say, I'm a tad jealous of your place of occupation. That church is so stunning and the surroundings with the trees,

like you must feel like you're just in heaven every day you go to work. It is such a blessing. I do. I kind of step on the campus and just kind of feel like, Ooh, things are a little bit calmer. So you, you know, the area, you know what? I don't know the area, but I thought the video that gave like an aerial view of it on your website, that church is stunning. Thank you. It is just so beautiful. So thank you. That is, and you've done your homework. That's amazing. I also think the history is so fascinating in that area. I agree. We always like to joke in my family that you can't walk, you know, six feet around here without hitting some sort of historical marker.

I bet. Have you ever studied the land that your church is on? Yes, absolutely. So I'm part Native American. My grandfather was born in our tribe, which is out in Michigan. I've been out to my tribe many times and have looked then here in Pennsylvania to see other indigenous people I might be able to connect with. My mom used to take me to powwows when I was little around here. And there are no more indigenous people in tribal reservations here in Pennsylvania. They were all driven out, but it's originally the home of the Lenape and they were an incredible nation going all the way up the East coast. And many of our words are still used in the Lenape words, like, you know, Manhattan, for example. You know, so it's these certain things that are, yeah, very much a part of my heart. Very cool. You know, I found out that in my lineage,

I had a great medicine man and he was known as the apostate. The Jesuits had come in and forced him into Christianity. Yeah. Oh, the story is crazy. I remember there was this one time I was working with a client and we were doing a lot of energy work and this is like seven years ago. And she tells me about the church that she goes to. And she's like, you know, Shanna, it has a lot of the same kind of traditions of the Catholic religion. Cause she knew that I was Catholic. And she's like, but they actually let women be priest. And they, what was the other thing? She was, we're not quite yet on the abortion thing, but we do allow gays and lesbians to our church. And I was like, oh man, this sounds like a really cool freaking church. It is pretty freaking cool. She might be Episcopalian. It sounds like, because that's, which is what I am. And it's essentially like Roman Catholic liturgy. Like

if you came into church, you might, you know, think, is this a Roman Catholic church? Except you'd see me and think, well, wait a minute, maybe not. But very much more of kind of like a very socially progressive kind of Lutheran interpretation of the Bible, right? You know, so it's very progressive and obviously women can be priests. We are completely welcoming and opening of all, all people, all gender, all sexuality. And most Episcopalians will also tell you that we believe in a woman's right to choose as well. So it's, it's very much a progressive understanding with a deep tradition. Well, that makes a lot of sense since we are evolving in each generation. So different. We had on Nadia Boltz Weber. Oh, she is. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. God love her. And one of the things that she said was,

is that you better start evolving or your churches will be freaking empty. That's it. And we see, right, we're watching that happen over and over again. I mean, it's, it's, what's really, really true is that I think we are entering every 500 years, I think society and religion kind of turns over on itself kind of turns the soil over a little bit. you can, you can date this back all the way back to like the time of King David, that every 500 years, some sort of major shifts happens in the world. And once you know it, the reformation was about 500 years ago. And so that means we're at the beginning of this huge spiritual shift. And I think we're watching people grow into kind of like a more mystical understanding of what it means to be a person of the spirit. My whole thing is saying like, wow, that's,

that's beautiful. And that's wonderful. And there are all these ancient practices, these mystical practices, that means we don't have to recreate the wheel when we're trying to hone our mystic site. That's kind of where I think we are, which is this exciting place. And much to what Nadia has said, if we don't start evolving in that way, then what good is the church even, right? So it's, it's that sort of mentality that I'm really on board with her about. I love that. You know, we always like taking our guests back and I was really touched by the story of when you were a little girl and how you decided that this is what you wanted to do. Can you talk about that? Yeah, I'd be happy to. Thank you. That's such a sweet story and I always love sharing it. So thanks for the invitation. My very first memory.

So I must've been about like three or four or so, you know, early enough to have a memory. I was on the floor of my sister's bedroom and I should have the impression of watching the sunbeams kind of come through the window and like dust kind of dancing on the sunbeams. And I just felt this thing that like, oh, that is the Holy Spirit. There was just some sort of voice in me. And I knew that if I got the Holy Spirit, captured it, that dust and was able to give it to people, that that's what a priest does, right? You know, like that was my understanding of priesthood. So I went running out of my sister's room and I remember saying to my mom, mom, I'm going to be

a priest. God wants me to be a priest or a fairy princess mommy. Those are my two options. And she immediately called our parish priestess to, I don't want to say talk me out of it, but kind of like, see if I was maybe having a little kind of crazy moment, but thankfully the priest was really supportive. And here we are today. You know, I wanted to be not a priest, but a pastor when I was young. Beautiful. Did you be a Luther priest, but a pastor when I was young. Beautiful. Did you go to Lutheran or what denomination, if I may ask? No, you know what? Well, my parents were very Catholic, but I grew up just kind of expanding because I just was so bored at the Catholic church. I'd be like, snoring. I was like, this is not me. And one time my aunt had, well, she was kicked out of the Catholic church for going through

a divorce and yeah. And so she had to go to a fellowship church in Louisiana. And I was like, oh, holy shit. This is so good. Now we've got some awesome stuff going. I was like, man, we got a band and cute boys in the band and everyone's dancing. And I was just, I was feeling the Holy Spirit. That is for sure. I just felt closer. I used to say that I felt closer to spirit. It was more of a celebration than the traditional, which I do love now. I look back

and I see how beautiful the traditions are. You know, there's really something to be said about that. I think that's one of the joys of having a tradition as like wide as as like the Christian tradition. But this is true for all religions, really. The variety lets you have all these different access points to the Holy Spirit so that it's never just one thing, which would be crazy if you thought about it. Right. Like like something as wild as the Holy Spirit only being able to be contained in one thing. It doesn't make sense. So to have all these different entry points, I just think is, is so beautiful. And I think shouldn't be like somehow one against the other, but rather like, wow, look at how much we can, we can learn and benefit from one another. So do you think the Holy Spirit can live in dust? Yes. Oh, great question. What's so beautiful about that question is in all these different

liturgies we have from Ash Wednesday or the funeral liturgies, right? Some of these old ancient rituals, dust gets talked about a lot, right? You know, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, you know, and the Ash Wednesday service, you are dust and dust, you shall return, you know, these, and it's not somehow like a celebration of morbidity. It's actually more like a, like we remember this dust, this holy dust that has been given this spirit to be animated and be alive and nothing is lost. Nothing is ever going to be lost. Even a grain of dust won't be lost in God's eyes. And so it becomes an occasion for us to celebrate that and to kind of have awe and wonder of that. And then to think about how like the same stardust that has all the same stuff and building blocks of life

that we do. It just kind of, it writes itself as far as a sermon goes, right? That they like, even this little dust contains the multitudes of the stars, as well as like the finitude of life. And there's something so holy about that contrast. I love that so much. I used to love to watch the dust in the sun. I love that you mentioned your ancestral lineage and the Native American piece. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like you're a very open-minded person, which, you know, unfortunately people that are like reverends are put into these boxes where we think that you're not. Oh yeah. And I mean, you practice yoga, you teach yoga. Do you also respect and maybe even bring in a little bit of your ancestry

into your teachings? Again, thank you for this question. Absolutely. And you're so right. Modern polls and such about what people think about the church and often the clergy, you know, the number one word associated with is judgmental, right? And often then also homophobic. You tend to get those two things put together, which breaks my heart because sometimes they're right. I mean, I think sometimes you do find that often. And, and so I'm, I'm on a mission to try to like be a different version. So I agree. Yes. To answer your question about the ancestral piece, it has become a really large part of my preaching, teaching, and also just personal spiritual practices. A few years ago, I had the opportunity to travel to my reservation, Sault Ste. Marie tribe in Michigan, and study with our traditional healer. And what I learned from him and the whole crew they have there working on these sorts of restoration of rituals has stayed with me to the point where now when I'm praying on my own, I also think about my ancestors.

And I think about the way that they are present or I'll offer some of the sacred medicine. You know, these things that are now had to be hidden in my family because my great grandmother was so afraid that my grandfather would be stolen and taken to one of the terrible boarding schools and be a victim of at least cultural genocide, if not actual genocide. We had to kind of scrub a lot of that from our family's tradition. So reclaiming that has been very important. On top of that, I also made part of my academic studies because I also spent a lot of time in the academic world learning more about the concept of blood memory. You know, this idea that indigenous people have that we are connected at least seven generations back to our ancestors. And not

just in, you know, what color hair we will have, not color, you know, and eyes and such, but what we bring forth, both the traumas and the joys. In fact, science is kind of catching up with them on this. They are finding that epigenetics will show you that you can inherit depression triggers. You can inherit trauma, et cetera, from your grandparents, essentially. And so my hypothesis and a lot of my academic writing has been around the idea that certainly then you can also inherit like the virtues and the rituals, right? Gratitude's a great example of this. Gratitude affects your heart. It affects you physically. It changes the way the hormones in the body works when you're practicing gratitude, much like trauma and depression can. So if trauma and depression

can change the DNA, why couldn't gratitude and why couldn't that be a multi-lineage thing? So yeah, I'm all about it. I think it's just so important. You are speaking our language. My ancestral mini series that I have right now, I think you just pretty much spoke the fifth episode. Okay. I can't wait to check that out. That sounds amazing. Because that is what I found, you know, and I just happened to fall into it. But the one thing that came out of it all was that I am a part of everything they did. I'm a part of everything they went through good or bad, their triumphs and strength and all the positive things about them and how they got through it. Oh my God, it was so hard. I can't even imagine that we're all alive when they had to go through.

Strength, you know, is what I got from all of it. And so you're healing, not just yourself, not just anybody who will come after you. Timeless healing. You're healing right back up the line through your ancestors as well. So it's, it is really just, it's staggering when you think about it. And empathy. I think the biggest thing I got out of mine was empathy for what they'd gone through. Empathy. Yes. Yes. You know, and I think that we have not been a culture who has carried on the memories of our ancestors. I know the natives have. That's part of their culture.

It's a huge part of their culture. I think Americans coming in and blending in with all these different things. Everyone was just like, well, mine's not the same as yours, so I'll just not even talk about it anymore. But now with like DNA and ancestry and the possibility of researching, I mean, I can find more stuff out about someone in 1800 that I can't about them today. So we're able to kind of bring that back into what I think most cultures around the world already do. I couldn't agree more. And, and it's the only way that we'll actually survive. I think truly, and I don't even just mean us as individuals with our own personal healings. I actually think it's how the planet will survive. The more and more we return

to an indigenous understanding of the land and our role in creation, not as masters of it, but rather as brothers and sisters of creation and in it, that is so very present in indigenous understanding of the world. That's the only way we're going to fix this thing that we're in is by letting the world heal itself again and being a part of healing. And it's critical. Shannon and I had a retreat up in the mountains with a group of girls and Shanna brought to my attention, she had done my ancestry and she'd done these two sisters ancestry. And my ancestry, we found that Ann Pudiator was my eighth great-grandmother and the Putnam sisters accused

her and she was hung. She was, you know, one of the 20 hung in the Salem witch trials, but us three were sitting in a room together. So the two sisters and me, Putnam sisters, like what are the odds, right? That we got the three of us under one roof. It is. And what's amazing about that is look at the chance of redemption that you're able to be a part of in that. I preached a sermon, I think two Thanksgivings ago, talking about how I have within myself, this Native American ancestry and ancestors who were on the Mayflower. And of course the, the genocide that came after, you know, their first Thanksgiving together. And how do we live in this tension? Like how does reconciliation happen? And you're just describing it beautifully. Like

we're all actually related to one another, which means like we all have a lot of room for empathy and a lot of room for reconciliation. And the more we do that, the less we're going to be in these little silos that caused so much brokenness and separation, separation, which is false. It's actually false. So it absolutely is. Cause like you just said, we're all made of the same stardust anyways. You know, Hillary, it's so funny because you say Thanksgiving. I was in deep in Mandy's ancestry and she had this ancestor that actually took some Indians. And this is actually part of the original story of the real story of Thanksgiving. So knowing the truth and going through all that I've gone through, I'm sitting there. My son says, mom, can you please take me to Cherokee trail high school? You know, that's

where they all went to high school to meet up with Mandy's son and her husband and all them. They have this tradition of playing football together. So I'm like, sure. And I'm driving there on Thanksgiving to Cherokee trail high school, which is named that because it goes straight through the Trail of Tears. And as I'm driving there, I'm like, well, you just have fun. You just have fun running around on that field playing football. But just remember, you know, what actually happened here. And if you think that they were thankful, Drew, he's like turning it up to a level. And you're, you know, you're, you're absolutely highlighting the, what I think is going to be, we're talking about the evolution of consciousness,

right? In a big way. I think that's going to be our generation's interesting evolution of consciousness. We keep seeing the truth of so much. Now we know a lot more and we're willing to admit a lot more. So then how do we do that balance? Because we're living in a society that needs a lot of forgiveness and a lot of truth telling. And how do we do that and actually hold reconciliation in there as well? Right. You know, it's one of the main questions of our generation is how do we live with all this truth and have reconciliation and because it's confusing, it you know you start to doubt everything you were ever taught or everything you know mandy and i have both had years of work on this from that though you find this trust within for the first time where you stop believing everything you were

told in the stories and the fairy tales and everything. And really you start asking the spirit within. And that's become my truth. That's become my truth. Yeah. I think that's what we're talking about. Or when you're talking earlier about like, what are the tools that help you then listen to the teacher within and to find good teachers without too, right? So you have the beautiful balance of getting something new for the teacher within to respond to. And it's a beautiful balance of saying like, well, then what are those ancient tools I can turn to? Like, what are the things that help me hone that and really listen to that? Because we live in a society that doesn't want us to listen too closely to our inner teacher. You know, like if, if we do, we'll stop spending money on things like, yep. We'll stop sending like on wellness industry.

We'll stop thinking that we need to look young. We'll stop thinking that there, you know, we need more, more, more, more. Yeah. And that's not going to make anybody any money. So it's going to be a big problem. You know, I have a couple of friends that always say to me, you know, be careful. Sometimes that what you're hearing inside might actually be the devil and the darkness coming because he's so good. I hate saying he, but that dark spirit is so good at disguising himself as good. You know, I don't know how to feel about that.

It's an unsettling feeling. I know that in my gut and in between like my rib cage. know how to feel about that. It's, it's an unsettling feeling. I know that in my gut and in between like my rib cage, what would you say about that? Yeah, it's a great question. And I think for those of us who are on this path, we need to get kind of serious about this discernment of spirits. We need to be able to listen and trust the teacher within. And how do we know that it's not just our ego talking? And how do we know it's not also some sort of outside influence talking? And how do we know when that outside influence and our inside influence are also the same thing, which is also kind of a terrifying thought. Back to the lineage of

teachers. One of the great spiritual mystics of all times is a man by the name of St. Ignatian. And St. Ignatian, founder of the Jesuits, he actually talks a lot about the discernment of spirits and says, there's a way to start listening to your will in such a way that eventually it lines up with God's will. And you get closer and closer as you mature in this practice. And he uses a lot of old-fashioned words with it. Some of them are, it's like a consolation or a desolation, right? The consolation are those things that kind of beckon you in that you kind of like a gut feeling about the desolations are the things where it's leaving you drained. It's like walking

through a desert, right? And the trick becomes then not only recognizing the desolations and consolations in this web of discernment, but also finding out when one of those is disguised as the other, right? Cause that I think gets to the heart of your question. Like true temptation comes when we think we're doing the best good and we're actually maybe walking down a different path. And so it becomes a matter of having these tools and practicing them. And I think having a really good community of trusted people that you can go to and say, this is what I'm hearing.

How does this sound to you? Am I kidding myself? Is there an outside influence or is this actually of God? Because when you start going on the spiritual path, things look a little different sometimes. And you want to know that you have people with you to help you explore it. Well, who's got to you? Who has got, these are great questions. You guys aren't softballing anything. I love it. I love it. Nope, nope, nope, nope. To me, like I'm not only Christian, I'm also, I'm Native American, but I'm also really Celtic. My dad's Irish. I look like my dad. And what ends up happening for me when I, when I think about God is it enters into the kind of Celtic realm of like a Trinitarian understanding. Right. But by that,

I don't just want to fall into like father, son, and Holy spirit, because those are terms that have been helpful, but also hindrances sometimes. So I want to unpack it a little bit more. I see God as this great interwoven connection of love between the facets of creation, right? You know, God, the creator of all this, oh, you know, like a love so big that it wanted to have more life in the world, right? I see God as the redeemer, you know, that might be the Christ understanding, right? You know, this idea that we are all one in this brotherhood and sisterhood of life. And I see that in the Christ, in the redeemer piece. And then the sustainer, the Holy Spirit piece that is running through each and every one of us

and every living thing on this planet. And that spirit animates everything. And that is what kind of brings that Trinity together because it's not just the individuals within it. It's the love that they share and that we get to be grafted into. I think that's the beautiful work of God is that it's ultimately the greatest love that we can't even conceive of. And yet we get to participate in. And that kind of blows my mind.

Like, wow. It does. Christian always does. And I've actually talked to other people, other Catholics that has gone through the same kind of journey I am. And so when you hear the word God, it's a trigger. Okay. It's a trigger. Okay. It's, it's a trigger. So we've shipped it to source or spirit, whatever, you know, whatever you want to call it. However,

I still, you know, I don't even know what I call it, but the thing is, is that we grew up thinking it was this huge white man, this long beard on a throne, right. With his holy son with blue eyes next to him judging everybody sniffer boy judgy jesus yeah yeah so it's been a little it's been a journey for me and i finally am at a place where i'm like totally good with it because at first i was very angry i was very mad um because the things that i was not aligning with, not discerning with, not feeling good about, and it didn't have to do with evil spirits coming in. And that was one thing that I was attacked at first. I mean, we even had someone tell us because we were preaching self-love, we were, you know, of the devil. Imagine that's another thing. I mean, the devil, I mean,

I picture, you know, this red phase with these horns growing out and damning to hell. And, you know, and so all of it has been very tricky for me. So that's why that's where the hard questions come in because I'm still, you know, on my journey of feeling comfortable talking about it openly. Cause at first, Mandy could tell you like our first year of talking about this, I was like very scared to go both places. Very scared. Well, because the, the spiritual trauma that happens in organized religions is real. Um, and, uh, especially when you consider that depending on how, how you're defining a religion, right? Certain people end up having a lot of power at the top. And then the way, the way it's defined then becomes like, you better get in line or else a lot of what you're pushing against are actually kind of modern theological understandings of

stuff. Like I say, I say modern, I'm talking, you know, like, like the last, you know, thousand years of Christianity. And like, when you keep going back further and further and further to the desert mothers and fathers, to Jesus himself, you know, it starts to get very crystal clear that we're not, we're not talking about a God that's actually interested in lightning bolts and damning people to hell and yeah. And even where judgment is used, it's actually not used in the same way we do, right? Like it's actually much more like God is judging like rape to be bad. God is judging murder to be bad, right? Like, I mean, we would want those things.

We would want God. And Hillary, don't you feel that most of the things that I just said are not even in the Bible itself. They're more of taught by man because if you actually read the scripture itself without the conditions and what you've been taught, it's a totally different, you know, literature. Absolutely. Absolutely. And so you get, you get this kind of pressure cooker of bad theology after bad theology, and then bad practice after bad practice. And you get enough of that. And then you also get

enough othering in there as well. Like, you know, no women, nobody who has a different sexual understanding than just hetero, you know, like it's, you start to then to have a religion of exclusivity, which doesn't make sense when you, to my, to my reading, it doesn't make sense when you read the story of, of, of God's love. It just doesn't. That's just me. Shanna has brought this up a couple of times and it makes a lot of sense to me. I don't know what the solution is. And I feel like you are the closest to the solution for this, that you give me hope. And that is that we have this generation that is very evolved, and they also are truth seekers, and they're also not afraid to go outside of the box and think for themselves. They also speak up. They're unapologetic. But the problem that Shanna is always concerned about is

that they don't have the structure that all the generations before have had within church, within society, with it. So how, how do we help them? And, and what do you think that looks like for them? Because without structure, not the kind of structure we're used to where, you know, if you don't do this, then you're bad. But this, how do we come up with structure to support this generation? So I love this because it's on my mind a lot, especially when you read, and I have a psychology degree. So like when you read all these psychological studies about the importance of intergenerational spaces and places where people sing together and places where people eat meals together, like church, right, ideally, in the best sense of church, where we have fewer and fewer and fewer of those things happening. And so a lot of times,

our youth, and I think our adults are kind of now at a loss for where to find other people to help with their life, right. And so I, you know, I think where the rubber really meets the road with this is that, like, back to what Nadia was saying, churches actually need to start becoming places that are, um, are home bases for people. And I'm not saying churches are supposed to just be like comfort factories. Like you're supposed to, it's, I like how Brene Brown describes her understanding of church. She said she went to church hoping for comfort. And instead she found a bunch of midwives, right. You know, helping her birth something new into the world. Not that there wasn't pain involved, not that there, but that's how like religion at its best is there to be there

as you need it and to participate in and to help you to give birth to new things. So I, my hope is that we'll have a revitalization of what church actually means. I've developed an online community called The Hive, which has all these kind of spiritual tools that are happening in conversation and community so that when people are in any place in their life, maybe they have a church, maybe they don't, but it's not assumed that they do, but it is assumed that they'll need other people because I just don't think we're made to do this. How do you, like we were saying earlier, how do you do discernment of spirit without community?

How do you listen for the way the spirit is moving in the world without community? How do you make a big change for social justice without other people in community? Right. So yeah. Yeah. Community is, is definitely something that is missing because I think that every, there was like this shift of everyone going in, you know, in isolating away from it, which is probably much like, because of what I was going through. And so now it's like, can we find like-minded people? And I love like the thought church kind of like concepts that are, that are popping up all over. You know, I'm very raw. I'm going to just say it very forward. A woman dressed how you are in a

position that you're in is intimidating. Even to another woman, women are shifting. Women are holding positions like you. Women are going for their big dreams. Women are not letting men anymore tell them that they don't belong in a certain position. Women are stepping up and it's this age of Aquarius. So my question to you is with that becomes a lot of awareness. And I was really taken back in a good way by the fact that you have done this cycle and how women are bringing more awareness, not only to themselves, their souls, their spirituality, but their bodies. And that's part of all of us rising up. We have to have that awareness as women and, and grab it and accept it and empower it. So can you talk about that cycle? Because I, we haven't had anyone on that's really gotten into that. And I love that you also have not

only a spiritual way to explain it, but also scientific. I'd be delighted. And, and I have a whole masterclass on this, uh, on the hive too. So I can only scratch the surface, but if people are wanting to do a deep dive, which by the way, it changed my life. So I highly recommend people trying this out. You're so right within the church tradition, women have not women and women's bodies in particular have often been seen as foreign, other, dirty, gross, right? Like not to be talked about, or as you were just saying, covered up somehow, right? Which is very strange when you look at the scripture story. So I'll do a little bit of theology and then talk about the science that goes along with this. Like we have

this really cool story from the scripture and almost all the gospels called Jesus with the hemorrhaging woman. It's a story about a woman who has had her flow of blood for years, years, like 12 years and has gone to every doctor. Was that written about me? Yeah. Right. Exactly. Right. This is my never stops. Yes. Yes. And have you ever been able to talk about it in a religious setting? Even though never, never, as it ever even been mentioned, never. Right. And, and I'm really on a mission to change that because this story shows in this story, there's this beautiful interchange between Jesus and this woman where not only is she

healed, but Jesus is, is willing to be changed more like her. And there's this transfer and balance because in Jesus's time, again, women were seen not too differently than now, but as like less than, and if anybody touched a man, especially a spiritual healer, they would be seen as bad. And Jesus has none of that. Like, so I take this story as inspiration because then it goes on throughout the history of Christianity. And we get saints talking about how the side of Christ, the wound of Christ on the cross is actually best thought of as like a virgin, like a vaginal canal, right? Where new where, cause when he's pierced, what

comes out blood and water, right? Just like when a woman gives birth blood and blood and the, uh, the fluid of water and like substance comes out. So we put both those things in the chalice at the Eucharist. The Middle Ages have these paintings where Jesus' side looks like a vagina essentially, and that's where new Christians are being born into the world. And so all that is preamble to say, I'm always amazed how little of women's bodies and the cycles that we go through are celebrated as they likely should be, because woman, God as mother is all throughout scripture. So this class is not just for women who, who currently are still menstruating. It's for women who are there, they can be on birth control or not. They can, they can be interested in having children or not.

It doesn't actually just follow the cycle of the egg, because I think so much of if there's anything out there for women and their cycles in a religious way, it tends to just be about how you can get pregnant, which is also exclusionary, right? So this actually follows the hormonal journey that we go through because women, men are solar focused, right? They follow the pattern of the sun. They get up in the morning, they go to bed at night. And that means within a year, they follow a year, right? They grow one year. Women follow the lunar cycle and that's true even and that's true even for, uh, for people who are, are non-binary, but who consider themselves femme. So this class is for them as well. Um, following the lunar cycle

is very different because when you follow the lunar cycle, each month contains with it an entire year, you go through fall, winter, autumn, spring. Um, You go through the entire journey of within yourself of feeling the flow of spring and maybe the down energy of fall into winter. And so within a year, a woman actually lives about 12 to 13 years because of how many cycles there are of the moon. This makes so much sense. Right. We're like on dog years. That's right. That's right. It's actually a good way of thinking of it. Right. I love that. So there are rituals for every part of this process because there are times in our, in your, in our cycles, let's say like when you're menstruating, for example, the hormones are

actually the most equal they will be for the entire cycle. They're low, which is why you might feel some low energy, but it's actually the very best time to meditate because both of the hemispheres can talk back to one another in the brain better than they can at any other time of the month. Is that around the new moon? Because I always know when there's a new moon, hands down, something could be off with me. I'm like, is there a damn new moon? Sure enough. Absolutely. If you're going to associate the lunar cycle with that energetic timeframe, it is absolutely menstruation is that new moon cycle. So when, when things look darkest, it's best to think about it like, guess what? You're going to get to bleed on it in a few weeks. Right? Like, so just kind of just wait to bleed on it. I love it. Mine is on the new moon. I mean, I'm sorry. My period starts on the full moon. That's how I always know. And a lot of people's do. I mean, and the moon really does affect the

gravity of our earth. So it makes sense that it would. Is that, am I right? Yeah. And that's, that is how so many of our indigenous mothers and sisters have felt about it. Right. In my tribe, for example, the lunar cycle, she's seen as grandmother moon who affects all the waters of the earth, including the waters within humans, especially women. Right. You know, so on top of all of that, when a woman is going through her menstrual cycle in my tribe, they don't work for the first three days of their period. I'm taking this on. I know. Isn't it great? Absolutely. And there's wisdom in it because she is seen as being so spiritually powerful at that time that if she were to even like touch people's food,

it would be too much. I thought you were going to say like bitchy. No, no, no. Isn't it even better? It's better. Because I am. And I have some to say about it. Here's why.

Because in Western society, we like to keep women on the male solar pattern, right? Where you are just working at your full tilt nine to five every day. If we were actually following a lunar pattern or our actual female pattern, there would be times in your cycle where you are your most creative, where you have the most energy and you are the, you're most able to be extroverted, right? So you'd put all of your big projects there. There are other times in your cycle where you are actually very much more intuitive. You like to get things done more at, but like in a solitary way right now, you're like, I'm checking stuff off my to-do list.

That's actually the PMS phase, that Luteal's phase, right? You know, that time where you're about to enter into your reflective time. If we were following that creative cycle, we would stop trying to burn ourselves out in these phases, right? When you're following a solar cycle, you're working at full tilt the whole time instead of actually finding pockets of rest and working to your strength. So what I've started to do is with my own schedule, starting to put the busier parts of my month in the parts of the month that can sustain that. So that by the time I'm getting to the end of it, I'm not burnt out anymore.

My PMS is completely gone. I'm no longer like as crazy as I once was. I'm no longer like breaking out anymore. It's just completely changed it because I'm not getting like adrenal fatigued by the time I actually get to the end and I can pray. Yeah. That's a real thing. That fatigue. Wow. It's so fascinating. It's such a no brainer to think that this is something that us women should honor. And I mean, it's life, literally, it's life. And it's been so shameful to talk about. I even still have like shame around when I have my period with my own husband who I've been with for 23 years. I feel like, you know, I got to make sure and not let him know.

I'm worried about if I'm smelly, I'm worried about like him seeing it and making sure I wrap it up. And, you know, I mean, and that's just because it feels so yucky and dirty. I wash my hands more, I clean my sheets more and it just seems so gross. And like, you know, there is a lot of shame around it, especially for teenage girls. Because society wants you to feel shit, right? If you feel smelly, they can sell you something to make you feel not smelly anymore. If you feel ashamed about the products that you need to use, they can make you not use like really good products for the earth. They'll make you buy whatever is fastest that you can throw away and disposable, right? You know, like it just,

it's layer upon layer, like people are able to control women and get money out of our pockets by the more shame we feel about something. And I was thinking about what Shanna said, you know, I feel bitchy, you know, what, maybe we're actually not bitchy, you know, like, as I was told, I was a Taurus. And so I've always associated that with being stubborn. So they always say you, that PMS means that women are going to be bitchy. Maybe it's that energy we're actually accepting and taking on because we've been conditioned to think we're bitchy. But if we would alchemize that thought and turn that bitchy into rest or creativity or switching our thought around it.

Why are women trying to think that we're actually at our most prophetic at that time frame? It's a righteous right, right? There's a time for peacefulness and there's a time to get mad at the injustices in the world and even in our life. I tend to think if we were running in cycle with our cycle, we would see that as our prophetic time, the time where we're actually building up and we need to say something. We can't sit on this anymore. And we need to call it whenever I'm going to get my period. I'm not going to, I'm going to call it the, what did you say? The prophetic time. That's beautiful. And guess what? It's temporary. It's something that I always tried to bring my daughter's attention to, you know, she'll start getting real aggravated about everything. And he said a week ago, you were just perfectly happy. I was like, Oh, you're about to start getting real aggravated about everything. And he said, a week ago, you were just perfectly happy. I was like, oh, you're about to start your period. It's temporary, Lindsay. I'm like, you're fine.

I was like, you're fine. You're just very aware and your senses are very heightened to it right now. But on a normal day, you've got it under control. It's temporary. Totally. And there's all these ancient practices we can do around these times. Like there's different yoga for different parts of your cycle. There's, you know, there's different ways you should eat to support different times of your cycle. Like sometimes you need more chocolate.

Yeah, for, for sure. And you know why you need that? Because your body needs more magnesium and true chocolate is chock full of iron and magnesium. Exactly. When your body needs it, that's when you start craving it. It's not because women just like, it's because your body is like brilliant. Yes. I mean, if I don't have that racist peanut butter cup, there must be something about peanut butter too. I mean, I might lose my mind. There is something about the peanut butter. That's the same time in the, in the cycle where you actually need more good fats. So it's time to eat like avocados and nuts. So your, your body is a hundred percent taking care of you in a way. Okay. What about the

chocolate cake? Go for it. Do you have anything there? You know, I saw something interesting on social media the other day that was like in a time where we have been taught that God will always take care of us and to trust in God and to have faith. Why are we all being forced to live in this fear? Some people say, I don't want the vaccine. I'm trusting that God will take care of me and my body will take care of it. And I respect either side. But what would you say about what's happening in our world today? And maybe just some words of wisdom for people right now. Absolutely. First of all, I'm going to speak mostly to America because in America, we have this very

interesting theology that's very tied to the idea that we're here, you know, like that coloners can come in and take over, right? You know, like that's a particular type of theology called the prosperity gospel. And in America, the prosperity gospel works a little like if you're a good person and you have the right type of faith. And typically if you give the right donation often is the unspoken part or often blatantly spoken, then God will, will bless you. He will make you prosper is often what's said, you know, like, and you will have blessing upon blessing. When you start to lay that against the history of America, you start seeing things like manifest destiny come into that, right? Like if a white person comes into the country and God is blessing them, then they should be able to have all the land that

they want, right? And you see it kind of like written into this American dream. Obviously, there's a problem with this sort of theology though. God's story and Jesus always says this, Jesus says, pick up your cross and follow me. Like there's nothing in the story of God that says like, you can kind of treat God like a slot machine, right? Like if you put in the right sort of faith or the right sort of person, and you pull the handle enough time with the right prayers, you're going to get what you need. And so like, it is what the Holy Spirit has told us. And when we hear about in the ancient church is that we are called to love each other as

God loves us in all of this. So what ends up happening is when you are when you're subscribing to the prosperity gospel alone, it becomes as though prosperity becomes a limited resource, right? Like I trust God because God's going to help me because God loves me. I don't know about you, but God loves me. Instead of being like, actually, God has asked us to love one another, has loved one another. So for people who are discerning what that means for things like vaccines, what it means for social justice, what it means for how you should vote, I think you need to ask the question, not just, not just, is this going

to make me prosper, but is this going to help the whole world prosper right now? Like how can I do the most good, not just in my life, but in other people's lives. And that to me is like the number one step on the social justice path and to help counter that kind of toxic prosperity gospel that kind of makes its way into every bit of American life. I love and appreciate that. Yeah, that was very beautiful. I'm going to throw you some hard questions real quick. Recently, because there's so much new evidence and there's all these archaeologists and they're finding all these new things. And because you are both a Christian and have yogic practices, I'm going to ask you, they have, you know, many

people from all over the world are doing research and they are finding that maybe Jesus went to India. Ah, yes. Do you have any thoughts on that? I think it is quite likely that Jesus lived in a culture like right on many different trade routes. Like we know that he traveled a lot himself and many of the trades routes that he were on, that he would have been on, would have brought a lot of people and cultures into his, into his world. So whether he traveled to India or if India traveled to him, I don't doubt that there is certainly a lot of cross-pollinization of ideas that are happening in Jesus's time. The history of the yogic sutras are really, really super interesting. We could do a podcast just on that piece of it. But what I love

about the yogic sutras alongside with even the 10 commandments or even any of Jesus's principles, they really line up beautifully. Like you have the yamas and the niyamas, these practices of personal practice and how you should be in the world. If they don't line up with the 10 commandments more perfectly, I don't know what does right. You know, like, and so does the description of, of angels. Yeah, sure. I mean, you know, the hybrids, those, you know, like how the seraphim is described compared to some of their Hindu gods. There's so many, you know, similarities around the world, but we haven't been taught to see them. And we haven't even read them because I mean, when I think of a cherub angel, I think of the little fat, cute Campbell's soup baby. And then if you literally read it in the Bible, it's bananas. Yeah. They've got like six eyes, six wings.

And they're like, you know, it's, it's there. If you saw one, you would run away screaming. And they have very similar things to other places around the world, other gods or, you know, other deities that have been explained around the world. I found that to be fascinating. And this was once I was able to read the Bible with my own eyes rather than what I've been told. And I was quite shocked. Yeah. And also, I don't know if you've ever read the book, Living Buddha, Living Christ by Thich Nhat Hanh. Yes. I mean, it blew me away. It was beautiful. Mandy and I talk about fruit salad all the time.

Why only have one fruit? I do not think Jesus taught that whatsoever. And, you know, I love that we have these new options to go to places like your church now, or these other thought churches, and these ones popping up that really welcome everyone and don't judge people. And I think that's what we need. I'm just, I'm thrilled that you have both practices in your life. Can you tell us about Faith in a Twist? Oh, I'd love to. Yeah. Faith with a Twist is my book with my, one of my best friends in the world, who's a spiritual

director and a yoga instructor herself. She actually taught me my first leg of yoga teacher training and actually my first two legs. And what's so beautiful about what we try to do in this book, at least I hope it is, is we try to give all these practices that are inspired by the yoga practice itself and then have within it all the wisdom from both the yoga wisdom and Christian wisdom, right? And we try to do it in a way that does not appropriate either, appropriate either, right? So that like, we're not trying to tell you that, you know, arms out is suddenly Jesus on the cross pose or something like that. You know, like it's, it's, we've all seen that, right. We've all seen it's not great. Instead, what it does is it reminds us that yoga

is a way to pray, but it doesn't prescribe to you who to pray to. And that is something I think is really beautiful about a yoga system is that for my own self, yoga has taught me much more about how to listen to my body, how to actually treat it as a temple of the Holy spirit and not just ignore it. Body the spirit. Yes. Yeah. So each day I get on my mat and I'm praying through each one of these, these poses. I'm, you know, I'm sweating and, and, and, and wrestling with God alongside me, but with the stuff that I'm wrestling with in my soul, you know, and yoga gives me a place to really practice that out. And so I think when people are, are looking for things within, uh, within this world that might help them back to the blood memory that we were

talking about, the way I recommend people start figuring this out for themselves is to look at your own spiritual blood memory. What have things that your ancestors practice throughout time and time again, it may be that you need to not do that anymore, but there might be some surprises in there, right? Like maybe they followed a certain type of religion that you want to go check out because your soul will find it easier to pray that way. You're just kind of designed for it, right? You already have it in your DNA. You know what? That reminds me of, we had on this one girl, Madder Nan, who was a psychologist, but she's also, she grew up in a yogi-like community.

And she's not really fully into that anymore, but the practice of chanting was a big part of her healing and still is today. She even makes chants of Latin and of, you know, Christianity to invite everyone because it is a practice that I had found myself awakening to didn't even know what I was doing. And I only picked that chant because it said, God is love, but it not said God at the beginning because I was very, very, you know, like God is everything. I'm going to go to hell if I listen to this chant, but it says God in it.

So I'll do it. And I loved how she said it was like, it's, if it's not in your native tongue, your soul still understands this vibration and love and all this, which is so amazing because our souls don't know just English. Right. And that'd be ridiculous to think. Right. And, and I'm chanting is a really great example of this. So I'm so glad you brought it up. Chanting is a part of every major religion, every single one of them, because they understand that there's some sort of, it's almost like internal yoga to help get the chakras in line, to help get things flowing. What we tend to forget about chanting is that like, it actually flows right into all of the traditions as another way of describing spirit. In the Hebrew

Testament, the word for spirit is this word nephesh. And that gets grafted later on into the Greek New Testament as the word pneuma. Both of those words are things, think of the word pneuma, right? Like pneumology, like you think of like the breath, right? It's a word for spirit, it's a word for breath, and it's the word for Holy Spirit all in one. And the word nephesh also then brings in the throat. It's also the word for throat. So the word for spirit and throat in this ancient tradition are the same. Why? Well, because this is where not only the air flows through, this is where the blood flows through. This is where all of creation is flowing through. And so when you get stuck in the heart chakra and the prosciutto chakra, you're not able to do that anymore. You're not able to let the spirit flow. So the chanting helps to kind of open it up and

you find tremendous healing when you start using your nephesh, your soul. Is it also your vagus nerve? Of course. It's right here. It's amazing. That is like, you know, you have to decode these things though, because no one in your, you know, typical, you know, standard religion is going to speak those things. But that is beautiful. That's why I just love you, Hillary. I feel like, no, I feel like your hope for, for these future generations, they're seeking some, someone and a church like you. Um, I, can we just clone you? I was just about ready.

Well, I'd like to clone you too as well. Cause you're doing the same thing. You're bringing this, I mean, aptly named sense of soul. You're bringing this sense of like groundedness to people's soul with your hard, hard questions and your really excellent conversation and asking questions that people all have and then are afraid to ask is truly important work. So thank you all. I'd like to clone a million of you too. Oh, well, okay.

Here's one more really hard question. I mean, I, we could talk to you forever. Do you believe in, in past lives? Oh, great question. I mean, I, we could talk to you forever. Um, do you believe in, in past lives? Oh, great question. So this goes back to the blood memory piece that I was talking about, right. You know, so like as a Christian, I like, and I've studied a lot of other religions, right. You know, and, and in particular past lives, um, tend to work on the Hindu idea of, of the Dharmic system, right, the Dharmic wheel. And what ends up happening with that system with reincarnation in particular is that there's a,

it's hard to get off that Dharmic wheel, right, because it's hard to live a perfect enough life where you'll be able to be recreated and finally to enter intoharma, which is the, you're trying to leave the karmic wheel to enter into the dharmic space, right? So in Christianity, we instead talk about not this, not the kind of same karmic recreation. Instead, we talk about resurrection as an understanding of new life and new birth. And, but where I think these two things go hand in hand is in the blood memory, right? Because we are carrying our ancestors around with us. So I tend to think that maybe we, I think we tend to live a life that goes on forever with God. Like that's, that's my side that says resurrection, right? I don't think

we ever actually die. So I don't think we can have a past life because we've only ever had, we're only going to have life, right? So there's that, but I do think we carry within us our ancestors stories. So we have past lives within us. Okay. So is that much like the Jewish belief? I mean, cause the Jewish belief in past and reincarnation as well, which is so interesting. It's just you're saying. Yeah. I feel very connected to my ancestors. In fact, I dream about them. I have, you know, um, I can see how, what you're saying and that does make a lot of sense as well. But that's why I will never downgrade any, any thought that they have a past life. I think, I think you're giving you a multitude of many lives. Yeah. Yes. So Hillary, your education is very impressive. We also know that you're getting educated with your relationship with God. You also have a love for bees. Are you a mother? Yes, I am. Yeah. When do you ever have time? I mean, I feel like you must just read and read and study and study

and be a mom and do this job. I mean, and be a beekeeper, like, oh my gosh, you're busy. Oh yeah. I mean, I don't do any of it perfectly is probably the answer. Like it's all. I have two questions. Well, one, I can't believe, so you're a priest and you can be married and have children, which is great. I mean, it's like like that was so made up by man not at all you know in the bible and then you know they took out a lot of books or they didn't add into a lot of the books of the new testament one particular that I love is the book of thomas I think is gorgeous I think I mean it is agnostic it actually more aligns with me than some of the taught practices. What do you think about some of the books?

Have you read the book of Thomas? Have you read the book of Mary? Yeah. Mary's my favorite of the Gnostic gospels. I know. Yeah. One of them is very magical. That one's my favorite.

So the Gnostic gospels are very interesting. I think some of them are left out for, I think, probably good reasons. Some of them are like, you get these stories of Jesus and they're, and they're written like, you know, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years, right, right after the new Testament was written. Some of them. So like they, some of them are kind of like bizarre collections, like where Jesus at one point was really, really mad at some kids as another kid.

And so as a kid, he like calls a bear out to eat them and stuff like that. Like some of the Gnostic gospels go a little off the rails, but, but some of them are excellent. Like some of them. And right. Some of them were written way before too. That's true. So what's really beautiful about then the ones that are kind of, I would say occupy a much more mystical space, right? You end up getting these very important stories of communities and followers of Jesus who had a voice in their own right. And so I think we need to at least keep them and study them and understand what it was that the mystic lineage has to give us. The Gospel of Mary is a great example for, and why it's my favorite, is we have only snippets of it, but what we have shows us a woman who is probably Jesus's greatest disciple, the

woman who was actually given the title of Magdala, which would is, it's not just a place where Mary was from. It's actually, um, uh, gifted the title to a spiritual master in Jesus's time. And so she's trying to teach the other disciples what they don't understand. And we're talking the boys, we're talking Paul, or I'm sorry, we're talking Peter or talking, you know, talking John. And they immediately are kind of like, no, it can't be that this person knows this much. She's a woman. That whole cycle thing. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So it's kind of the story of, of women in faith. All I'm saying is, yeah, check them out. They're worth reading. They're worth reading, especially in conversation with the people who would have written them at that time.

Why are they there? Why were they taken out or not, not put in? These are really important and helpful questions. Wonderful. Thank you so much for coming on. I feel like you have brought so much wisdom, even to myself. I've learned a lot. I love the whole cycle thing. I love your openness and how you are just willing to teach the world all these things from a different perspective. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love you. Thank you. The feeling is so mutual. Yes. Thank you. Can we have you on again? I mean, I feel like there's just so much we could talk about. Yeah, I'd be delighted. I think we, you know, I feel like we're already best friends. So that would be a blast.

Your voice needs to be heard. I really enjoyed you. Thank you. Thank you all. It was a real honor and a real treat. So many blessings. If anybody wants to check me out over at thehiveapiary.com, everybody's welcome. And we'd love to have you in that conversation.

And now it's time for break that shit down. Let's break this shit down. Shall we? Love it. So just anything that's on your heart that you feel is important to say to the world. Thank you. I would say this, this is what's coming up in my heart right now. Each one of you is this beloved temple of the Holy spirit, and you have every right to claim that and to extend that beautiful love to everybody else. All you need is to trust that is to feel that, um, because it is flowing through you in this very, very moment. So that's all that's on my heart. Thank you so much. It's been such a pleasure. We'll be in touch. Maybe we could have you back for like Easter or something like that. Oh, that'd be fun. I've got, you know, we could talk about that. Cause I have a lot of questions about, Oh, let's do that. Cause there's a lot,

there's, there's a lot. Let's talk about that. And we can talk about the harrowing appell to what we talk about. I would love to. Yes. Hillary, thank you for reigning love, wisdom, and that all onto our listeners today. My honor. Thank you, friends. Have a great day. Thanks for being with us today. We hope you will come back next week.

If you like what you hear, don't forget to rate, like, and subscribe. Thank you. We rise to lift you up. Thanks for listening.