189_Celene Lillie: The Thunder Perfect Mind === Monica: Welcome to the Revelation Project Podcast. I'm Monica Rogers, and this podcast is intended to disrupt the trance of unworthiness and to guide women to remember and reveal the truth of who we are. We say that life is a Revelation Project and what gets revealed gets healed. Hello, dear listeners, and welcome to another episode of the Revelation Project . podcast. Today I'm with Celene Lillie, a returning guest. Celene wrote The Rape of Eve. And today we're going to talk about the Thunder Perfect Mind. And this is just an incredible conversation and I can't wait. To jump in before I do, I want to let you know that we've decided to extend enrollment for one more week into unbecoming. Monica: So please don't delay. If you are a woman who is interested in unbecoming from who the world told you to be, to reveal the truth of who you are, don't delay and. Hop on to our landing page and go to www.jointherevelation.com/unbecoming to learn more about six months of circling in sisterhood for live teaching, coaching practices, and more. Monica: Tools of embodied feminine leadership. This is all about disrupting and unwinding the toxic patriarchal programming, what we call the good girl program. It's all about helping you navigate the way back home to yourself and to live as a fully expressed, fully sovereign. Fully amazing, magnificent, revelationary woman that you are. Monica: And I love that quote. Maybe the journey isn't so much about becoming anything. Maybe it's about unbecoming everything that is not you so that you can discover. Reveal and embrace the truth of who you are. Honestly, this program is incredible. We led 15 women through the program last fall, and we have a great percentage of them returning to do it yet again, and we want to. Monica: Just create a massive invitation to any woman out there who is interested. 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Can't wait to see you there. Monica: Today, I have Celene Lillie, my returning guest with me, and we're here to discuss Thunder Perfect Mind. The Thunder Perfect Mind, and I'm going to start with a little excerpt from this divine ancient poem or text. So here we go. I am the first and the last. I am she who is honored and she who is mocked. I am the whore and the holy woman. Monica: I am the wife and the virgin. I am he, the mother and the daughter. I am the limbs of my mother. I am a sterile woman, and she has many children. I am she whose wedding is extravagant, and I didn't have a husband. I am the midwife, and she who hasn't given birth. I am the comfort of my labor pains. I am the bride and the bridegroom, and it is my husband who gave birth to me. Monica: I am my father's mother, my husband's sister, and he is my child. I am the slave woman of him who served me. I am she, the Lord of my child. And this poem, this ancient text, the Thunder Perfect Mind is A text that I feel is really starting to become more and more well known and there couldn't be a better time for what we're all awakening to. Monica: And if you were If you've been listening for a while, you know that Celene Lillie was a guest who came on to talk about her other text and her other book, The Rape of Eve. And it was such a profoundly Inspiring episode. I feel like if there's one episode that women mention time and time again, it is this particular episode called the rape of Eve. Monica: So we'll be sure to put it in the show notes and you're in for a treat today because this particular. Text is so rich and so deep and has so much to offer. And Celene is here to talk to us about it. She's given lectures on this particular text, and she's really an expert in this whole genre. So I want to kind of give you a little bit of background on her. Monica: Celene Lillie is a lecturer in religious studies at the university of Colorado Boulder. She's an adjunct professor at the University of Oklahoma and the Seattle School of Theology and Psychology and the Dean of the Western Academy. Her scholarly work focuses on the New Testament, the Nag Hammadi codices, and other early literature of the Jesus movement. Monica: With a particular interest in gender and violence. She's the author, as I mentioned of the rape of Eve, the transformation of Roman ideology in three early retellings of Genesis. And she's the co author with Jada Calloway. Mia Katrosits, Justin Lasser, and Hal Tasig of the Thunder Perfect Mind. This is a new translation and introduction, and I think you're going to love this episode. Monica: I also want to mention that there's something, and actually this is what I'd love to start with, Celene, this whole idea of a new New Testament, which is edited by. Hell as well. I would love to kind of just jump right in there and ask you, what is a new New Testament? And Hey, Celene, welcome. Celene: Hi, Monica. Celene: Thanks so much for having me back. It is just delightful to be with you again. So a new New Testament, what do I want to say about this project? So this was a project that I was involved in. When I was a PhD student and, um, Hal Taussig was my PhD advisor, he also just to say gathered all of us who worked on this book, The Thunder Perfect Mind, we all learned Coptic together, which is ancient Egyptian. Celene: Um, so that we could, we were learning it in order to translate, to be able to translate a multitude of texts. And Thunder is technically, I guess, one of the easiest Coptic. Text to translate. So people use it a lot in, in the classroom and we started getting in there and just noticing all of this very, very juicy stuff, which we will talk about throughout the course of our time together today, but a new, new testament. Celene: So this is another one of health house projects and he was really interested And for a very long time and still is in educating people about these texts that aren't found in the New Testament. This wide variety of early Christian literature, things like the Gospel of Thomas, things like the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, which would be super fun to come and talk about at some point in the future. Celene: You got Monica: it. Yeah. Celene: All of these really great, witnesses maybe is the word, to Celene: Other forms of Christianity in the ancient world, and a lot of them have very different relationships to women and gender than most of what has been traditioned to us. in the contemporary world regarding Christianity. And so, Hal noticed with his, with the interest in his students, he was also a pastor and would preach on these texts on Sunday mornings at his church. Celene: And alongside some of the work that Karen King was doing, who was at Harvard University at the time, that We really wanted to make these other texts available to folks, but wanted to go through a discernment process as to what we thought would really be life giving. Like if we were going to call this thing a new New Testament, one of the things that One of the criteria for this was what would be life giving to people who were spiritually oriented in the contemporary world. Celene: And so we convened a group of, I think the first meeting, there were about 10 of us and the second, there were 20 to 25 and we had scholars and pastors and Catholic nuns and rabbis and secular folks who all came together. We had one Buddhist to vote on what we thought, some of this early Christian literature, we thought would be helpful, useful, inspiring to folks and voted on, you know, and this sounds really crass, like voted on what was going to make it in and what didn't, but you know, this is how the canon came together in the ancient world. Celene: So. We voted on texts, and Thunder Perfect Mind was actually one of the ones that made it in, so it's the entire Christian New Testament, and then a number of added text, and Thunder, as I said, Thunder was one of the ones that, that made the cut for this, and partially I think because of Every time one of us brought it someplace outside the Academy, people were just, they were so inspired, and even at that time already, the text had really grabbed the imagination of artists and Yeah. Celene: Authors and musicians from a wide variety of places. Like I think it's a nurse with wound to, you know, it was kind of this ambient. I think they wrote a thunder perfect mind song in the nineties, Jordan and Ridley Scott. So Ridley Scott who did GI Jane among other, you know, big movies and. I always think about the 80s and 90s. Celene: It hasn't stopped there, but he and his daughter did an 8 to 10 minute ad for Prada using the Thunder Perfect Mind. Um, yeah, there is a movie called Daughters of the Dust about the Gullah people on the coast of South Carolina and the text played a huge role. In that it's the epitaph for the beginning of Toni Morrison's jazz. Celene: Um, so it's really all over the place. And then Sue Monk Kidd very recently, I believe it came out. It was 2020. It was right around the time of the pandemic. She wrote a book called. Oh, and it's going to leave my brain. It was just there and it's gone. Monica: I got it. Hold on. I read it. And I, same with, I'm having a hard time. Monica: Was it the book of longing? Celene: The book of longings. Yes. And she, which was random. Um, she actually used. She found our book and Thunder Perfect Mind plays a huge role in this and she and Hal Taussig have actually done some things together after this because of her interest in, in the poem. So it's a, you know, it's really interesting to see all the ways in which it's affected people. Celene: And I always feel like I need to say this. I don't know if I talked about this. When I was here last time, so apologies if this is a repeat, but you know, I started out when I was in school as an opera performance major and I hated it and I dropped out of undergrad and had no clue what I was doing and ended up working at a women's book and gift store in Charlotte, North Carolina with this amazing woman, Hope Swan, who I am still friends with to this day and Hope was She's, she is such an amazing human being, but really, I think it jump started my spiritual life in a lot of ways. Celene: And she's also an artist and she was really interested in Nag Hammadi and actually had done an art piece called the Thunder Perfect Mind. And so I was first introduced to this text as a college dropout when I was 20 years old. And then, lo and behold... 13 years later, I'm working on a PhD and co authoring a book on this. Celene: So you just never know what is going to happen. Monica: I mean, truly, it's truly amazing. And Hope Swan is her name. You had said, okay. So she planted the seed that then really germinated later, but it really is amazing how that. What happens? I was talking to somebody today and she was talking about just where her son is in his life right now. Monica: And he's doing this random job going out and identifying fish as part of like Noah, like this project. And I was saying to her, it's so interesting, but you get to a certain point in your life and everything random that you did, you can look back and see that it really wasn't. Random at all that you took something from each and every person or part you played along the way. Monica: And it kind of all culminates into who you're becoming. And so it's just this really beautiful process. And I'm so glad that you're telling the story because I actually hadn't heard that story. So what I'm really hearing too, is that this project, the new New Testament begins to include that which was excluded in the past. Monica: And what I'm hearing was. Excluded were the marginalized voices or what the fathers, um, you know, of Christian theology. I don't know if I'm saying this correctly, um, decided that that was fringe or unimportant and yet unimportant for whom actually. Right. And so what happens is that as we remember these pieces and these parts of the. Monica: You know, whether they be the lost Gospels of Mary Magdalene, right? Or the stories of Thecla and Paul is it, um, and thunder perfect mind that now we're starting to see, um, more of the truth actually, because, um, because so many of these Gospels and ancient texts are so revealing. Right? They're so revealing of things that we may not see unless we're exposed to them and actually tell a huge part of the human and divine story. Monica: And so it's really important for us actually to know about these seminal. I'm gonna call them seminal texts. Celene: Yeah, I would call them seminal texts as well. And I think, you know, additionally, so like, not only do we Get a lot of more, a lot more information about how do I want to put this so there are these ways in which the texts give us really juicy bits to think about in relationship to our own lives and from a historical perspective. Celene: They tell us a lot about the people who the really different ways in which people are taking up the Jesus story to answer really difficult questions about, you know, and we're like, if we're not in a moment right now. That's looking at this. I don't know where we are, but you know, what does it mean to live in a world that's full of violence? Celene: How do we hold on to our humanity in moments like this? How do we look at complexity? How do we come together as community? In the midst of it, and that these are the questions that I see, they're answering them in different ways, but these, when you look at the wide spread of texts that we get, these questions that are perennial questions for us as human beings, I think, are the ones that arise again and again and again and again. Celene: And so, for me, not only do these texts give us new ideas about how we might. interface or think about ourselves, the divine, the world. But one of the things that I think they also do is show us the vast creativity. Of the people who were living at this time in thinking new ideas, exploring new avenues, bringing again, the things that might not be important for one person, but vastly important to another to the four. Celene: And what if we're supposed to look at this wide variety of texts, not in a prescriptive way as like, this is what you should do, and this is what you shouldn't do, but As this vast welling up of creativity that can actually inspire our own creativity today in facing into these really, really difficult human questions. Monica: Yeah, I love that. I love that so much, Celene. And to your point, you had said, you know, something about, you know, these texts may not be important from this point of view, but from this point of view, and I think about even just the ancient texts that you brought in our last conversation and how. Yeah. You know, and it's like, so who gets to decide what's important? Monica: Who gets to decide? And I know you even caught yourself when you were like, I know this is terrible, but you had to choose a certain amount to consider in the new New Testament. You had to consider which, which ones of those were going to be. included. And yet I'm so grateful because one of those texts was this ancient story. Monica: And one of those texts was the gospel of Mary Magdalene. And one of those stories was the Thunder Perfect Mind. And so we start to actually. Understand and perceive so differently based on that. And it occurs as like a healing event for so many women who have listened to that episode. And by the way, I have had women tell me that they have listened to that episode two, three, and four times and cried every single time, you know, that that's how powerful that episode, the rape of Eve was to them. Monica: So. I got choked up. You get choked up. We all get choked up because it's it to exactly your point. We need to see ourselves. I needed to see myself. I needed to see a God that looked like me. I deserve to see myself in the divine. We deserve to see ourselves in the divine, no matter who we are, no matter what color our skin is, no matter what our gender is, we deserve to see that we are both human and divine, not just for some people, not just for some skin colors, not just for some genders. Monica: For all of us, because we are the human race, like one family. So this kind of starts to invite us deeper into what the thunder perfect mind was all about. And what I want to do first, if it's okay with you, Celene is just orient our listener to when was this found, you know, give us a little bit of context before we go there. Celene: So like the Eve texts, and just to say. You know, funnily, in one of the Eve texts on the origin of the world, there's this little hymn to Eve in the middle of it, and it mirrors the thunder perfect mind. We think it's a part of the thunder perfect mind. So these texts are actually connected, which is really fascinating to me. Celene: And a lot more work needs to be done on that. But so this text was found at in Nag Hammadi, Egypt in 1945 as a part of this larger cache of 52 texts that was found in its It's called the Upper Nile, but you go south and in the middle of the desert, our best guess is that it was connected. This find is connected with, there's some controversy about this now within, with scholars, but this is the position that I, that I hold around this, that it's been connected to the Pacomian monastery there. Celene: So this is one of the first monasteries in the ancient world. And one of the theories is, is that as the canon comes together and we get less and less texts that we're allowed to. To use in Christianity, they had book burnings and all kinds of other things and that these texts were most likely sound familiar that these I'm sorry. Celene: I feel like I just have to say this right now because it's so important with the book burning and the thinking about what we can and can't read, whether we're talking about the cannon or other things. I just think that this view is so infantilizing as if human beings are aren't mature enough to take information on their own and decide what to make of it. Celene: And I think as I'm saying this with these texts too, I've had folks say to me, you know, this is great for me to know about, but like my congregation is not smart enough to know about this or wherever else we put this in whatever context you see it in. And we have to stop infantilizing people and people deserve to have good and legitimate information about things. Celene: Even, you know, what I say, like don't take it at face value, go on the internet, research stuff, but you all should have access to this information and know that these things are available to you and no one should stop this flow of information. So thank you for letting me get on my soapbox for a minute on that. Monica: Oh, I I'm like preach. Yes. Celene: So yes, these texts were most likely part of, they were hidden and they were put in jars. Um, and the guess is that, you know, The monks probably thought they were going to come back and get them at some point, and they never did. Thank goodness. Monica: Or the monks hid them because... Celene: Well, one of the things that I wonder, you know, if you hide someone while the, well, you know, while the thought police are coming in to, like, tell you what you can read and not... Celene: I probably would have gone back to get them after they were gone. You know, I probably would have gone back to get these things for the library. And, you know, who knows what happened that they were not returned to that library. But I do actually think that's good news for us in the 21st century because they probably would have been lost forever. Celene: And, you know, a part of these 52 texts, we had some that we knew about from other finds. So some of them weren't new. Some of them we'd heard about from these. Early leaders of one faction of early leaders of the church who were the ones who won. So we only have their voice. We only had their voice for the most part for a long time. Celene: And the early church fathers, I keep finding, trying to find new ways to talk about them because talking about them as early church fathers, even during that time, elevates them to a status that they didn't even that they didn't actually have really at that point. There were so many other things going on. Celene: And, um, it's all of these ways in which our language and our framing of things can be problematic, really problematic. And it makes us think that this dominant narrative was in fact, inevitable from the beginning. And that's not true. So included in this was a little fragment of Plato's Republic. So a really wide range of materials. Celene: Were a part of these texts and thunder perfect mind was one of these from from the group. That was a total surprise. We had no clue that a text like this existed. And because of that, you know, there's not a lot that we. Know about it. We, I think, put, you know, a 200 year, two to 300 year time range when we thought it could have been written anywhere from, you know, maybe 100 BCE to 200 CE. Celene: It's part of a. of a genre that exists in the ancient world called erotology. And this is these divine folks who have all of these wonderful I am statements. Um, Thunders is a little different and, and we can talk about that, but people like the goddess Isis, and I actually pulled this up here so that Just to show people like what this is like. Celene: So this is an ISIS erotology from the first century CE. So this is between zero and 100. And she says things like, I am the one who discovered wheat for humankind. I am the mother of King Horus. I am the one who rises in the dog star. I am the one called goddess by women. For me was built the city of Bubatis. Celene: I separated the earth from the heaven. I showed the paths of the stars. I regulated the course of the sun and moon. I devised the deeds of seafaring. I made what is right strong. I brought together woman and man. I assigned to woman to bring into light of day their infants in the 10th month. I ordained that parents should be loved by children. Celene: I imposed punishment. Upon those unkindly disposed toward their parents with my brother, Osiris, I put an end to cannibalism. I taught humans the initiation into the mysteries and it goes kind of on from there. And so you can hear this resonance with thunder, but these are all of these, like she only exists in this really lofty position and she's very much in charge. Celene: of everything. And so it's a very different voice than what we get in something like Thunder, where she is revered and slandered and lofty and every day and all of these things kind of in between at the same time. So that's kind of a little bit about, yeah, a little bit about the history of Thunder. And just again to say, we still I think are grappling with what this means and are still exploring and are just really at the beginning of this exploration. Monica: Okay. I love this so much. I love that you brought ISIS into it and these IM statements. So I'm familiar with the IM statements, not only from the Thunder Perfect mind, but for those listeners who listen at all to Paul Zellig, you know, he, Has some IM statements that are really orienting. I'm going to call them that, like there's something about saying those words that I aming as you would call it, that there's actually this empowerment that comes with it as you speak these words. Monica: And so it reminds me of early on when I came out of my dark night of the soul, I would, I wrote a piece. And it was called, I have rights. And it was like, I have the right to, and I, and in it, it's also very paradoxical. I had no concept yet of the thunder, perfect mind. But in this writing, it was like, I was freeing myself. Monica: I have the right to make mistakes. I have the right. To make as many mistakes as I need to make and still be chosen and to choose myself, to nominate myself for opportunities. And, and it was like this embracing of all of these parts of myself that I had cast out. So it was very much during my process of remembering who I am, who I am. Monica: And, and I am. Messy and magnificent. It was like this truth. Like I get to be all of these things and nobody can take this from me. And so it can be really powerful, really empowering, really moving actually to, to do that for yourself. And so it really invites us to try on these statements. And also there's so much more here. Monica: So before we go into the more, I want to point to a story I've heard you tell, and it's the story about a rabbi. That you were with, you called yourself like a lowly, a Celene: lowly student at the time, a lowly doctoral student. Monica: I want you to tell that story because I feel like it, it will play into this. Celene: So, so this is actually when we were working on, on the new New Testament book. Celene: And I was sitting next to one of the rabbis that was there and. He turned to me and, and, you know, it said, you know, Celene, how do you, how do you say the name of God and how do you pronounce the name of God? And for those of you who are not familiar with Jewish culture, you don't actually pronounce the name of God. Celene: You never pronounce the name of God. It's, um, it's four letters in Hebrew and. We oftentimes will use the word like Jehovah in English translation. So it comes through the German and then we get this there. But, you know, in people who are Jewish, we'll say like Adonai or, or just like Hashem for the name, because you don't say the name of God. Celene: And so I'm thinking while I'm there, I'm like, Oh no. Like, what is, what is he trying to get me to do? Am I going to do something really bad? And I was like, and I looked at him and I'm very flustered. And I said, well, the name of God isn't. Producible. I mean, isn't pronounceable, isn't, isn't sayable. And he's like, you're right. Celene: And he then says, so these are the letters in Hebrew. And he goes, yeah, Celene: in his very raspy breathing. And he says, you know, he's like, the only way that you can say it, because there are no vowels is on the breath. And I wonder if that breath is the voice of Thunder Perfect Mind, if that's who Thunder Perfect Mind is, if that's the voice in this poem. And I still have goosebumps when I think about, when I think about this and think about this possibility of what What does it mean? Celene: We get this, too, in both the Jewish scriptures and the Christian scriptures around this connection with wisdom, Sophia, and in Proverbs, actually, wisdom does have all of these I Am statements, too, but not part of this range. And, yeah, what would it mean for the voice of God to be primarily a woman's voice that does do some, some, that has some gender fluidity, which we can, we'll talk about, too. Celene: But this primary voice of God. A woman and that encompasses all of these experiences from what we think is, you know, the transcendent divine to the person who is, you know, literally like thrown out on the street. And what if that's the voice of God? I mean, holy shit, Monica: Right? What if that's the voice of God? Monica: And what also comes up for me? Is this breath as Ruach? Is that the Celene: Yeah, the Ruach? And that this word, so it's the same ruach and pneuma in Greek are the same word. And it sucks that we have, that we pick one English word to translate this because it's breath, wind, and spirit at the same time. So this breath is the thing that connects us, you know, it's wind. Celene: It's the air that's around us that we breathe in each other's air. It's the thing that's inside and outside of us. And it's the thing that brings us life at the same time. And so often when we're translating, we pick a word like it's either breath or either wind or either either spirit. And Monica, I don't know. Celene: I always do this with my undergrads. I don't know if you ever. Where you grew up, if you had the thing where as a kid you held your breath when you went by the cemetery because the spirits might get into you. Yep. Well, it's that same concept because breath, wind, and spirit are all connected. So you can literally breathe in the spirits. Monica: Yes. Celene: And so we have these traces of this in our own mythology in the contemporary world, but in the ancient, but in the ancient world, they are really part and parcel of the same system. And so that too, so that breath of God is breath, wind and spirit, the thing inside us and outside of us that connects us and enlivens us. Monica: Oh my gosh. Okay. Mind blown because. It's true. You know, I love this word remembers. So it's, you know, what I hear in the thunder perfect mind is like, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember. And it's like literally in thunder perfect mind, the text remembers us. It reorients us. It reattunes us. It brings us into wholeness and then thunders us into a million pieces. Monica: You know, it's, it's this. Really powerful place where nothing is rejected or erased and, and all at the same time, there's a process and a presence and an example through this. What the thunder perfect mind is basically doing is it's taking the binaries and there, and there's our card, right? It's taking the binaries and. Monica: Making them fluid. It's this place where everything that's been cast out, and this is this God, that without the new New Testament, we don't know this God as intimately as we do. When these other texts are brought in that bring the voices that point to. These other very important things that we are to remember, which is that if you can't see God, it's because you're not looking low enough as Miguel brought to the podcast when he came on. Monica: If you can't see God, you're not looking low enough. It's like, wow. Celene: Well, and you know, you're reminding me too, of just all the ways in which. I feel like we, we make am into a noun and we think of it as something that gives us parameters and not that parameters aren't always that I, you know, I, there's, oh, that's a whole nother complicated conversation to think about the ways in which, you know, Boundaries, parameters, having limits is not a bad, is not a bad thing. Celene: It doesn't have to be a bad thing, but it can also be absolutely confining depending on where those parameters are coming from. And I'll just say for myself, you know, I do this to myself all the time. I put these, I take in these messages from the outside world and I put these parameters on. And then my am actually gets smaller and I forget that my am is a verb and that it's constantly fluid, constantly shifting, and actually can contain multitudes. Celene: And that's the thing too, you know, kind of going back to where you started with this as well, having those I am statements in the ancient world, most people couldn't read or write. So the best guess is that this is performative. And so when I read, The I ams of thunder allowed, I literally am merging, I am, um, what's our card again? Celene: I can't believe the C word just. Monica: Yes. Conjunction. Celene: Yeah. There's this conjunction between my I am and thunders I am. And so all of the sudden it opens up. All of these different kinds of possibilities and because that I am of thunder is so vast, it actually, then I, you know, automatically I start including things that might not be in the text of thunder per se, but are clearly between the lines of thunders. Celene: I am. Monica: Oh, I love this. Okay. And I'm also having this revelation in this moment that. There is a lot of perception without the New New Testaments. There's a lot of he, him, his, let's just say it that way. Okay. There's a whole lot of he, him, his, which means there's a, you are okay. So if you are divine, I'm not because there's this absence without her. Monica: There's this absence that. We then kind of become the, the forgotten, like the forgotten ones. And so here we are remembering at the same time, the collective is remembering and we're remembering the texts that were lost long ago in the monk's monastery, and it's all happening at once, like a quantum unearthing. Monica: Of this memory of this fluidity. And this is where we get into the gender bending part of it. I think, do you want to take it from there? Celene: Yeah. So there's this, there, there are these really interesting moments in thunder where all of the sudden. The she will shift to a he and that, you know, it's not, it's not all the time, but it's this gesture towards this gender fluidity. Celene: And I think there's all kinds of ways that people have thought about it that are taking up this poem, you know, from thinking about. You know, queer lives and trans lives, two things like Jungian psychology, where we talk about the ways in where folks talk about the ways in which men and women also have an anima and an animus with inside them, within themselves, so that we too are not only one thing. Celene: And I think the piece of I really appreciate about this is that, you know, so, so much of the time I wrote a paper. A number of years ago for a conference that was looking at women in the 24 like looking at women in 2nd century Christianity. And I used Eve. I used Mary Magdalene from the Gospel of Mary. I used the back left from the acts of Poland. Celene: And I used Esther. No, I actually I used 1st. I use 1st Timothy, which is very restrictive on women that. Women be silent, you will only be saved, you know, don't teach anyone, you'll only be saved through childbearing because you're like Eve, you know, one of these kind of classic Eve texts in the Christian scriptures. Celene: And one of the interesting things that I noticed about this is that the places that women occupy have a really huge spectrum in the ancient world from being able, you know, like Thecla. Who's going off on her own and teaching and preaching and doing this stuff to something like First Timothy, where women's roles are really, really circumscribed. Celene: But men tended to have the same role every time. And it was legitimating their own power. And most of the time it was doing so violently and that was the position that was constantly occupied, but because it's so tiny, constantly needed to be defended is what I think, but women had this huge range of, of possibilities for them that included these more masculine roles in certain ways. Celene: And I. There is something to me that's really beautiful about the possibilities of thunder, because it's a place that no matter where you fall on the gender spectrum, you can see yourself in this text. There is a place for everyone here, and it also means that no matter how you self identify, you can actually broaden the possibilities. Celene: and the spectrum of what you're allowed to claim in the midst of this. And I think, you know, maybe the other thing that I just say about this is that this is not atypical of the ancient world. It's atypical for what we normally get from the ancient world and are paying attention to, but they're much more laid back in certain ways about gender, about different kinds of gender fluidity than we are in the contemporary world. Celene: And I also love them the ways that this Text just pushes against so many of our contemporary notions, boundaries, status quos, and allows us to, along with it and its voice, like, it just explodes so many things so that we each can follow that voice of thunder in ourselves and occupy the spaces that we Thank you. Celene: Dream of and dare to occupy, Monica: You know, I've heard people say, having a thunder moment where in my case, my bill of rights, right? Where I was like, wait a minute, whose rules have I been living by? Whose story have I been living by? It's this moment of personal revelation that for me became this, this Voice through the noise, you know, this, that was this quieter, more, it was like, Sophia, it was wisdom. Monica: It was the voice of wisdom. What I started recognizing about this voice is it didn't need to be loud to be heard, that there was this wisdom to this voice that was coming through my interbeing. It was this voice that was. Strong and true and quiet and solid and kept reminding me that I was allowed to be all of it and that it didn't diminish or define me and that there was this and more to be revealed and more to be revealed and more to be revealed and just this allowance in that way of living that started to become this guiding principle in my life. Monica: This guiding voice in my life. Celene: I, oh, I love this so much, Monica. And, you know, this piece, I think, I want to nuance a word a second as I'm hearing you talk about this, and it's this word occupy because so often it can be used in militarized settings and thinking about, oh, yes, you know, just thinking about all kinds of occupations and the way in which, you know, even Now it's this reminder for me about, I'm occupying land that wasn't ceded by the indigenous people in Colorado right now. Celene: And so I just, I want to be really careful and nuanced by what I mean by this, but it's the very thing that I think that you're talking about is that like, what does it mean to be in, be able to inhabit the fullness of my external and internal spaces? And, but not in a way that inhibits other people, but it's a way that in a way that when I. Celene: When I can claim all of those pieces, and that the voice can be big or it can be small. This is just my, my personal experience of this, so I'll be curious to see kind of what you think about this. But I find that like when I'm, like the irony of course, is that when I'm in my center, And taking up my own space, I don't need to be defended in the same way, and I can actually allow everyone else to take their space too, like there's some kind of a reciprocity of those experiences. Celene: Moments. And it also means that when somebody comes and tries to take up my space or shut my space down, I then can actually meet that, but from a place of And tries to Integrity rather than from deficiency. Monica: Yeah. And I actually recognize this, believe it or not, in the context of sisterhood, true sisterhood, where So many of us have been conditioned or programmed in this way that I talk about all the time, these micro doses where this, so if you are that, then what am I this, if you're divine, then, and then you have these micro dose stories that, you know, is this diminishment that ends up being this trance of unworthiness. Monica: And so. When we recontextualize sisterhood and we dare to celebrate each other in our fullness, instead of the binary, which is too much or not enough, we then full self expression is not a pie just because you take your piece. It doesn't mean there's less for somebody else. That's not how this works. And so it becomes this way of being with no one and nothing left out. Monica: With no one and nothing left out, Celene: Monica, do you find that, you know, when you, the more you claim and the more you like embrace your gifts. And I think for me to this would be a place then where I also know my limits like, oh, this isn't a gift of mine instead of and I and I feel like this, this happens so much again in the context of, you know, what you're calling the sisterhood where then instead of celebrating others gifts, it's The jealousy, it's all of these other things, or I want that, or this scarcity mentality around this. Celene: But when I can claim all of my stuff and be in the messiness, you know, the center of the messiness that is my life, I also, there's more room. I find my capacity for grace is much larger with other folks and their messiness and my capacity for joy for all the things that they can bring to the table that that are not things that I may have, but that I have other things that I can bring to the table that other people might not have. Celene: And that there's this. There's this possibility of co creation that exists in an entirely different way when I'm embracing the, all of the muck and all of the beauty at the same time. Monica: Well, and here's where I just want to give a plug for this is why I love human design so much actually, because I feel like the teachings of the gene keys and human design are so deep and so rich and so vast and there's that word and. Monica: There's also what you are so beautifully surfacing is this way that true love, true, unconditional love for myself is loving myself for everything that I am and everything that I'm not and being like. Yep. Guess what? I'm not designed that way. And that's okay. And there's so many of these because otherwise what a revelation it is to be like, you know why you can't do that, Monica, you're not designed that way. Monica: It's like, oh, thank God. You mean there's nothing wrong with me. I'm just not designed that way. Celene: Well, in this notion, I mean, You know, I, you know, and I feel like this really started in the, probably like the seventies and eighties, but like the, you can have it all. And it's like, you know what? I don't want it all. Celene: Yeah, please. No, because we're, again, we're finite human beings. And how do we embrace, and so this goes back to kind of what I was talking about before with this limit, this piece of the limits where I was like, Oh, I, you know, I don't want to let go of the limits because there are moments when. Oh my gosh. Celene: I can't tell you how much I can relax when it's like, Oh, that's, that's not who I am. Like, I don't need to be good at this thing. And Oh, Oh, Oh, isn't that such a relief that like, I don't need to be all things to all people. Holy shit. Monica: Like, wow. Like imagine that, I mean, that's what I say about this whole piece about saying yes to the mask is that when we actually stop defending our lives, you know, stop defending ourselves and stop this territorial way of being with our lives, right? Monica: This mine, this whole way of just mine, yours, black, white. You know, uh, Republican, Democrat, like, there's just like enough already. There's this whole, just constant conflict. Celene: This is the thing that I love about the voice of thunder too, is that people so often notice the binaries that are being connected, but there's like so much beyond the binaries that's happening in this voice. Celene: And I just feel like this is the polarization that's happening right now. It makes me, it makes me cringe. It makes me cry that we cannot figure out how to talk to one another. And this voice too, I just feel like is so beautiful in the midst of that, where it's not just these binaries or polarizations. Celene: But she's like cutting through them with, and this was a great insight when we were working on this together. But Maya Katrocets of really noticing the ways in which, wait a second, these binary, it's not just the binaries, which is the thing that everybody noticed about the poem, but there are these thirds and there are these things that are, they're pairs. Celene: And then there's a third and it moves to the side a little bit. It's doing this with gender too. And all of these places where. It really seems to be collapsing these binaries that are really part and parcel of ideological constructs that we are fed, whether it was in the ancient world or today, we get fed these ideas and what does it mean to, to move into these more complicated spaces for ourselves and others. Monica: So, Celene, this might be a great time for us to read another stanza or portion of this poem. What do you think would be a good place? I'm looking specifically at 13. Celene: I love this and maybe because I've used If you all can handle like a little bit of a longer piece and Monica, would you like to read? Monica: Are you kidding? Monica: Sign me up and they're here for it. I know, I know my listeners are here for it. Celene: So why don't we start at that stanza above 13 and let's, can we actually read the whole page? It's so good. Monica: Hell yes. Okay. So where, where do you want to pick up? Do you want me to go down to 30 and then you take over? At the pay attention to me. Celene: Sure. That sounds great. Monica: So here we go. I am the silence never found and the idea infinitely recalled. I am the voice with countless sounds and the thousand guises of the word. I am the speaking of my name. You who loathe me, why do you love me and loathe the ones who love me? You who deny me, confess me. Monica: You who confess me, deny me. You who speak the truth about me, lie about me. You who lie about me, speak the truth about me. You who know me, ignore me. You who ignore me, know me. I am both awareness and obliviousness. I am humiliation and pride. I am without shame. I am ashamed. I am security and I am fear. I am war and peace. Celene: Pay attention to me. I am she who is disgraced and she who is important. Pay attention to me, to my impoverishment, and to my extravagance. Do not be arrogant to me when I am thrown to the ground. You will find me among the expected. Do not stare at me in the shit pile, leaving me discarded. You will find me in the kingdoms. Celene: Do not stare at me when I am thrown out among the condemned. Do not laugh at me in the lowest places. Do not throw me down among those slaughtered viciously. I myself am compassionate, and I am cruel. Watch out. Do not hate my compliance and do not love my restraint in my weakness. Do not strip me bare. Do not be afraid of my power. Celene: Why do you despise my fear and curse my pride? I am she who exists in all fears and in trembling boldness. I am she who is timid and I am safe in a comfortable place. I am witless and I am wise. Monica: I have the chills. And can I just say that I love how she's like, do not stare at me in the shit pile, because there's something about that too, that's so real, right? It's like the part of me that can relate to that, that can relate to that human part of me. That is so afraid of being in the shit pile and doesn't want to be seen in my shit. Celene: And, you know, I think that really real, that really real place in the outside world too, you know, with media. And I think particularly around our celebrity culture, where, Monica: And our cancel culture, Celene: like there is something where we get off on, on being voyeuristic and putting people into these positions. And so. Celene: So there becomes, I think, this corresponding personal fear in the midst of this, you know, and what is it, and this just names that so... Oh, she just, she names so many things I think that are, that are so relevant. But this one, this line, I just, every time I read it, I just think, and how do I stare at my own self when I feel like I'm in the shit pile? Celene: All of those things where, where it's really about, you know, these learned insecurities. That's right. And how can we, with all of our juicy and messy I am's come together and support each other in these moments? How do we find community across a difference? And I think that's the thing too, like she just like, she gathers everyone into her. Celene: I am. Monica: Yeah. Okay. And I'm, I'm not done with this. I want to, I want to kind of go, go into this a little bit more, but what I want to say is that my listener often hears me say, I can breathe here, right? I can breathe here, which is interesting, right? So, cause I go back to what the rabbi said. I go back to this idea and I'm either going to thread in human design here and the gene keys, because in human design and in the gene keys, you're given strategies or you're given lines in order to code. Monica: Get out of the shadow frequency and into what they call the gift frequency. And one of my archetypes for my life purpose is to be the dancer. And so it's really interesting. Cause I was like, dancer, I don't dance. And that, you know, cause I was being so literal about it because shit pile and you know, and. Monica: And then I was like, Oh, like the dancer, like dancing with what is the like, hello, like that. And also that breath is also a strategy for transcending the trance, the friction, the shadow that it actually is like, Oh, I forgot to breathe. Let me remember, you know, that I am both human and divine, that I have the right to be messy and magnificent. Monica: I have the right to be both human and divine. Like, so what she's doing here is so powerful because she's, she's presencing. She's not staying in the either or the or she is being. Celene: There is, so I was in a dream group with a Jungian therapist a number of years ago and one of the things that she said about this poem is that because of these different positions that we as we take in the I am actually vacillate between our sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system With the voice of thunder. Celene: And so thinking again about how the breath does that, how it helps regulate our sympathetic nervous system and bring us into the parasympathetic. And that there's something about this poem that again, with that breath. Actually, if we can presence with the poem and thunders presence, we too can find that equilibrium. Monica: I love that so much. Yeah, there's some, there's like, what's here is the dancer, the breath, the relational, the fluid. And, and to welcome, I mean, this is the other piece is that there's this welcoming in that's so very beautiful, because I think we're at this place in our collective awakening where we are meeting the edge or what. Monica: The cards might pull up the dead end, and it's interesting because in these cards, the ones that I use, the dead end is really the place where we cry out. And it's the place where we surrender, where we say, uncle, uncle, take me out, coach bench me like I can't, I can't do this anymore. There's something in the grace of this moment, actually, in the humility of this moment. Monica: In the depths of our human mass, where we end up on our knees and just when we think we've reached the bottom, there's a whole nother bottom waiting for us, right? So there's this place and this is what I'm pointing to out there. And I'm inviting all of our parts to see ourselves in the everything and the everyone that is happening because it's What Thunder is doing is she's saying, I am the disco ball, I am the disco ball, and we all are, but y'all's out there acting like you're like a fragment, like a nothing, because if you knew your own sufficiency, if you knew your own enoughness. Monica: You would not kill, you would not maim, you would not war, you would not pervert, you would not pornify, you would not, it's this, and it all gets to belongs. So here we are, in our, it's like wherever you go, there you are. It's this, again, place where we meet the very edge of our capacity to hold. It together anymore. Monica: And she invites us to let it go. Just let go and say yes to the mess because we're all in it. Celene: Monica, I don't know if I, if I've gone off on, on this tangent with you before, but you're just, everything that you're saying is reminding me of this piece around holding, you know, the holding it together, the holding space, the doing all of these things. Celene: And I have realized. Monica: And the women can do it all, right? Celene: Yeah, women can do it all. We can hold it all. Um, we're going to hold space for this. And I have really been watching this. In terms of my own languaging, because realizing that I don't actually hold anything, I'm a part of co creating spaces and those spaces then hold us, the voice of thunder can hold us, but when I start to think that it is me doing these things, that's when overwhelm, burnout, all of those, all of those, oh goodness, all of those, so. Celene: Really difficult emotions, things, those depths start that dead end. It's that dead end when I think that I'm and again, what am I doing? I'm making that I small. It's no longer dynamic. It's no longer amming. It's a noun and it is solidified and hard and it's calcified. And that's when I can't move anymore. Celene: That's when I can't dance anymore. That's when I can't breathe anymore. All of those things and that's the other thing that I think this voice invites us to do. It says, I will hold you and you don't actually need to be the one who's doing this. Monica: So this is making me like look at this book because we got the card conjunction in the alchemical conjunctio conjunction, which is love, divine union, and infinity. Monica: And you just mentioned calcification and What I was thinking of was coagulation and both apply, but these are in the area of the book for my listener, I'm looking at the book of the wild unknown alchemy guidebook and card set, and I'm in the End of the book, that's called the eight operations. And this is all this whole card deck is about alchemy. Monica: And the reason I think that this is so important is because Isis was all about alchemy. The mysteries are all about alchemy. The thunder perfect mind is all about alchemy. And so. We have to become familiar with the eight operations when we're doing our inner work, because what Celene was just talking about is calcification, which is that place where we become There's a flawed ideology or an outlook that keeps us in this place of frustration, where we become hardened, calcified, unable to, it's like the opposite of fluidity. Monica: It's this place where we get crunchy and, and it's uncomfortable and nothing is working. And then what I was thinking about was where a lot of people also end up is this place of stuckness, which is known as coagulating. So we need coagulation when we're bleeding out. So some of these things are really important, like they're really, and this is why it's so important for us to kind of know these alchemical operations, but not from this turning lead to gold, literally, it's more about. Monica: Alchemizing this inner lead into this gold, into the light to take the shadow and bring it to the light. And so coagulation is this really. The adherence together of a fixed way of seeing things or a fixed way of being, we can get stuck there. And so, the sacred and remembers us. It remembers us that we. Monica: Are interdependent that we are interconnected that unless we get this piece, we will be stuck forever in this place. And honestly, that place is a hellscape. It's that place where nothing works anymore. So I think it's really powerful to just look through that lens for a moment. So cool. So Thunder, really, like we were just talking about how do we become hospitable to welcome these parts in? Monica: And, and I want to also get in here with this question about deifying, because I think it's a fascinating subject. And I once heard Celene, some question that you were posing. Or contemplating, and it was in this realm of our own contribution to the deity to welcome. How much do we contribute to the deity? Monica: Do you know what I'm saying with that? When I bring that into the. Celene: Yeah. So, you know, this is, I loved your. Your disco ball metaphor, you know, this piece, like we're all a facet and, you know, we get this in, in the book of Genesis about, you know, people are, everybody's made in the image of God. And so if that's true, then we actually need every image to get back to God. Celene: Like you can't, you know, throw out some images. You need every facet. You don't have a disco ball unless. All of the facets are there they talk about in Hinduism. There's this idea of Indra's net that, you know, each person is a jewel and then you're connected to this wide net. And I do wonder about, you know, and this is something too that I have thought a lot about from my training with Hal Taussig, but like thinking about. Celene: Something like, you know, the other place that people who have grown up in Christian culture know a lot of I am's because of Jesus's I am's, you know, I am the good shepherd. I am the gate. Really interesting if you think about that. But if you also think about this is oral culture. If I'm saying I am the gate, how am I identifying with the divine in that moment? Celene: Jesus actually says, he's talking to God and he says, you know, as I am in the father, you are in me and I am in you and it's y'all. So y'all are in me and I am in y'all, all y'all, not just the men, not just the women, not just whatever. And so there are all of these places and there are all kinds of practices in, you know, other traditions where you identify with. Celene: the deity. And so I wonder about the ways in which to, like, this is a co creative process. And we actually need, and I would say, you know, as I think about it, we talk about, you know, you know, human beings made in the image of the divine. But I also think about all of these other aspects of our world, the trees that If there aren't trees, I can't breathe, and we can't be having this conversation right now. Celene: I think about the fact that, you know, we're here, you know, on my computer. Like, I think about my computer often, and I think about... The really horrible labor practices that go into mining the metals that are in my computer and that so many gifts like this moment are coming through the possibility of this machine that is also predicated on a lot of harm and destruction. Celene: Thank you. In those ways, like, again, it makes me think of this voice of thunder, which is a deified voice. And it deifies all of these things that we tend to either, or it ends them all in your language, Monica, it ends them all. Monica: It ends them all. Oh my God. It, I am some all it ends them all. I love that so much. Monica: And that. Our perspective defines what we're able to see. It's why I think Jesus said things like he who is without sin cast the first stone, or, you know, this idea of stepping into someone else's shoes. And it's, we have to dare to look if our life is not, okay. Do you remember when we were kids, Celene, and we had those things that you would put the viewfinder in the, and you would like click it and then you'd be like, Oh, it's like the little picture in the mini mouse. Monica: But we need to like, look. Through this constant viewfinder and just find another perspective, another perspective, another perspective, and to, for God's sake, zoom out, open the aperture, the all aperture and see from this higher place, because. When we are so zeroed in, when we are so in the microfiche of it, zeroed in, it's so constricted, it's so, the actual thing that happens in my body, when I forget that I, That I don't have to be perfect, right? Monica: Kind of how you and I started this before we jumped on. We were talking about the parts of us that get the better of us. Sometimes parts of us that tend to run the show sometimes, Celene: You know, just the, and, and that's a growing edge too, right? Also, you know, we get used to. You know, I don't want to say that this is a positive thing, but, you know, we were joking about something and the first thing I did kind of was like apologize for, you know, something in the past and, uh, you know, one of these things that it maybe one day I will move over the threshold of that, but, you know, it's enough to notice it and, but these pieces where. Celene: We're also habituated to the contraction. And so there's a way in which that's also comfortable. And so being open, surrendering all of these things. And two, I feel such a difference in my body. Even saying those words, I talk about the kind of my own self defeatist. Tendencies and I can my body literally constricts and I talk about being open and I can feel it open. Celene: But the openness I'm, you know, even after years and years and years and years and years of work, it's still not always my default. And so that's a growing edge too. And so how do we and that openness can be really scary when we don't have answers that and can be right. Really scary because all of the sudden we have a different kind of agency if there's not an either or and if there's all of these ands and we have to make different kinds of decisions and discernments about things. Celene: And this is also reminding me just because I don't want to forget to say this at some point that I don't know, Monica, if you noticed that the end of the poem has a little bit of a different voice. Then the beginning of the poem, and we think that this portion at the end was added on to try and hem in the voice of thunder, that it was too big. Celene: It was too much, too expansive, too much space. Yes. Too much space Monica: Because it's completely antithetical to the, to the vibration of the rest of it. It's like, wait a minute. The aperture gets really tight and it's so great that you're bringing this up because I'll be sure to include the poem in the show notes and I want my reader or my listener and of course they'll be reading so they'll also be my reader. Monica: You know, to really notice that, to really notice that the end stanzas and to feel into the difference because it's there Celene: And then, you know, to take that feeling and to just notice all of the places in. The world where when people are trying to do, I feel like creative collaborative work, whether it's around peacemaking or art, that all of a sudden these other voices try and hem things in and close stuff down that it's not just something I think that's happening that happens within ourselves, but we can watch these motions in the larger world. Celene: And again, like this is not Yeah. Not everybody, not everything, but I always find it very interesting as I start to notice patterns. Yeah, they are. They're patterns and they exist on the microcosm within my body and then in the macrocosm in our society and in our world. Mm hmm. Monica: Yeah. Yes. Yes. It's true. You know, there's always going to be the, but not all. Monica: Yes, I get it. But I think we're, we're kind of talking about the greater pattern here. Well, Celene, I'm never disappointed. I feel like. We just journey to these places and just kind of go there. And I'm so grateful for that. And I know we're kind of coming up on time and I'm wondering, what else do you think you want to. Monica: Bring into this portion of the conversation that you think will not only create a, I don't know, maybe a contemplative mood to end on, but also maybe plant the seeds for our next conversation. Celene: Oh my goodness. That feels really big and really juicy. And, you know, I just, Celene: I don't know why this is the thing that's coming to me now, but really this piece about being able to take up space, being Able to make up one's own mind about things. And I think, you know, maybe the thing that I want to say is there are probably two things that I want to say. The first is that I so often feel like in this day and age. Celene: We're supposed to have little soundbites about things, we're supposed to have answers right away, we're supposed to have a position right away, and there's something in the complexity of Thunder's voice that reminds me that I don't need to have answers right away. That I can take as much time as I need to discern my words, to discern what I want to be doing with my life, to cultivate compassion for myself, to do all of these things that in this world that I feel like so often makes me feel like I'm in a rush, the patriarchal pace, the patriarchal pace, the Trisha Hersey, the nap ministry, is Go look her up, but yeah, I'm huge fan, you know, about, about grind culture and this idea that we constantly are in this emergency response mode. Celene: And that's not, again, not to say there aren't emergencies, not all of these things, and yet we are allowed to, we're allowed to slow down. We're allowed to take time. We're allowed to discern. And there's something about Thunder's Voice that I think allows us to do that. And I just want to encourage anyone, no matter who you are, this is a really fun poem to spend, to spend time with, to Monica: spend your life with. Monica: I mean, my goodness. Celene: Yeah. I mean, we scratched like one little tiny piece of a surface that could be, um, a part of, you know, part of the dance of this and that there is room for everyone here. There is room for everyone here. Monica: There's the three. I love that so much. I love that so much. And this is also a big thing that we teach in sisterhood because There's this tendency for women when they're starting to share and tell the truth about their own life to immediately shut down and say, I've taken up too much time. I've taken up too much space and our dare, you know, to piggyback on what Celene is saying is to dare to take up even more space, even more space than you think. Monica: Is appropriate and to approve of it as Libby would say, to approve of all of the space that you take up and to give your own self the space and the grace to do that, to really do that. Because what happens, especially to those of us that have felt we've been in positions and we've been conditioned to be in positions that. Monica: Where like the opposite to actually like we've been conditioned to stay small and uncomplicated and the truth is we're actually the opposite. We're like so big and we're so fucking complicated and like to just dare to be that and to approve of it is so thunder. It's so thunder and it's also. Wonderful for the women and even men around you to see you in your full expression, because that is, I feel like the biggest gift we can give each other is to dare to take up space in the way that thunder is modeling. Monica: And so good, Celene. I love you. I can't wait for our next episode. Yes. To doing one on the gospels of Mary Magdalene. Yes. Wouldn't that be amazing? Celene: Yes. We'll put that on the docket. Oh, Monica. Thank you. Monica: Thank you. Thank you. Oh, it's been so wonderful. And for our listeners, I will be sure to put the links, including Celene's last episode and probably a couple others that may help just kind of in this genre. Monica: I'll put some more links of some compatible episodes in the show notes that'll build on each other. I feel like you're going to enjoy. Some of these backlogged episodes that also expand the aperture even more and are even messier and better and grittier and all the things, and just really unify some of these conflicts and opposites and give us. Monica: Permission really to be all of it. So thank you again, Celene, and to my listener, more to be revealed. Monica: We hope you enjoyed this episode. For more information, please visit us@jointherevelation.com and be sure to download our free gift, subscribe to our mailing list, or leave us a review on iTunes. We thank you for your generous listening and as always, more to be revealed.