Self-actualization

Not Your Celebrity’s Kabbalah

/ Lauri Ann Lumby / Leave a comment

Welcome to the official launch of my newly revisioned Order of Melchizedek Training!  This is a training that has been around for awhile, but which needed to be reconfigured – certain courses removed, and others added. Additionally, as times have changed, so too have the images related to this intensive training program. Without further ado, let me introduce you to the newly envisioned Magdalene Order of Melchizedek – the primordial tradition of mysticism and magic.

In short, the Magdalene Order of Melchizedek training is a comprehensive and intensive dive into the most ancient systems of personal growth and transformation which later influenced and inspired Hebrew, Gnostic, Coptic, Orthodox, and Christian schools of mysticism. Whereas these ancient systems bear no identifiable origin or name, they have been most clearly articulated through the Jewish Kabbalah.

The Magdalene Order of Melchizedek, however, is not your celebrity’s Kabbalah. This training bears no resemblance to the “red string” Kabbalah that has been lauded by pop stars and the Hollywood elite. We do not promise wealth, outside power, or fame.  

Neither is this training an attempt to appropriate the closely guarded Jewish mystical schools. As I am neither Jewish, nor have I studied with modern Jewish masters, it would not be appropriate for me to claim knowledge of their methods.

Instead, drawing from (as close to as possible) original source material and incorporating my lifetime(s) of cross-cultural mystical and theological studies, this training gets to the heart of the mystical intention which is, and has always been – UNION. Union with Source (that which some might call God), Union with our truest Self (what some might call our “God-self”), and Union with all of Creation.

LOVE is the ultimate goal of this training. LOVE, not of intellect or emotion, but LOVE that is embodied. Embodied Love is arrived at through a thorough and deep process of identifying, healing, and transforming all that is within us that has forgotten we are Love.

To support and facilitate Embodied Love, the Magdalene Order of Melchizedek guides you through ancient symbols, tools, and practices that illuminate the woundedness within us that seeks to be healed, while providing the foundation for healing those wounds. You are additionally supported through one-on-one mentoring.

The Magdalene Order of Melchizedek is not for the faint of heart. Neither is this a shiny object to be claimed. Instead, it is a deeply personal, intimate, and often challenging process for catalyzing change with an eye toward empowerment that endures. As creator and facilitator of this training, I will hold your feet to the fire, while providing comfort and encouragement through that fire. The Magdalene Order of Melchizedek is not a process to do alone, but only in the company of one who has walked that fire before you.

Learn more here

When Your Demons Come Home to Roost

/ Lauri Ann Lumby / Leave a comment

Letters from Hell #6

Today is a bad day. This has been a difficult weekend. For no (every) reason whatsoever, I have been feeling profoundly sad bordering on depressed. This is a stuck kind of sorrow compounded by a prescription antidepressant that makes it really difficult for me to cry. I feel like I’ve got a 20 ton boulder sitting on my chest, just behind my sternum.

Usually, I know what to do with this kind of sorrow.  I sit with it. I allow myself to feel it. I apply Tonglen or Ho’oponopono to it. This time, neither seem to be budging the load.

I allowed myself a weekend of self-care. I planned for nothing and allowed myself to simply rest. I didn’t much have a choice as I’ve also been feeling the consequences of autumn allergies. To put it bluntly I feel like SH*T. I don’t do well when I’m sick. I tend to fall into judgment, self-loathing, and self-flagellation at the hands of my inner critic who looks an awful lot like the “Shame nun” from Game of Thrones. “Shame.  Shame.  Shame.”

I’m not good at being vulnerable. I feel embarrassed and ashamed. I don’t want to invite anyone into my vulnerability. There is really nothing anyone can say that will make it better when I’m feeling this way. I know I just need to wait it out.

This morning I wrote in my journal.  These are the words that surfaced:

Taking this moment to pause. Suffering fall allergies and the pure exhaustion of a forced life. How much have I forced my self to be and do ____________ instead of just being myself. I’m tired. I feel stuck, but I’m not sure I really care. I’ve worn out my dreams.

I’ve worn out my dreams.

My dreams of a forever love.

Dreams of becoming a successful writer.

Fantasies of becoming a sought-after teacher.

Herein lies at least one face of this deep sorrow. I’m grieving. I’m grieving the failure of the goals, wishes, and dreams I had for my life and which I pursued with a vengeance. No one can say that I didn’t try (though I know some who will tell me I didn’t try hard enough or in the right way – to them I say, whatever).

Life doesn’t always give us what we want. And when we don’t get what we want, we can be like Sisyphus vainly attempting to roll the boulder up the mountain, killing ourselves in the process, or step aside, letting gravity take the boulder to where it naturally wants to go.

At some point in our lives, we are all faced with a crowd of our unrealized dreams. We can cling to or try to revive these dreams, or we can surrender to the fact that maybe these dreams were never meant to be fulfilled and/or that the journey was the point, and not the destination.

It still makes me mad. I know what my gifts are and on some days it just kills me to know that they are not being utilized.

I grieve this as well.

As the Rolling Stones once said, “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometime, you’ll find, you get what you need.” (Hmmm….that might be bullshit too….unless they’re including getting what we need only by the skin of our teeth.)

Being human is hard. Today is one of those days where it feels especially hard. I don’t like feeling sad or vulnerable. I don’t appreciate the demons of self-doubt, personal loathing, or shame that dance around in my head when I’m feeling this way. I also know better than to try to “change my thoughts” (toxic positivity) in an attempt to make the demons go away.

Instead, I sit with the demons. I call each of them forward. And I do my best to LOVE them. Each of them arose out of some kind of need – whether it be the need to belong, the need to believe the lies of perceived authority, or to keep me in compliance with the system, they came as some kind of support. Additionally, they show up to remind me of the deep pain I’m still carrying from trauma I’ve experienced in my life, along with an invitation to tend to yet another deeper layer of that pain that is now ready to be seen, felt, processed and released.

As is always true of the spiritual journey – wash, rinse repeat. So back to the demons I go to hear what they have to offer me in the way of healing this time.

Thank you sirs, may I have another.

Navigating Loneliness

/ Lauri Ann Lumby / 1 Comment

Loneliness is a natural consequence of spiritual awakening. As we grow spiritually, turning inward to come to know and more fully embrace our true selves, we find the world and the life we were living less satisfying. We find ourselves seeing the illusion and falsehoods of the traditional systems of the world and find these increasingly uncomfortable. We find that we no longer fit in with the jobs, people, and experiences to which we had been giving time and attention. As we grow spiritually, we find that we never really did fit into these roles, but that these were just masks we wore to be accepted and acceptable to the system.

The more we tend to our inner journey, the less interest we have in spending time or energy with anyone or on anything that isn’t supportive of our truth. We cut away the relationships that are harmful or draining while cultivating a more peaceful and gentle life. Eventually, we discover that our “friend” circle has become very small – made up mostly of other people who have done similar spiritual work on themselves – and our relationships with these people are less about a need for belonging or gaining acceptance, and more about mutual sharing, support, and respect.

The need to belong is one of the greatest hurdles to becoming whole. The need to belong arises out of a codependent need for acceptance, and the price of that belonging is often no less than our souls. We lose ourselves in our compulsive need to be loved and accepted when the only love we truly need is the love we have for ourselves. Many become stunted in their spiritual growth because they are afraid of losing that (false) sense of belonging and because they are afraid of being alone.

Being alone is in fact one of the greatest gifts we can give to ourselves. It is in solitude that we are quiet and still enough for our deepest wounds, unhealed traumas, unnamed and unmanaged fears have the room to surface. It is because of this predictable dynamic that many avoid the solitude that their soul desperately needs. Loneliness is one of the aspects of our conditioning that surfaces in that space of being alone.

Loneliness is at once natural, and a conditioned response based on fear. As a species, it has been demonstrated that we need community to survive. Being wholly alone is not healthy for anyone. We need human interaction. As a species, we are interdependent. We could not survive without the collaborative work of the pack – each individual sharing their own unique gifts for the sake of their own fulfillment, and in service to the all. Loneliness, in this case, is a gentle reminder that we need human connection.

Loneliness as a response to fear, however, is less about our natural inclination toward tribal interaction, and more about the shield that flies up in protection of the ego (false self) when we are getting closest to our deepest wounds. The ego could be said to have its own life based on conditioning and on the fears that keep us imprisoned in the system. The ego defends itself when it feels threatened. It does not want us to heal or grow because with every step toward healing, a piece of the ego dies. Loneliness is one of the shields the ego throws up in defense of itself.

When loneliness arises in our consciousness, our first inclination is to find a solution to loneliness – to make it go away. We desperately seek after anything that will fill that emptiness that accompanies loneliness. Some turn to food, drugs, or alcohol. Others turn to compulsive activity. Others seek for someone (anyone) to make them feel less alone. Sometimes, the someone arrives disguised as love, but most often proves itself to be just another face of dysfunction.

These efforts to fill the hole left behind by loneliness will always fail, as the result of these attempts are fleeting and impermanent at best. Eventually, we end up right back in a pit of loneliness, except this time, the pit has grown deeper.

The actual remedy to loneliness exists, not in resisting it or trying to make it go away, but in being with the loneliness to find out what it has to say to us. What is the fear that loneliness has hiding behind or beneath it? Is it the fear that we are not loved? Is it the fear that we are alone? Is it the fear that we are insignificant and have nothing to share in the world? Once we can identify the fear, then we can do the work of healing it, and in that healing, becoming free of that fear.

One of the greatest gifts I have given to myself, was a 30 day loneliness practice. I was somewhat newly divorced and thinking I needed to find a new person who would love me. It turned out the person I was really looking for to love me was myself. The loneliness practice supported me in arriving at that knowledge and in doing the healing work that allowed me to be mostly free of loneliness.

For the loneliness practice, I turned to Tonglen. Tonglen is a mindfulness practice from the Tibetan Buddhist practice that supports us in being with our pain, our loneliness, and our fears.  Being with these wounded aspects of ourselves allows us to be healed of them. Here are my instructions for Tonglen taken from my online course “Starting a Spiritual Practice:”

Tonglen—a Tibetan Buddhist Healing Practice

Tonglen is a simple breathing and visualization practice that helps us to release powerful,

negative feelings and emotions.  Instinctively, when we experience a negative feeling or  

emotion, we are compelled to push the feeling away.  Tonglen invites us to do the opposite – to bring the feeling in so that it can be healed, transformed and released.

1) First, we FEEL the feeling. We allow ourselves to welcome it instead of pushing it away.

2) As we feel the feeling, we identify where in our body we are feeling it. 

3) If possible, we name the feeling (is it shame, hatred, anger, resentment, sorry, guilt, betrayal, etc.)

4) After we have identified where in our body we are feeling and feeling and if possible,

identified what the feeling is, then we breathe into the feeling.  More specifically, we breathe into the place in our body where we are feeling the feeling….while allowing ourselves to feel it. 

5) After breathing into the feeling, we breathe out love. While breathing our love, we might

also visualize what love looks like—maybe it is light and it has a color, perhaps it is the shape of a heart or the wind.  

6) As we breathe out love, we imagine it going out into the world, maybe even to any person

or persons who may be somehow connected to the negative emotion we are feeling. 

7) We continue this process of feeling the feeling, breathing it into our bodies and breathing

out love until we either feel a shift, or simply run out of time.  If during the practice we find

ourselves brought to tears, this layer of pain or woundedness has been freed and released.

8) Tonglen can be turned to again and again and again for the release of negative emotional

states.  We can us it both symptomatically (as a negative feelings arises) or therapeutically

(for example, daily if working on deep seated negative emotions or old and lingering emo

tional wounds).  

To free ourselves from the imprisonment of loneliness and its resulting fear, apply Tonglen to loneliness. With this I recommend a two-pronged approach. The first is a foundational approach.  In this, set aside 10-20 minutes each day to be with loneliness, applying the practice of Tonglen. The second is the symptomatic approach. WHEN you find yourself feeling lonely, apply Tonglen to that loneliness. Tonglen can be done at any time, anywhere, no matter what activity you are engaged in. It is a powerful tool for freeing ourselves from the loneliness that might otherwise drive us to act in non-loving or unhealthy ways toward ourselves. Tonglen also allows us to be freedom of the ego’s shield of loneliness so that we might increasingly escape the system that keeps us imprisoned in the false self, thereby freeing us to live more and more as our truest self.

Lauri Ann Lumby, MATP, provides one-on-one mentoring and support for those who are in the process of their spiritual journey and who are awakening to their highest selves and their most authentic truth. Lauri helps you to shed the layers of the ego made up of conditioning, past wounds and trauma, and fear so that your Soul might be free to live as its truest self.

Learn more here.

Seeking Refuge in Hell

/ Lauri Ann Lumby / Leave a comment

Letters from Hell #5

Increasingly, people I know and with whom I am close are retreating from the everyday world. Me included. This retreat is partly an act of self-preservation, but even more so, it is a result of their awakening.

The self-preservation piece is obvious. People no longer want to be part of a world that is built on fear, power, and control. They no longer want to participate in the violent division that currently defines our world. They no longer want to fight or even be witness to the ignorance and hatred that fuels the fires of the hell humanity has created for itself. Instead, they are choosing peace and a sense of safety over ongoing conflict. They are choosing to separate from the noise so they may enjoy quiet. They are retreating into a sanctuary of their own making, based on what they have come to learn about themselves and their truest needs, wants, and desires.

This brings me to the awakening part. A dear spiritual brother recently shared with me a lecture given on the “disappearing” that was once predicted by Carl Jung. In short, Jung theorized that as human beings become individuated (Abraham Maslow called this self-actualization), they would come to realize that the system in which they were conditioned to participate no longer works for them. They see the system for what it is – false, abusive, and harmful and begin to find ways to detach themselves from the system. As they do so, they discover what their soul really wants and needs to feel whole, and they begin to choose that. For many, this choice leads them away from the outside world and into a space that is more quiet, peaceful, content, and gentle. This quiet place becomes their refuge from a world in which they no longer belong (if they ever really did).

This choice for refuge is available to all of us, when we so-choose it. Whether actively individuating, or simply wanting to find peace in a world at war with itself, finding refuge is simple:

  1. STOP engaging with the divisive tactics of the hell in which we are living. Don’t participate in the arguments, the projections, or the blame.
  2. Embrace the position of objective witness. Observe the dying world without reaction. See it. Observe it. Make note of it. But don’t get sucked into it.
  3. WHEN the dying world triggers your fears and unhealed wounds, instead of reacting out of those fears, STOP and engage in the many spiritual tools you have for easing and transmuting those fears.
  4. Start, or double-down on your daily spiritual practice. Make this your number one priority.  
  5. Be mindful of how and with whom you want to spend your time. Say NO to those people and activities that drain you or compel you to engage in division.
  6. Make your home a sanctuary. Gather around you the things that give you comfort and make you feel safe.
  7. Cultivate a routine of self-care. Choose at least ONE activity per day that feeds your soul – read, write, take a walk in nature, visit an art gallery, have coffee with a dear friend, watch a movie or documentary that informs or inspires. Cook a wholesome and delicious meal.
  8. Nap. The violence and discord of the dying world makes us tired. Get extra sleep and nap when you need to.
  9. Tell the “should” voice in your head to SHUT T.F. UP. “Should” is one of the strongest weapons of conditioning and is one of the ways we remain tied to the system. Cut the cord. Let it go. DO what you love and let the non-loving conditioning go.

Whether we acknowledge that the world we are living in is a kind of hell, or are simply outgrowing the conditioning that has kept us imprisoned by the system, refuge is necessary in our journey of finding peace and contentment in our lives. That refuge is available to you right now, if you so-choose.

Simple Tools for Finding Refuge

Hell Isn’t All Bad

/ Lauri Ann Lumby / Leave a comment

Letters from Hell #4

Living in hell isn’t all bad. Hell definitely has its perks:

  1. Living in hell allows us to clearly see the world humanity has created for itself – one that springs forth out of fear and which seeks after power and control in the hopes of mitigating that fear.
  2. Living in hell shows us daily the consequences of this quest for power – greed, gluttony, and the violence that humanity wields in their never-ending quest for MORE.
  3. Hell has been increasingly peeling back the layers of humanity’s corruption and all the lies that have been cultivated to justify injustice.
  4. Hell allows us to see who people truly are, including the lies they continue to tell themselves so they might benefit from the system hell created.
  5. Hell also shows us who we are not.
  6. Every second of every day, hell shows us the system that allows for its survival, along with how to escape that system – if only we would pay attention.

The doorway into hell is the same path by which we can escape. Humanity, as a collective, is not doomed to an eternity in hell. As individuals, we are not condemned to waiting for everyone else to wake up before we can make our own escape. The steps necessary for our escape are simple:

  1. We willing to see the hell-system for what it is – a system that is based on and manipulates us through fear.
  2. Harness the skills of observation required to identify all the seemingly infinite ways in which the system is attempting to manipulate you through fear (or shame).
  3. When you notice the system attempting to trigger your fear/shame – SAY NO!
  4. Instead of giving into the fear, STOP and turn your gaze inward – what is the fear that is being triggered? Where did you first experience this fear/shame?
  5. Engage in the mindfulness/meditation practices that you have for releasing/healing/transforming that fear.
  6. Wash, rinse, repeat.

As the journey into hell was created by a thousand steps, so too is the journey out. Escaping hell is all about identifying every wound, trauma, fear, and past conditioning that ties us to the system, and then unraveling ourselves from them. The journey out of hell is about healing through heightened awareness, and radical personal accountability. The more we see the ways in which the system controls us, the more power we have for making our escape.

Whereas the cacophony of the system wants us to believe otherwise, hell is not what the majority of humanity wants. At our core, most of us yearn for peace. We long for connection. We ache for compassion and kindness. And we’re driven toward justice. To escape hell, we cannot allow the system to convince us otherwise – for humanity is made of Love and it will ultimately be to Love that we will return.

For Support Along the Journey:

2 year training package
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Self-Awareness
One-on-One support

Being Soft

/ Lauri Ann Lumby / Leave a comment

For my entire life, I have been hard. I have worked hard. In school, I studied hard. I have been hard on myself by creating high expectations of myself. I have been hard on others by projecting the expectations I have for myself on them. I have tended to a strict moral code. I have been a master of discipline, persistence, tenacity, and work ethic. I hold myself to the highest of integrity – while expecting others to do the same. I have been hard on my physical, emotional, and mental self by forcing my body into my own dysmorphic idea of “perfect weight and size,” by stuffing my emotions (don’t let them see you cry), by covering deep hurt with rage and unmet needs with resentment. I love deeply, but when wronged, the ax falls. Because of life’s many heartbreaks and betrayals, I have built a shield of armor around me in an effort to keep myself safe.

All this hardness has given me the illusion of being safe and made me feel like I was meeting society’s expectations of achievement.

We are conditioned, after all, that we are only valued based on what we achieve.

Straight A students are lauded by parents, teachers and other authority figures (while being despised by their fellow students for being a smarty pants and a showoff). Valedictorians get into good schools and receive scholarships. Those who earn a doctoral degree secure positions of prestige at universities. Skinny girls are more loved and popular than those with curves.

Right!?

WRONG!

If there is anything that life has taught me, it is this:

Our value has absolutely nothing to do with how we look, what we do, or what we have achieved. Instead, our value is intrinsic in our very being.

As the prophet Isaiah quoted Source as saying:

You are precious and glorious in my sight, and I love you. (Isaiah 43: 4)

As I have increasingly come to understand this and have done the work of healing the wounds within me that have then allowed the Love within me to be more fully known, what has been hard in me has become more soft. I no longer seek after a size 6 body (menopause took care of ever thinking that would once again be a possibility). Instead, I’m working on accepting a curvaceous post-menopausal form. I’m no longer seeking after achievement, recognition, or fame. Instead, I’ve learned to embrace the gift of invisibility along with the precious few who can actually see me. I’ve come to understand that my work in the world is mostly done on invisible planes and what is done in this world, is meant for a rare and precious few. I’m still disciplined as I find I do better with a structure of some sort in place, but I’m also more flexible with my time and can even embrace DOING NOTHING (gasp!). I’m more forgiving of myself and of others (though the betrayal rule remains in place – betray me or take advantage of my generosity and I reserve the right to sever that connection). My heart is wide but fragile. I reserve the right to protect it as I see fit.

Being soft is also a mindset. Instead of walking like an elephant through the world, can I move more gently? Instead of always hurrying, can I begin to slow down? Instead of punishing myself with all of my conditioned shoulds (I should be able to drive when and where I want. I should go outside. I should take a walk. I should…..), can I be more kind in my expectations of self and allow myself to simply be?

After a life of being hard, I think it’s time I embrace being soft.

Shining a Light on Reality

/ Lauri Ann Lumby / 4 Comments

This past Thursday morning, I was gifted with a dream that felt more like a lesson or an attunement than merely a dream. In this dream, I was visited by other-worldly beings (aliens? angels? Who knows!?). I was together with a group of spiritual companions, and a light was being shined upon us, that light reached out to enfold a multitude of human beings – too many to count. As the light was shining upon us, I heard, “These are the people who are opened to and have made a commitment to being and living as the fullness of Love.” I then saw the light shining on a second multitude of humans. As the second multitude was engulfed in this light, I heard, “These are the people who can yet be awakened by Love.” Finally, the light shined on a third group. About this group I heard, “These are those who are unwilling to be opened by Love.” Finally, the other worldly beings spoke these words: “This is how it has been. This is as it shall be. This is how it is.”

It has taken me several days to process (I’m still processing) what took place in that dream and to notice the effect the light and the words had upon me. As the days have unfolded, I have felt an opening and a softening in me of the hopes I have held out for humanity. More pointedly, this dream has made me keenly aware of my tendency to judge and the disappointment and sense of deep sorrow I feel when coming face to face with humans who are unwilling to know Love.

All my life I have found myself heartbroken when individuals, or the collective, demonstrate bigotry, cruelty and/or violence toward another human. Why would anyone choose cruelty? Why aren’t people eager to know and practice Love? For what reason would one turn away from the deep healing that occurs as we open ourselves more and more fully to Love?

By Love, I’m not talking about romantic love, parental love, or even collegial love. Instead, I’m speaking of the “Love that surpasses all understanding” (Eph 3:19). The Love that is our Source (what some might call God). The Love that makes up all the Universe. The Love that is our true and original nature. This is the Love that dwells within us always and to which we can turn as we seek healing of separation and for all the traumas and wounds we have experienced in our life. Love provides us with an opportunity to more and more fully embody our truest self. Refusing that Love keeps us imprisoned by the tragedies of life and the conditioning that causes us to remain in shame.

In my own life, I have experienced the transformational power of this Love. Love has helped me to release resentment. Love has helped me soften my judgment and grow in compassion. Love has supported me in peeling away sixty years of conditioning, trauma, and woundedness, to find an even deeper Love waiting to be known. Further, Love has helped me to be forgiving and compassionate toward myself for all the times I am imperfect in Love.

Because of the benefits I have experienced from Love, I believed that everyone would want to know that kind of Love. I have spent a lifetime trying to be that Love while providing opportunities for others to do the same. In this work, I have experienced receptivity, suspicion, and flat-out refusal. Until this dream, I found myself perplexed by this refusal. Why would anyone refuse the opportunity to know and live from Love? The reality, as the dream reminded me, is that many do not want to or are unable to be open to the healing power of Love. Proof of this reality is in the millions of examples we are given each day of human beings choosing gluttony over temperance, lust for power over fortitude, wrath over mercy, envy over love, greed over generosity, sloth over knowledge, and pride over humility. Since time immemorial, there have been human beings who have refused Love, and in doing so, have refused themselves.

It is what it is. There is nothing I/we can do to change this. There are humans already doing the work of Love. There are humans open to being awakened by Love. And there are those, no matter what we do, who will flat out refuse it.

Today, I am working on acceptance of this reality. In each moment that I consciously acknowledge this truth, I find myself freer to focus my energy and attention on those open to Love, and less on the disappointment I feel when that Love is refused. Acceptance of this truth also presents me with a question – how am I choosing to be Love – especially toward those who outright refuse and in this refusal continue to act in cruel and hateful ways?

Growing in Love is a life-long journey!

An Uncommon Priesthood

/ Lauri Ann Lumby / 3 Comments

Uncommon: not ordinarily encountered: unusual; remarkable, exceptional

Priest: someone who is authorized to perform the sacred rites of a religion especially as a mediatory agent between humans and God

Priesthood: the office, dignity, or character of a priest

Merriam-Webster Dictionary

On the first day of the Christology course that was part of my ministry training, our (female) professor asked those of us who felt called to ordination to raise our hands. The men in our class, as was to be expected, raised their hands as they were on the track to becoming deacons. My friend, Karen, and I also raised our hands. That got us a giggle because women, of course, are not allowed to be ordained, either as a deacon or a priest, in the Catholic Church.

I was a preacher
My heart broke for all the world
But teaching was unrighteous for a girl
In the summer I was baptized in the mighty Colorado
In the winter I heard the hounds and I knew I had been found
And in my Savior’s name, I laid my weapons down
But I am still around… (Highwomen, lyrics by Amanda Rose Shires / Brandi Carlile / Jimmy L. Webb)

That was thirty years ago, and yet still today, women are barred from priesthood in the Catholic Church. That prohibition, however, has not lessened my call to be priest. In the years since, I have discerned priesthood through two denominations outside of the Catholic Church, but in both instances, the prevalence of clericalism in those institutions dissuaded me from completing that path.

Clericalism:  a policy of maintaining or increasing the power of a religious hierarchy (to Merriam-Webster’s definition, I would add: lauding, flaunting, defending, and enforcing that power and in some cases, using it to justify non-loving acts)

To me, priesthood has never been about power. It has always been about service. Neither has it been about hierarchy. Instead, it is a collaboration of gifts in support of individual and collective need. This is the priesthood I see in Jesus and what he drew forth from those who gathered around him. Jesus was not a leader who wanted followers. Instead, he was a catalyst who empowered people in their gifts. By humbly serving those most in need, Jesus’ example challenged the religious and political institutions of his time. These institutions valued their power and privilege over the people they were meant to serve.

Sadly, Jesus’ example did not stand as the early disciples (Peter and Paul in particular) traded the collaborative empowerment that Jesus’ taught them for patriarchal and hierarchical power. This model still stands today in nearly all Christian institutions. This is why I did not, cannot, and refuse, to fit into any institution that values power over service.

Instead, it seems, I have carved out a priesthood all my own. One that has been ordained, not by a bishop’s anointing and laying on of hands, but by careful attention to the call of Love, and living out that Love in all the many ways I have been called. Sometimes this call looks priestly in the marriages and funerals I officiate. Sometimes this call looks formative as I create and facilitate classes and write books in support of participants’ personal/spiritual development. Sometimes it looks pastoral in the one-on-one spiritual counseling I provide. Sometimes the service I provide supports people in their healing, in finding direction, and in experiencing comfort.

Most commonly, however, my priesthood is confirmed in unexpected and surprising ways. It is known in the 6am phone call from a distant friend seeking support for a family member in crisis. It is known in the generous financial donations I sometimes find in my mailbox. It is known in the confidences people have shared with me during challenging times. It is in the many acquaintances who suddenly seek my support and my own wondering of why they chose me. Why would they trust me with this, I barely know them? And yet, time and time and time again, this is so. People who I know – but not really. Amazing, lovely people who I have come to know and love along the way – but we don’t really hang out. People who I know from simply being me in the small community where I live. People, in whom I’ve likely seen something (love, kindness, generosity, honesty, integrity, authenticity) who are somehow seeing me, and trusting me with the most intimate and challenging times of their lives.

This is the priesthood for which I am most grateful.  A priesthood that is unexpected and surprising and looks absolutely nothing like what we have come to associate with being priest. And yet, it is exactly what the Catholic Church preaches in its invitation to participate in the priesthood of all believers (Catechism of the Catholic Church paragraphs: 1267, 1268, 1141, 1143, 1268, 1305, 1535, 1547, 1591, and 1592). Whereas the institutional church does not recognize my priestly calling, I am profoundly humbled and grateful to all those who have invited me to serve in this role.

Open to Possibility

/ Lauri Ann Lumby / 2 Comments

Surrendering to this time of recovery has given me ample opportunity to examine my life and what I believe to be my mission and purpose. At sixty years old, the expression of that mission has changed (somewhat), but the mission remains the same: being a force of transformation in a changing world.

Transformation to me is about:

  • Bearing witness
  • Holding space
  • Being love
  • Sharing tools for healing and growth
  • Speaking truth
  • Providing counsel and hope
  • Sharing what I see and hear

As it relates to the world today: guiding humanity through the death of the world as we have known it while preparing them for the world yet to be. (Cue Livin’ it Up from Hadestown) The ancients gave the title psychopomp to those charged with this important task.

In being psychopomp, I have found the following to be helpful:

  • Commitment to my daily spiritual practices
  • Praying without ceasing
  • Steel-clad boundaries
  • Honoring the fragile nature of my physical body and the even more fragile nature of my energy.

I’m done giving more than I can give.

This commitment to self so that I might better serve my mission, has led me more and more deeply into a monastic, contemplative lifestyle. I am becoming the hermit I have always longed to be.

With one little hiccup: a capitalistic world that doesn’t recognize hermit as a valid profession, and therefore, does not provide for those called to a monastic kind of life. For me, this hiccup has been like a nagging sliver that I just can’t get rid of. I think the perceived conflict between the Soul’s calling and the material world is one that plagues those currently called to a gentler (and perhaps new world) life.  I know I’m not alone in this struggle. This has left me at conflict with myself and the world as I stress about money, making money, working a “real” job, etc. etc. It has felt like an unanswerable question and a conflict I’m doomed to endure until the end of my life.

But then, yesterday, after I came out of the heavy waters of the Capricorn full moon, I heard some new words:

Be Open to the Possibility

Immediate shift in perception!  Instead of feeling stuck in the one scenario that has been playing through my mind, I suddenly remembered: God/the Soul has a plan. How that plan is brought into being is none of our business. Our only job is to be clear about what we want, and let God figure out the rest. The outcome may not be exactly as we had wished for, but in my life experience, when we let go and let God, the outcome is ALWAYS far better than we could have ever imagined for ourselves.

Does this mean that one day soon the Universe may provide the means by which I can fully embrace the hermit life and tend to that which I deeply feel called to do? I don’t know. But at least now, I am open to the possibility.

Do You See It Yet?

/ Lauri Ann Lumby / Leave a comment

This afternoon, the social media world was abuzz with the latest in a long-line of actions that have threatened the separation of church and state in the U.S. – something upon which our nation was established (Article 1 of the Constitution) and disseminated through a wide variety of laws. One of those laws appears to have been threatened today by a filing of the IRS which seems to give pastors the right to endorse political candidates without the risk of losing their tax-exempt status. Social media is in an uproar.

What I want to know is why the uproar? More pointedly, why the shock and surprise? From my vantage point, the separation of church and state is nothing more than a lie we’ve been telling ourselves for the past 250 years.

We need only look at the violence and hatred perpetuated by churches via Christian Nationalism, the pro-birth and anti-ERA, anti-LGTBQ+, and anti-civil rights movements to know that church has always been given power in our nation, despite our valiant attempts to stop them. The fact that in some states access to women’s health care has been banned due to religious influence, and that in some states government buildings are required to post the Ten Commandments, and valuable public educational funding is being whittled away by school vouchers to private (often religious) schools, tells me all I need to know about the lie we’ve been told.

Do you see it? The lie?

The myth of separation of church and state is not, however, the only lie.  We are living through an exciting (albeit unsettling) time in human history where all the lies are being laid bare. One by one by one, everything we’ve been told to be true about the freedoms and liberties we are guaranteed by the Constitution are showing themselves to be false. If not an outright lie, we are being shown where the foundation upon which our nation was built is vulnerable and full of holes. We are being shown, that the United States is a nation, not built out of brick, but made out of sand.

For those who rely on the perceived certainty of the Constitution, this can feel like a terrifying time. No one wants to learn that the system of checks and balances upon which we have placed our trust is complete and utter bullshit.  It is, in fact, horrifying to watch how easily these supposed guarantees are not just, whittled away, but completely ignored with zero consequence.

This is an apocalypse in the truest sense of the word: to reveal. We are being shown what is true about our nation, and what is not. We are also being given a choice. Do we allow the revelation of these truths/falsehoods destroy us, or do we see them for what they are – errors to be repaired and wounds to be healed. We cannot heal what is wrong with our nation until we are fully able to see what is wrong. Only then can we begin the critically important tasks of reform.

But first we have to be willing to see.

What are you seeing?

Sloth is the compulsion through which we refuse to use the mind we’ve been given to reason, discern, and exercise truth. Healing the fear that causes this compulsion is one step in the path of our true liberation. Embracing the truth that WE DO KNOW and WE CAN SEE frees us from ignorance and the power of others to manipulate us through falsehoods.

Learn more HERE