Lotus and the Lily. Janet Conner

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      you are your own shaman

       We can be the curates or curators of our own souls, an idea that implies an inner priesthood and a personal religion. To undertake this restoration of soul means we have to make spirituality a more serious part of everyday life.

      —Thomas Moore, Care of the Soul

      My parents insisted I go to a Catholic college so I wouldn't lose my faith, but by my sophomore year, all my friends and I stopped going to church. Protesting the Vietnam War seemed more meaningful. I made a big mistake, though: I tossed out the proverbial baby with the bathwater. I consciously wanted to toss out the dogma and rules and endless focus on sin, but in the same whoosh, I threw out all the beautiful practices, prayers, mystical symbols, and songs. I threw out every method I knew to connect with the Divine.

      It wasn't until I woke one morning, forty and pregnant, that I felt an urge to reconnect. I tried going back to a Catholic church, but it didn't feel right. Then I tried an Episcopalian church. That went pretty well until I helped my three-year-old bless himself as the priest intoned the closing benediction, “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.” In the silence that followed, Jerry turned to me and asked in a loud theatrical whisper, “Where's God the mother?”

      That excellent question sent me searching for a feminine deity. When I discovered that not only was God originally worshipped as the Goddess, but she was also served by priestesses, well, I was tickled pink. The girls were back! But after a couple years, I wondered whether it was really better to have only women and no men in charge of theology and ceremony. Why couldn't we both, women and men, be emissaries to the Divine?

      On day three of my first time doing the Lotus and the Lily process, I was having a chat with my wise loving Voice when a phrase popped onto the page: “I am my own priest.” I sucked in my breath. The little Catholic girl who still resides under my skin was scandalized. “Whaddya mean, I am my own priest?” I wrote. But of course, the Voice was right. I am, you are, we all are our own priest-priestess-shaman-rabbi-imam. No intermediary is required. No intermediary is necessary. Sometimes perhaps, no intermediary is even desired.

      Now, I know it's lovely to pray alongside someone who has a profound prayer practice. It is divine to be in the presence of someone holy. It is comforting to hear someone else's words of prayer and hope. But you can connect with the Divine yourself. You can make that connection right now. In your kitchen. At the computer. Lying in bed. In the shower. Driving to work. Folding the laundry. You have direct and immediate access to Spirit. We all do. We just forget.

      I find this a relief. Connecting with the Divine is not about finding the right priest or shaman. It's not about finding the right religion, the right prayers, the right ceremonies. It's about standing in the sacred space that you create, calling forward the words that come from your soul. And it's about connecting, deeply and truly connecting, with that which you know to be holy.

      That's what we're doing today. We are all becoming our own priests, our own priestesses, our own shamans. We are all stepping into our innate spiritual power and saying to our divine Source, “Here I am. How can we get closer?”

      How does that feel? Are you ready to declare that you are your own shaman?

      Reflect

      Write

      Dear Voice,

      I am in a bit of a quandary about this. Yes, you and I talk on the page, and I know it's a connection with something bigger, greater, wiser than me. Sometimes I think that something is God, and sometimes I'm not sure. But does connecting with it elevate me to being my own shaman? Shamans have serious power! I don't feel like I have a whole lot of power to invoke God. That's why I'm doing this program, for heaven's sake. I'm learning, or wanting to learn, to create prayers that work. Yes, I pick up a pen and write to something godlike. I just never connected the dots all the way to “I am my own priest.” Let's talk about this. Am I directly connected to you? To the power of God? Does that make me a shaman? What does it really mean to be directly connected with the peace and strength and power of God?

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