What’s a Good Catholic Girl like You Doing in a Place like This?

Last week I was ordained a Shamanic Minister. When I told my mother she said, “Wow, from Catholic to Shaman, that’s really something.” Yes, it is something. And while I don’t pretend to come close to the title of Shaman, part of this path is awakening the “inner shaman”—not really so different from the Holy Spirit, or the kingdom of heaven Jesus spoke of. And it’s about helping others awaken to their own inner shaman/healer/counselor/teacher.

Part of the ordination ceremony was to write a Statement of Intent for my ministry. I’d like to share an excerpt with you. It’s a bit longer than usual, but hopefully you’ll read it to the end.

On a much earlier segment of this life path, I was a charismatic Christian. A group of like-hearted seekers, perennially suspect by ministers and church elders, we diligently studied the Bible and applied it to our own lives. When Jesus said “Greater things than these will you do, for I go to the Father”, we took it literally. We simply did what the Bible said: laid hands on the sick, cast out demons, saw miracles happen in answer to our prayers of faith. We told mountains to move, and they did. When I became disillusioned with the form of Christianity practiced in churches, I walked away from all of it. I had not yet found the Divine outside that form. When I left the church, and much of my spiritual practice, I did so deliberately. I told God: I want the truth of You. I am sick of following this path or that path, only to be disappointed in what I find there. If you are real, if any of this is true, show me.

I took two verses from the Amplified Bible with me. One, from Jeremiah—“ If you seek me with all your heart, I will be found by you.” And the other from Hebrews, talking about the 40 year wandering in the wilderness: Because they did not have an “experimental faith”. So, I challenged God. I had an experimental faith. And for ten years I wandered in the dark. When I moved to Arizona, I had nearly destroyed my back, was on 2 antidepressants, several anti-inflammatory meds, and morphine for pain. I wandered into a Tai-Chi center, discovered energy, meditation, and God. I bumped into God while stumbling around in pain and darkness.

I’ve been on a superhighway of learning and transformation since that day. What I learned in the early bible study days has come around full circle in a much deeper and fuller way. And I’ve seen and made my own this Golden Thread of Truth that runs through all the great spiritual teachings

All that is to say, that this ordination, is a culmination of the journey. Now, to take all the “stuff” I’ve collected along the way, and with the blessing of my teachers, and my community, alchemically transmute it to healers gold.

My conviction is that we are evolving into a new kind of human –from Homo Sapiens to Homo Spiritus, to borrow a phrase from David Hawkins. As we evolve, we change the species, the planet, the cosmos. Just by doing our own work, just by tending to our own evolution. It is also my understanding and conviction that our evolution into the Oneness of our Divine Source, of necessity includes all of us—all the bits we’d rather leave behind—the ugly, the shameful, the hurtful, the uncomfortable, the wounded; past selves, aspects of us that exist on multiple dimensions simultaneously, our future selves. We, all the parts of me, become One, and One with All That is.

Through the work I’ve done with the Venus Rising Association for Transformation, as well as a lifetime of inner work, I’ve reclaimed much of that lost and abandoned soul territory. And while I’m far from finished, there is in my being immeasurably more peace and wholeness now than ever before. And it is for this that the world is crying. And so it is to this that I am called to speak, teach and most importantly, to live.

Thanks to divine grace, and so many teachers along the way, I’ve stepped into much more of who and what I really am, and, to a much greater degree, out of a limited, fearful, self-sabotaging life picture. As I step more fully into my own healing, and into the experiential knowledge of myself as a limitless spirit being, I am being recognized and sought out by others as a teacher, mentor, healer and guide. This ordination provides a framework and a platform from which I can better fill these callings, and step into an even greater expression of the package known in this lifetime as Meredith Star Raven Davis.