Mary Morrissey
m...@privacy.net
Since the early 1990s, the Oregon-based Living Enrichment Center (LEC) was
seen as the New Thought mecca that everyone wanted to attend. Serving
approximately 4,000 members on more than 90 acres of land, LEC boasted a
retreat center, bookstore, cafe, pool, and A-list speakers including Wayne
Dyer, Marianne Williamson and Neale Donald Walsch - making LEC one of the most
powerful and influential New Thought mega churches.
At the forefront of LEC was Mary Manin Morrissey, a charismatic and dynamic
spiritual leader who co-founded the Association for Global New Thought (AGNT),
met with The Dalai Lama and spoke at the United Nations to promote
nonviolence. Author of two best-selling books, No Less Than Greatness and
Building Your Field of Dreams, Morrissey was revered and respected among the
New Thought movement.
But in 2004, the dream came tumbling down as charges of financial fraud
fractured the church. Her then-husband, Edward Morrissey, pleaded guilty to
money laundering and later spent time in federal prison. LEC closed amid
lawsuits and accusations of betrayal, and Morrissey began the long road of
repaying the $10.7 million she borrowed from her former congregation.
Today Morrissey travels more than 200 days a year leading workshops for her
company, LifeSoulutions.com, which she sees as her way to repay the debt.
Newly remarried and now living in California, Morrissey spoke with New
Connexion about her fall from grace and the journey of starting over.
Q. What really happened at LEC?
A. We bought the property and it was a faith move. We funded that purchase
with congregant loans. Lots of ministries do that. About the time that we were
going to refinance, there was a zoning change and 50 percent of the land came
under an environmental zone that dropped the value of the land almost $5
million overnight. So all of the ratios we had been working with for debt to
equity were no longer valid. We had to extend all of those loans.
During that time, this is my belief about Ed - there was stress, his
depression and a bipolar episode - with his work with New Thought Broadcasting
(NTB), he began to divert money [from LEC] to take [NTB] public and pay off
all the debt. So the financial reports we were working with were inaccurate.
According to him, he was "borrowing money" and it was all tracked and there
was no money hidden.
I was on the road, on the board of AGNT and very busy. When my father was
dying, I stayed home for about eight weeks and I canceled all my travel.
During that time I began to open some mail just because I was home, and I saw
some things that caused some questions. The answers partly made sense, but
didn't all make sense to me. By the end of 2003, Ed and I were separating and
I began to unravel stuff and I knew that I was going to have to get attorneys
and make reportings that were just going to be devastating.
I knew that Ed was depressed and erratic. So I got his psychiatrist to help
get him hospitalized and then we began to tear [the books] apart [with outside
experts]. Once Ed got medicated, then he finally said, "This made sense to me
at the time. It was the only thing I could see to do." He took full
responsibility for making the decisions that were commingling of the money,
which is illegal. He went to prison for that. And that was his responsibility.
I felt that from the beginning, while I didn't do that and didn't know about
that, it didn't happen by me but it happened with me. It happened with me
giving him authority.
Now when the federal government looked at it and investigated it, fortunately
he had a CPA license. The people I picked to operate realms of the work I was
involved in had the credentials to do the work. And I had a right to trust the
reports I was given, was [the investigators] determination. I was operating
from reports that were given to me and making decisions based on those
reports, but that didn't take away the moral and ethical responsibility. I
felt that people didn't just loan money to the church, I believed and felt
that it's true - they loaned money to me. It wasn't their fault that I
entrusted the money to be managed.
Q. Right after LEC closed, you held Sabbath Tuesday services in Portland where
you allowed people to ask any question they wanted. What came out of those
meetings?
A. They felt betrayed, they felt hurt, they felt disappointed, they felt sad.
I think sad was one of the bigger emotions - that we had this community and we
don't have it now. They felt hopeful, saying, "Will you start something else?"
But it wasn't mine to do. That's why I didn't do anything on Sundays here and
started the Sabbath Tuedays because there were emerging young works here out
of the leadership that had been fostered at LEC. I just wanted to encourage
that and I didn't want to present something alternate.
[People have said], "She's such a smart woman, I just can't believe she didn't
know." I can understand that. What I did know, I thought was okay. Over the
last few years, I've talked to so many different women, particularly executive
women. Women who are very smart in areas of our lives, but surrender a part of
our authority, our power, our control. We play dumb, often in financial ways,
with men that we trust. I liked being taken care of - not having to worry
about the money and just being able to teach and write and do the work I love
to do. And it wasn't that I wasn't concerned. I wanted things to be right and
I thought we were doing the right thing.
Anyone who is in business and run anything that's bigger than managing it with
your own two hands, understands that you can't know everything. There were
3,000 people a week coming through that church, and that's just local people.
And there were 10,000 people watching the TV. And just the amount of emails
and phone calls and call for the human things that were going on in people's
lives, and training other leaders to reach out and minister to those people -
I was working many, many hours. I'm not really good at detail. I'm really good
at visioning and speaking and content.
VT: So many people at LEC looked up to you. Was that the hardest part?
A. I didn't know how I would survive it. I still deal with that - the feeling
of having betrayed the trust. Part of my mind says you betrayed that, and the
other part of me says that I had no intent for it. If I find in myself some
things that were conditions that would allow this to happen in me - that
needed to be continued to be worked on - one was ambition and some arrogance.
Those were the two that I unpacked, what I thought were my defects.
For me, the balance of being truly in service to the mission you are called to
and getting just even a degree off with ambition. Where do the seeds of
ambition lie in any of us, how do you nip it? It's hard to see 360 degrees
particularly with yourself.
I felt like ethically and morally the fact that people had entrusted me - it
made me responsible for the repayment. Ed's not going to be able to repay any
money. He's having a challenge taking care of himself. So I said from the very
beginning to the attorney that you need to find a way to help me create some
method by which a portion of what I earn goes back to repay people. Will I
ever be able to repay it all? Not without a major home run somewhere. It's
taken a lot of soul force to say, "Okay, I'm going to pick myself up, dust
myself off and say, 'I've made some mistakes.'"
Q. What did you do when LEC closed?
A. One of the handbooks I used as the church was closing was Dark Night of the
Soul by St. John of the Cross. He says that when the dark night comes upon you
- not if it will but when it does - such as a diagnosis, a car wreck or your
heart gets broken, the first thing you do is try everything you can to make it
go away. When you discover that your power is not great enough to make it go
away, if you surrender to that, three things will happen. First is a feeling
of release, second is a feeling of relief because you're not fighting it
anymore, and third is this strange feeling that comes upon you that you don't
want it to end too soon because you really want what it came to give you. And
I got to that place at the Oregon Coast after the church closed. I fought for
the church until they said that you have to close it. It was 23 years [that
LEC was open].
VT: What did this time mean to you?
A. It was perfect. It was three months. I drove down to the Oregon Coast to
where there's a footbridge almost half-way down to the beach - when I was in
my early 20s, we would take our kids there. You cross the bridge and go down
to the beach, and I dreamed LEC there. I used to dream about this community,
and that the things I had saw had all happened. And I wanted to go and just
sit on that beach and say,"Okay, now what?" When I got there, they had closed
the bridge and there was a big sign and it said No Trespassing. It was like
saying to me, "You can't go back."
The first few weeks I was just bereft. I'd always been able to hear the voice
since my early 20s when I really began to befriend that place inside myself.
Then one day I was walking down the beach and I heard very clearly, You're
still breathing. And I wept, I was so happy. I was like a little kid saying, I
didn't think you were ever going to talk to me again. And it said, This is a
dark chapter, but it's not your whole book.
Q. We are called to our gifts and to our paths. Being a minister is a path,
and it is your gift.
A. I think that part of what my gift can be now too is how you navigate that
terrain that is really difficult. The temptation to blame - the lower energies
of the human experience of blame, cynicism, bitterness - all those are
seductive when you're feeling bad. I was also a bit frightened of the
experience because when I make a mistake - my life has blessed in so many ways
- but when I make my mistakes, I don't get to do them in the back room where I
and one other person get to see them.
Q. Something you've talked about in your work is responsibility. And in being
able to take responsibility for mistakes, it seems like the only thing we can
do is say, "I did that. I was a part of that."
A. The "I'm sorry" doesn't take it away. There are certain things that get
broken that you can't fix. And then you have to find a way to live with that.
And one of the ways to do that is to say, "If I were in the same situation
again, would I do exactly the same thing?" With more information, more insight
and more humility, no I wouldn't do the same thing again. I would pay
attention differently than I paid attention before.
But I am transformed by the experience also. I'm not the same person I was
then. I'm a more mature person in a lot of ways. So to bring that to this day
is really all that I can do.
For Morrissey's upcoming workshop schedule, visit www.lifesoulutions.com.