From Ego to Empathy: Fr. Tom Lumpkin’s Spiritual Evolution

Looking back on his choice to join the seminary after high school, Father Tom Lumpkin regards it as a decision filled with ego. “I wanted people to look at me and respect me and admire me. I wanted to be a priest in a self-centered way.”

Lumpkin has shared living space with the homeless for nearly fifty years, opening the doors of the Detroit’s Day House Catholic Worker in 1976 to those who would otherwise be sleeping on the streets. For most of that time, he got up at the crack of dawn four days a week to serve coffee and hot meals to those in need at Manna Meal soup kitchen, which he also co-founded in 1978.

Day House recently announced its closing, although the soup kitchen will carry on. Lumpkin still serves breakfast at Manna Meal twice a week.

Now, more than fifty years after entering the seminary, his teenage wish for the admiration of others has come true. Lumpkin is a local legend in Detroit’s Corktown neighborhood. But a lot has changed for Lumpkin in those decades, and now he can only chuckle at the arrogance of his younger self, and marvel at how far he’s come on his spiritual journey. 

Interdependent, not Independent

“If you had asked me growing up about Jesus’s message I would’ve said basically what you should do is, keep the Ten Commandments, go to church on Sunday, don’t eat meat on Friday, and that will get you to heaven,” said Lumpkin. He added, “After you were baptized, first communion, confirmation, I thought it was just maintenance.” 

These days, Lumpkin regards his faith as a spiritual journey. And he sees Jesus’s message in a different, much more radical light as well. 

“Jesus’s preaching came out of a different fundamental sense of who we are as human beings. Our culture tells us that we are each and every one of us separate; so life consists of you being all about you, and you’re getting yours, and you don’t have to really care about other people. The culture tells us we are all independent, we really just focus on ourselves. What underpins Jesus’s teachings is that we are not independent creatures, we are interdependent creatures.” 

Lumpkin’s favorite image of our interdependency comes from John 15, when Jesus tells us that he is the vine and we are the branches. While we may be distinct from God, the Earth, or each other, we are not separate because we are all branches of the same vine. 

“Once you realize that, then you find your security, not in just looking out for yourself, or getting more money or more esteem, but trying to deepen the ties between you and the Earth, and other people and God. You grow more and more mature, more and more secure, by deepening the ties between yourself and others in your life.” 

‘I began to know the need for God’s mercy’

One of the more interesting comments Lumpkin often makes in interviews is that he’s happy the Catholic Worker helped him see his own dark side. His work helped him see that maybe he wasn’t as peaceful or tolerant as he thought.

He recalls a particular anecdote about an intoxicated guest who interrupted a community prayer session one night in the Day House living room. 

“I decided I was going to get this woman up to her room before we started our prayer. But she didn’t want to go to her room. So with the people gathered there for prayer, I am almost dragging this woman up the stairs—so that I could get to prayer!” Lumpkin said, cracking up. “It was pretty embarrassing. I came back and the other community members said, ‘Well, Tom, maybe there was a better way to handle that.’”

“Early on I sort of thought God would have to reward me for the good life I lived. But after living with poor people I just began to know and feel the need for God’s mercy. “

Lumpkin began to  realize how lucky he was to have grown up the way he did. He noted that almost no one he worked with had received the blessings he took for granted.

“They did not get the two parents that loved them and loved each other that I got. When we’re born into this world we’re very insecure, and what makes us get through to maturity is being loved. That’s what makes us secure. But so many people who are really poor did not get that. Realizing that, I gained more compassion for them and less criticism, realizing what a privileged life I have, and realizing they didn’t get what I got.”

A little more like Heaven, a little less like Hell

“One of the things I thought when I was younger, was that the goal of living your life on Earth was to get to heaven,” said Lumpkin. “And while I wouldn’t deny that now, what Jesus said, the goal of preaching the gospel was not to get to heaven. But to make heaven come down here on Earth.” 

Lumpkin sees the work he’s done the last forty-odd years as a small part of that process, straining to pull little bits of the kingdom down to our earthly existence. Now decades after his self-described “ego-filled” decision to enter the priesthood, he has come a long way in terms of humility. 

“All I am is a little small particle of the body of Christ on Earth,” said Lumpkin. “I am God’s hands and feet and mouth in this particular place in time, I’m nothing more than just a channel for God working through me. But it took me until my 80s to come to that. It’s something you grow into.”

Lumpkin ended our interview on a personal note, sharing how he saw his mother bring a little bit of heaven down to Earth. His mother was getting old, but instead of accepting an offer to live out her last years with family, she decided to enter a senior living community.

Why? She knew she had good to do there, resolving each day to get up, go down to breakfast, and cheer up other members of the community. 

“She always felt like she had good work to do,” Lumpkin said. “You never retire from trying to make life a little more like heaven and a little less like hell for people.”