Margery Kempe: The Mystic Who Refused to Stay Silent

Mystical ✨

Jul 14

Margery Kempe

She wasn't a nun. She wasn't a saint. She wasn't even literate.

But Margery Kempe, a 14th-century Christian mystic from King's Lynn, England, became one of the most radical spiritual voices of the Middle Ages. Her book—the first known autobiography in the English language—was dictated through scribes, chronicling her mystic visions, holy tears, and relentless, raw pursuit of union with God.

Margery didn’t live inside a cloistered abbey; she lived among the people—bearing children, running a brewery (unsuccessfully), and walking the long, dusty roads of pilgrimage, from Canterbury to Jerusalem. Her tears—often misunderstood and mocked—were her testimony. She wept in church, in public, in front of priests, in the streets. She cried because she felt the Presence of God like fire in her bones.

Her contemporaries saw a loud woman. A dramatic woman. Some even called her mad.

But mystics don’t usually blend in.

Why She Matters Now

Margery’s story echoes through the centuries, especially for modern women who feel the pull to more. More intimacy with God. More honesty in their spiritual walk. More embodiment of their faith—unapologetically emotional, deeply sensory, and uncontainably alive.

At Loto Wellness Collective, we meet women like Margery all the time. Not medieval pilgrims, perhaps—but seekers. Those who cry during worship and don’t always know why. Women who sense the sacred in silence and in song, in movement and stillness, in tears and in touch. Women who carry the courage to defy what the world expects of them in order to follow the whisper of God.

Margery & The Loto Woman

Margery reminds us: your story doesn’t have to be polished to be holy.

For many years she lived a life of self-described vanity and was a businesswoman.

You may be uncredentialed, misunderstood, or burned out by religious systems—but God is still speaking. And like Margery, you may be called to live outside the “normal” framework of religious life and still find your home in God.

Her mysticism wasn’t about lofty doctrine. It was about Presence. About encounter. About giving God her full body, mind, and spirit—and not apologizing for the mess of it.

That is sacred living. That is the way of the mystic.

That is the Loto woman.

A Sacred Invitation

Let Margery's life spark something in you.

Where are you holding back your spiritual emotions for fear of being “too much”?
What parts of your story feel disqualified from holiness?
How might you live more freely—more audaciously—in the presence of God?

You don’t need to be a nun to be a mystic. You don’t need silence to be contemplative. You just need a heart that burns for God, and the courage to weep when He moves.

Because sometimes, the holiest thing you can do… is cry out loud.

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