I've been thinking for a long time that this day would come.

I am a psychotherapist in private practice, and I write a blog in order to express the real me. To decompress, to let it fly, to make a space where I don't have to to take myself seriously, to fling my thoughts out onto the world and take the consequences, whatever they may be.

While that opportunity has been great for me, I have to face the fact that it may not be the best for clients who find their way to this site. The blog is a public forum, and anyone can get here by any means. When a client reads my unguarded thoughts, learns about my family, my leisure activities, my struggles with faith, they have to manage the two me's they encounter: the professional, focused only on their welfare, and the private, a regular person just like everyone else.

Please understand, I don't think my job as a therapist is to appear the expert, the authority, the pristeen oracle of all wisdom in the office. I believe in self-disclosure and empowerment as therapeutic interventions. But my job is to protect the therapeutic framework, the little box inside my office where the only important thing is my client's welfare. When that framework is compromised, the client bears the burden, often in less-than-conscious, but very disturbing ways.

So, here's my plan. In the next week or so I'll  move to another platform and create a blog using an alias. Suggestions for aliases are welcome, however, I probably won't use them unless you suggest them privately. 

I'll feel better once I've done due diligence to separate the professional me from the private me.

If you would like directions to the new blog, email me at phyllis.mathis@gmail.com. Tell me who you are. I'll send out a broadcast message when it's up and running. Please don't link to me by name, or give my url to anyone you know to be a client.

I'll probably take Phyllisophie offline, so if you want to save it for any reason, do so in the next couple weeks. I may post a couple more entries in case I think of something else, so stay tuned.

I just stopped in (to the blog) to see what condition my condition was in...

KENNY ROGERS
Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)
(Mickey Newbury)

(Yeah, yeah, oh-yeah, what condition my condition was in)

I woke up this mornin' with the sundown shinin' in
I found my mind in a brown paper bag within
I tripped on a cloud and fell-a eight miles high
I tore my mind on a jagged sky
I just dropped in to see what condition my condition was in

(Yeah, yeah, oh-yeah, what condition my condition was in)

I pushed my soul in a deep dark hole and then I followed it in
I watched myself crawlin' out as I was a-crawlin' in
I got up so tight I couldn't unwind
I saw so much I broke my mind
I just dropped in to see what condition my condition was in


(Yeah, yeah, oh-yeah, what condition my condition was in)

Someone painted "April Fool" in big black letters on a "Dead End" sign
I had my foot on the gas as I left the road and blew out my mind
Eight miles outta Memphis and I got no spare
Eight miles straight up downtown somewhere
I just dropped in to see what condition my condition was in

I said I just dropped in to see what condition my condition was in
Yeah     yeah       oh-yeah

Ok, well, it's not actually that bad. (I think someone wrote this song from a bad trip) I feel pretty good, now that everyone from the wedding is gone. I just thought those lyrics were clever. If you're too young to remember the song then you're missing something.

I'm ready to be back, but no time to write today. Gotta heal people's minds, you know. 


What?

I find it interesting that Jesus is called priest, prophet, and king... We have the priesthood continued every Sunday in liturgy, we have feasts and symbols celebrating Christ the King, but I've never, in all the Christian world, found a church named Christ the Prophet. Nor is there any feast day called Christ the Prophet.

This may be because we don't want Christ to deconstruct the system. (that's what prophets do) We only want the King who blesses the status quo. Indeed, most religion is "legitimating religion." ...It tells us it's okay to live in toxic and unjust environments - just as long as you have a personal relationship with Jesus inside of the sick system...

Dorothy Day put it more strongly: "The trouble is, all of us still believe in the dirty rotten system." As long as we believe in the dirty rotten system, we're going to have problems. For we don't question it. We think we can genuflect before the system but go say our private prayers. But it won't work. There is probably no one more truly radical than real persons of prayer because they are beholden to no ideology or economic system, but only to God. Both church and state are honestly threatened by true mystics. They can't be bought off because their rewards are elsewhere.

Richard Rohr, O.F.M. Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contempletive Prayer

Three miles an hour. That's the speed of God's love, according to this blog.

I like that. Mostly because I love to walk, and I love to walk, mostly because that's where I have most often been aware of the love of God.

I love that I have come to know, without a doubt, the love of God for me. How did I ever live otherwise?

The one thing in my work that consistently breaks my heart is when I get close to someone who can't, for whatever reason, connect with the love of God. When I get inside their head, and see God through their eyes, it's tragic sometimes. There are people who deeply believe, against their conscious mind, that God needs to punish them relentlessly for some misstep, while those who have greatly sinned against them get off scot-free. 

That nasty shriveled-up Scrooge-in-the-Sky gets too much airtime in the brain. Alas. Maybe he's the one travelling at the speed of frenzy, right alongside us, and that's why we hear from him more often. Maybe if we slowed down to 3 miles an hour and looked for the love of God, maybe we'd actually find it.

Richard Rohr on contemplation and liminal space:

We keep praying that our illusions will fall away. God erodes them from many sides, hoping they will fall. But we often remain trapped in what we call normalcy, "the way things are." Life becomes problem-solving, fixing, explaining, and taking sides with winners and losers. It can be a pretty circular and even nonsensical existence.

Instead, we have to allow ourselves to be drawn into sacred space, into liminality. All transformation takes place there. We have to move out of "business as usual" and remain in the "threshold" (limen, in Latin) where we are betwixt and between. There, the old world is left behind, but we're not sure of the new one yet. That's a good space. Get there often and stay as long as you can by whatever means possible. It's the realm where God can best get at us because we are out of the way. In sacred space the old world is able to fall apart, and the new world is able to be revealed. If we don't find liminal space in our lives, we start idolizing normalcy. We end up believing it's the only reality, and our lives shrivel.

I know it's a stretch, but you can do it. Jump start the grey matter and read it again.

I guess I haven't been paying attention.

I've been vaguely aware that the Episcopal Church has been in rough seas these last few years. I read the headlines when Gene Robinson, an openly gay priest, was elected bishop. I knew that some Episcopal churches were pulling away, reorginizing under the Anglican Communion, holding a conservative line in the face of a progressively liberal denomination.

I just had no idea, until today, that the president of the American Anglican Council is our old friend and pastor David Anderson. The Reverend Canon David Anderson, that is.

I'm stunned.

David Anderson was the one who rescued us from floundering, after our little cult blew up in our faces, years ago. We heard him speak at a healing conference and decided to check out his church. 

David Anderson taught us about the Episcopal church, he witnessed our confirmations, he dedicated our first child, Gloria.

He encouraged us both to become lay readers, chalice bearers, and vestry members. He pastored us.

David Anderson took us to Glacier National Park, and taught us about grizzlies, huckleberries, and speed limits in Montana.

Now he's the voice of conservatism in the Episcopal Church.

He's been interviewed by Time magazine. He's been on Larry King Live, MSNBC, and quoted in the New York Times. And I've missed it all. Until today.

I really need to pay more attention.

Clarissa Pinkola Estes has this to say to the over-tamed woman:

"...refuse to be captured. With instincts sharpened for balance - jump anywhere you like, howl at will, take what there is, find out all about it, let your eyes show your feelings, look into everything, see what you can see. Dance in red shoes, but make sure they're the ones you've made by hand. I can promise that you will become one vital woman."