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21 August 2006 @ 08:15 am

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.




 
 
14 August 2006 @ 08:23 am
It's a little spooky what can show up when you Google yourself. This Phyllis Mathis is NOT me, but hey, maybe there is a parallel dimension, and she is the me I would be if I had walked another path. Maybe she's my radical liberal alter-ego, being very, very brave. Check out the films she's promoting.

You go, Phyllis Mathis! Be brave!
 
 
10 August 2006 @ 07:52 am
Just start writing, something will come.

Lots has been going on at our house these days. Finally things are settling down to our normal snail-crawling pace. Must be time to blog again. It's just hard to gather any thoughts that are worth a read.

The news continues to be bad. London's Heathrow is almost totally shut down because of a terror plot involving major flights from the UK to the US. Tanks and troops in Lebanon. Corroded, leaky oil pipeline in Alaska. High gas prices.

I haven't had a spiritual thought in weeks, it seems, but I do have to say I might be ready to attend a church from time to time, sometime soon. That's significant, right?
 

Meanwhile I've been reading a very good book: Caretakers of Our Common House: Women's Development in Communities of Faith. 

I'd love to talk to somebody about this book. Some of it is a little dated, and it's definitely a feminist voice, but it has huge implications for the church, if ithe church would only listen. Has anyone else seen this book?











 
 
09 August 2006 @ 08:14 am

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?

 
 
31 July 2006 @ 07:55 am
I've severely neglected this blog lately. Lots of things are happening that make it hard for my soul to catch up. The events of last week, and into the end of this coming week, promise to comprise a kind of perfect storm for me. Several emotionally life-changing events are converging to pull my heart in many directions at once:

First, our son is married now. The wedding was beautiful and meaningful. I hope to get a copy of the vows for you to read. They were astounding in their wisdom and emotional strength. The happy couple will be moving to Texas at the end of the week. The wedding made me realize that, if you do things right as the mother of a son, he grows up and leaves you, and it's your privelege to smile and let him go. It doesn't seem the same with daughters, thank God.

Second, our friend Sue is returning to us from Lebanon, heartbroken and traumatized. Regrouping and listening for God's direction will be her work for the next few weeks. She sent a couple of links to articles that are more than worth a thorough read. Please, for her sake at least, go and read them:

Christianity Today, July 17, 2006, and Christianity Today, July 20, 2006

Third, we said goodbye this morning to members of Ted's side of the family who came for the wedding. Last night we spent several hours singing worship songs together. Gloria and her two cousins were blending their voices in the kind of harmony that can only be reached by people who share some of the same DNA. It was gorgeous. The whole weekend with them was a treasure.

Fourth, I will be spending time this week with an old friend from Minnesota, from whom I had been estranged for several years. Neither of us realized how cloudy the emotional weather was going to be during her visit.

And fifth, good friends of ours have decided to move back east in a couple of weeks. Things came together in a hurry for them, and we'll have to hurry to get our goodbyes in, this weekend somehow. 

Indeed there is a storm brewing. I hope my heart can take it.





 
 
27 July 2006 @ 07:20 am
Here's a quote from an interview with Dr. James Houston in the Denver Seminary Magazine, on spiritual formation and integrity. Responding to a question about speeding up the process of spiritual formation, Dr. Houston says,

Well, I think the vocabulary is wrong, because it's all part of living in a technological society. And so processes, procedures, programs are all, in a sense, technical devices or technical mindsay for fixing things. So we want to fix things quickly. But the very nature of integrity is that we have a speed that is appropriate to what we are doing. The speed of gaining information is very fast, but the speed of godliness is very slow. Or the speed of making a friend is very slow in comparison with other forms. So we lose integrity when we use the wrong mindset or the wrong speed at which we're operating. My problem is that I can think faster than I can speak, I speak faster than I can act, I've got more acts than I've got character for...so maintaining integrity is acting appropriately
.
 
 
22 July 2006 @ 10:52 pm
Some bits from an update from Sue:

Well, the news keeps getting worse and we as a team are in shock and disbelief. ... If I can go back (to Lebanon), I don't know how I can ever look people in the eye and tell them sorry my gov't had the power to help, but refused. Today, Israel bombed a christian news station and bombed cell and landline towers...communication might be completely cut off.

...You would not believe the stories that are coming out. Mass burials because there are too many dead. Pulling bodies from collapsed buildings. Mostly children. Can anybody tell me why? Why are Arab lives so cheap to us?
 
 
19 July 2006 @ 07:52 am
Just to keep you up-to-date. My team made it out of Lebanon and they all are
in Holland. They were able to make it out together. Thanks for praying for
them. I have a plane ticket to arrive in Amsterdam on Friday morning to join
them. That would be Thursday night your time. Again, thanks for all your
responses and for your prayers and support. You are so needed and are being
used.

I don't know what will happen next. I know that trying to process this, all
I can think is brokenhearted. Me, I'm sure my team, our friends and the
whole of Lebanon. But I got a verse last night that gave me some peace.

He has sent me (JC) to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for
the
captives and release from darkness for the prisoners.

That's what He came to do, heal, please pray that for us and for the whole of
this little country in so much pain. 

lots of love, Sue
 
 
17 July 2006 @ 09:16 am
Our friend Sue is safe for now and waiting to see what happens from day to day. It looks like the rest of her team will be evacuating Beirut today.

It appears that most of the western world is content to let Israel do the dirty work for us in the "war on terror." No one is stopping them, not even a few thousand innocent Lebanese. I wonder how it feels to be counted among acceptable losses.

All I can say is, if they're going to take on Hezbollah, they'd better wipe the land clean of them. We don't want any leftovers. 

Then we'll have, oh, say, 6 months before another group springs up, more organized and well-financed than they. That is if all-out war doesn't erupt because of Syria and Iran.

What genius is running this thing anyway?



 
 
14 July 2006 @ 09:49 am
Some of you know our friend and housemate, Sue, who has been working in Beirut these last months. I am posting this email she sent out this morning, after speaking with her last night as she was approaching the border with Syria. Please pray for her and all of the Middle East, as Israel continues to "defend itself" by bombing the shit out of Beirut. Hopefully things will settle down soon, or I'll have to remember how to spell Armageddon.

Before I went to bed on Thursday night ships off the coast were bombing the
neighborhood where I work and where my friends live. About 3:30am, I was woken
up by the call to prayer and jets flying overhead. I don't think I can
accurately tell you the terror that you feel when you hear them and your 8
story apt building walls shake as they fly overhead, not knowing where they
will hit. My roommate came into my room at that point and said that her team
was evacuating a short-term team of college students whose parents were going
nuts. She was told to pack a bag as well and that she might not be back. I
called my team leader and he was beyond worried about me staying by myself. He
asked if I could join them so I wouldn't be alone. On 4 hours of sleep in 2
days, I made the decision to ride to the border with them through a back way.
I had 5 minutes to put things into a suitcase and we were off.

At the border, my roommate, her team, and I decided to go back to Beirut. We
felt it was too premature to evacuate ourselves and had gotten the team of
short-termers off. I called my team leader to inform him that we were coming
back. He told us the events that took place in the early morning, I could hear
the bombs as we were leaving but had no idea of how extensive the damage had
been. He actually told me that he would prefer if I would head on to Jordan. I
told him that I preferred to head back and be with them. He demanded at that
point that I leave and told me he could not handle it if I had gotten a way to
the border and not left. It was probably the hardest decision of my life but I
did as he wanted and headed to Syria. I started to cry on the phone with him,
I was unable to say goodbye to his wife and children. I didn't say goodbye to
all of our friends either. I cried for the 9 hours it took to get to Jordan. I
really don't think I have ever had my heart ripped out like that before.

So, I sit here in the lobby of a hotel and cry as I write this. I have a ton
of emotion going on and of course I am exhausted. I am not sure if I can sleep
again. I am angry for what is happening to the city and people that I love(and
that no one is coming to help us), I am worried beyond belief for my friends
and nationals who can't leave, I feel guilty for being a rich american who
can. I think that I am also traumatized with how violent the past 3 days have
been. I am in the process of contacting a team here so I can stay with
someone. I don't know what will happen, how long I will wait here. My hope is
that in a week, I can return. Please pray for my team, my friends, and that
the violence against the civilians of Lebanon(60 dead now)will end. For peace.
It will only happen with all sides knowing the truth of God.

Pray for peace.
 
 
10 July 2006 @ 08:28 am
The sun is shining again. They say it will be mid-nineties again tomorrow, after a week and a half of rain. This is Colorado, right?

I've been away from the blog. You might have noticed. Apologies to those writers I have chided for not giving me something to chew on at least once a week. I've been in a weird space.

I've often thought of the transformation process like the metamorphosis of caterpillars. How would it be to have a peek into the coccoon during the process? How does it work in there? When does a caterpillar cease to be a worm and more a butterfly?  Sometimes I imagine everything turns to goo and then something else emerges from the slime. Sometimes that's how it feels with me.

I guess that's what the coccoon is for. To hold in the goo.
 
 
01 July 2006 @ 08:54 am

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

 
 
30 June 2006 @ 10:42 am
During my hiatus from church attendance, one of the things I'm trying to rethink is the idea of leadership. If there is a community of believers more or less hanging together in some form, should there be such a thing as leadership? Or is it true, as a friend used to say, there are leaders whether the group says so or not. Leadership will always emerge, and it's better to recognize it than not.

I'm thinking about this due to of a couple of posts by
Maggi this week, suggesting that leaders (priests and pastors mainly) learn not to take criticism personally. People will confuse leaders with parents, and come across with criticism that belongs rather to the parents than to the leader.

This is a true and evidenced phenomenon. In the psych world we call this transference - when a person, say a teacher, somehow embodies the dynamics of another person in the student's life, with whom the student has unresolved issues - say a parent. In the dynamic of transference, the teacher ceases to be a person in his/her own right, and ends up being a symbol, or an icon of the parent, whereby the student begins to reinact the struggle in order to resolve it. Unconsciously, of course. 

Poor teacher. He/she will never be able to do anything right in the eyes of the student. (Transference sometimes moves in the positive direction as well. That happens when we put someone on a pedestal. They become the symbol of the good parent, come to rescue and heal us).

Is this an inevitable occupational hazard for a pastor? 

Or, is there something so fundamentally wrong with the way we have constructed church leadership, that this kind of dynamic is a natural consequence of a wrong way to do church?

I keep thinking of the things Jesus said about leadership. I try to imagine what he saw when he envisioned people living in this kingdom he kept talking about. I wonder what the world would have looked like if people hadn't set up popes and priests and rituals and papal edicts. Or if Constantine hadn't made Christianity a civic religion.

What did he have in mind when he said the greatest among you would be your servant? Or that leaders should do as he did and wash people's feet?

I can't help but think something's gone terribly, terribly wrong. I think this every day. But you knew that, didn't you?

 
 
29 June 2006 @ 08:33 am

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.

 
 
28 June 2006 @ 08:22 am
Curious how the Episcopal Church's civil strife has suddenly become personal for me, since I discovered our old friend and pastor is smack dab in the middle of the fight. And it's brought the whole issue of homosexuality and church authority in front of me again.

It's interesting to me that the issue isn't just gay clergy, and thankfully not  women clergy (I was happy to read that Rev. Canon Anderson is fully supportive of women priests and bishops), but the church's adherence to the place of scripture in it's community and what it means to be distinctly Christian.

In my deconstructed state these questions have been rolling around in my head for months.

I remember back to 1985, when the priest of the Episcopal church we were attending resigned his ordination. It was shortly after the national convention in which something had been decided that was beyond the pale for our pastor. He quit his job and urged us all to flee the liberal apostate Episcopal Church. We did, and have not returned (except for Christmas Eve services every year). Lately I've been longing for the peaceful ritual of the eucharist, and have been "this close" to attending an Episcopal service.

It just feels weird to be interested again. And it feels a little full circle - and strangely personal. Go figure.

If you want to read more about it (I hope this link works) go to the New York Times.
 
 
27 June 2006 @ 09:38 am

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.

 
 
26 June 2006 @ 08:42 am

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.

 

 
 
24 June 2006 @ 12:05 pm

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."

 
 
22 June 2006 @ 07:40 am
How pathetic is this? Last night I needed a little veggie time while Ted was writing a paper. I was tired of reading, and was jonesin' for something interesting, so I turned on the TV. (Last month we cancelled our cable, yet I keep channel surfing, hoping something good will magically appear on broadcast television. I know better, but still...)

I ended up on PBS, watching something called Wild Things. How morbidly fascinating. Everybody killing and eating everybody else. I watched a jaguar (pronounced "jag-you-ah" by the Brits) kill an alligator, alligators line up like racehorses downstream from a school of trapped fish, and hawks tear apart ... well, you don't want to hear the rest. I kept changing the channel and then coming back, like moth to the flame, to see who was winning. It was riveting (when it wasn't disgusting). 

Wild, indeed.

Lately some have tried to convince us that God is the author of wildness.
Wild at Heart, for example, encourages men to embrace their wildness. (Women get to be rescued by the wild man, and go on adventures - no doubt carrying parasoles and wearing corsets, carried on a berth by six naked savages - sorry, John, that's how it hits me). Richard Rohr encourages men to explore the wild as well.

Women, however, have to venture into the forbidden land in order to consider wildness a reflection of the godly in them.
Women Who Run With the Wolves, for example, will make the hair on a proper Christian lady's head stand on end. Guaranteed.

We want our God tame, our religion calm, our behavior dignified. Holiness is next to paralysis, for some of us. I must confess I spent most of my life exploring the virtue of stillness, civility, and poise, hoping to get closer to God. And for sure, God is in the still and quiet. 

But God must also be wild, and fierce, and passionate, and exuberant, don't you think?  Otherwise the jaguars would have no claws and the alligators no snapping jaws. The hunt, the stalking, the chase, the kill - are these the result of the fall?

What would it be like to reflect the wildness of God? To follow a wild God into the world? 

Maybe we just push our wildness underground, since we deny it's godly quality. Maybe this underground wildness decays into the petty legalism, backbiting, and political maneuvering we find in so many religious/spiritual groups. 

What if we need to bring the wild back into the light?



 
 
21 June 2006 @ 09:09 am
Praise God, the dark night of the chest cold is over. Last night I washed the sheets from the bed of my exile, and put my Vicks Vapo-Rub back in the drawer. I think I'm going to live.

It's been a while since I've spent so many days in bed. At first I read and watched movies, since my brain was still working, for the most part. Halfway through, this virus-truck backed up and ran over me again. This time I was down for the count. It's remarkable how indignant one can get over being inconvenienced by one's own body. How entitled one can feel to be able to do whatever one wants, whenever one wants to do it. I kept expecting to be better the next day. I took Monday off to be sick, that should do it, I thought. After a Tuesday disaster at the office, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday were spent doing penance for hubris. Virus 1, sick woman 0. 

I've learned my lesson. You can't cheat Mother Nature.