Chakras = Energy Centers

I attended a day long seminar yesterday entitled "Beyond talk therapy..." It had four presentations. The first was on a EMDR and DNMS. The second presentation was a massage therapist & bodyworker with 20 years of experience who uses bodywork to release the trauma that gets stored in the body (deep tissue work). It was fascinating.

The third really got my attention. The presenter is a license therapist who uses energy work with trauma clients. I was amused when someone one in the audience asked if energy centers are the same as chakras, which of course, they are. That which was once considered too weird is now moving into the therapy room! Anyone who is curious can learn about energy therapies at http://www.energypsych.org/. She also used the energy fields of body for "tapping," which allows the client to access the limbic system and recovery from trauma. More at http://www.aitherapy.org/ and http://www.icakusa.com/.

The last presentation was a yoga person whose studio focus is therapeutic yoga for students with chronic physical and mental health issues. By that time, I was relieved to do a few deep breathing and stretching exercises!

While the audience had mixed reactions to the presentations, it was awesome for me to be in a setting where my new age, eclectic wiccan views are not at cross purposes with more conservative therapeutic practice. I once was asked if I could do a chakra balancing as part of a session. Word got back to a conservative (Baptist minister's wife) supervisor who was not happy about it. Sigh.

The Turing enigma: Campaigners demand pardon for mathematics genius

I found this article on my gay/christian list, and had to share. Turing was a genious and a hero that came to tragic ends.

Clipping: London Independent, August 18, 2009

He may have played a pivotal role in securing victory in the Second World War for his country six years earlier, but few outside the academic community would have recognised Alan Turing as he made his way down Manchester's Oxford Street shortly before Christmas in 1951. Someone who did notice the athletically-built scientist, however, was a young working class gay man called Arnold Murray.

Homosexuality was still illegal under the same repressive laws which had sent Oscar Wilde to jail half a century earlier. But regardless of the risk, the chance encounter was to develop into something more substantial and Murray spent a number of nights at the older man's modest home in suburban Wilmslow.

A month later, after Turing, a veteran of the then still secret Bletchley Park code-cracking team, had been giving a talk to the BBC on his pioneering work on artificial intelligence, he returned home to find his house burgled.

The culprit was an acquaintance of Murray's, who would prey on Murray's lovers, thinking they would be so afraid of being outed that they would not report the thefts to the police.

But Turing defied this convention and went straight to the police, where he admitted his affair – a "crime" for which he was spared the normal two-year jail term in favour of a hormonal treatment designed to beef up his masculine urges and suppress his homosexuality. The resulting publicity was to prove too much to bear and in June 1954, the 41-year-old was found dead in bed by his housekeeper. He had eaten an apple he had laced with poison.

The consequences which unfolded were not only a tragedy for Turing, his friends and family, it also robbed the world of one of the greatest thinkers of the 20th century. Now campaigners are demanding an official apology from the Prime Minister Gordon Brown, recognising the "consequences of prejudice that ended his career". More than 700 people have signed a petition started by the leading computer scientist John Graham-Cumming on the Downing Street website, including gay rights campaigners, politicians and scientists.

"What really annoyed me about this was here was a man who died in his early 40s because he was a homosexual. He was a war hero but here was a part of our history that we were turning a blind eye to when we should be celebrating it. There were a lot of homosexual people during the war doing incredible work – if it was not for Turing we would most likely be having this conversation in German," Mr Graham-Cumming said.

Turing had already made major contributions to mathematics and the embryonic computing sciences before the outbreak of hostilities in 1939. But it was for his work among the wartime Enigma code crackers at Bletchley Park for which he will be best remembered. "Turing realised that we had to turn what was then a cottage industry of code breaking into a full scale industry. He was probably the most important person there," said Simon Greenish, director of Bletchley Park Trust.

His "bombe" machine was able to rapidly de-code the 158 million, million, million variations used by the Nazis in their commands with the creation of a prototype high speed processor. It saved tens of thousands of lives and variations on the original helped both the British and the US to eventual victory.

But although he was, by any measure, a genius, Turing was an idiosyncratic figure bordering on the strange. A runner and rower of Olympic ability, he used to occasionally run the 40 miles between London and Bletchley to attend meetings. His behaviour and high-pitched voice drew furtive smiles from colleagues who tolerated his eccentricities such as chaining his tea mug to the radiator or riding his bicycle wearing a gas mask to avoid hay fever.

After the war, and having been awarded an OBE, Turing moved to the US to work at the National Physical laboratory where he began work on creating the stored-program computer but returned to Manchester in 1948, where he continued his pioneering work in the field of mathematical biology. But the arrest and conviction in 1952 for gross indecency shattered him. The chemical castration caused his breasts to enlarge and bloated his athletic physique. He was also banned from travelling to America. What followed was described by his biographer David Leavitt as a "slow, sad descent into grief and madness" and Turing began travelling abroad in search of sex safe beyond the reach of the British law.

Professor Richard Gill, Professor of mathematical statistics at Leiden University, is among those to sign the petition. "He was one of the geniuses of the 20th century and I have the feeling he was also a pretty decent guy. How his life ended was incredibly sad. In his last years he was thinking very deeply about some very difficult puzzles which give most people a bit of a headache. He was surely going further with this work and was certainly not finished yet," he said.

But there is another twist in the story of Alan Turing. Some have been moved to question whether he saw himself as a gay martyr. His chosen mode of death echoed his favourite fairytale Snow White, from which he was often moved to quote the phrase "Dip the apple in the brew, let the sleeping death seep through". His family insisted his death was merely a tragic accident while others have even hinted more darkly at murder because the inquest was never to establish that the apple contained cyanide. Recent years have seen his reputation partly restored. A memorial statue has been erected on the fringes of Manchester's Gay Village while the city's inner ring road bears his name. An official apology, however, continues to elude him.

Homosexuality and the law: Why Alan Turing was considered a criminal

*The 1885 Criminal Law Amendment Act made any homosexual act illegal, even in private. Among the most famous prosecutions was that of Oscar Wilde in 1895.

*Section 11 stated that "any male person who, in public or private, commits ... any act of gross indecency with another male person, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and being convicted thereof shall be liable at the discretion of the court to be imprisoned for any term not exceeding two years, with or without hard labour."

*This part of the Act was inserted at the last minute after being drafted by the MP Henry Labouchere. It did not fit in with the rest of the Act, which dealt with sex crimes relating to young women, but was still passed by the House of Commons.

*The amendment was described as a "blackmailer's charter" as it effectively outlawed any and every form of male homosexuality. It prompted a number of prosecutions.

*The Act was repealed in England and Wales in 1956, but homosexuality was not fully legalised until 1967.

Maid, Mother and Crone

From my email group: "How do you determine if you are a maiden, mother, or crone within Paganism? Is it age, experience both? And if so what are the guidelines?"

I've actually put a heck of a lot of thought into this question. Indeed, I've even posed part of this question on list recently. So I'm going to give you my thoughts as they are currently. Like the wind and the river, this is subject to change!

Robert Graves, in The White Goddess, theorized these archetypes. A lack of primary sources and primary research has discredited his theory. Nevertheless, it has caught on. Probably, as Carl Jung would say, because archetypes work through our collective unconscious. They become a way to reach into our souls and to connect us across language, culture or age boundaries.

To me, maiden is partly youth. It is also a time before a woman before she moves into mothering/motherhood (with or without children). It is the time of Diana, the Huntress. The place of Warrior Goddesses (maiden does not mean virgin--it means not mother). She is Persephone, Innana. In addition, while I don't agree, some see the maiden as virginal. My attitude is that we are a fertility religion and we celebrate sexuality. Thus I choose to interpret the maiden as unmarried, unpair-bonded. In an arbitrary sense, I often see maiden as teens and twenties. She is the spring before Beltane. She is the young woman in the wheel of the year who is courted, who flirts and who dances the maypole. She is the waxing moon.

Mother is the woman with children, but she much more. Not all women have children, and yet they pass through stages of nurturing. This can be the time of creativity, vibrant energy, and powerful growth. Often this begins in twenties, but can also be thirties and forties. The mother is the summer and fall (pregnancy-harvest). She is the woman of fertility and fecundity, abundance and growth. She is the woman of knowledge. She is Demeter. She is the woman who faces the loss of her daughter six months a year to the Lord of the Underworld. She is a woman touched by love and by grief, who celebrates her children and suffers birthing pains. Mothering is not required for passage through this phase. Freya did not have children, though she was a goddess of unbridled sexuality. She was also a goddess of love and birthing. She loves music, spring and flowers. She is also a goddess of war and death. She was consort to Od. She is the full moon.

Crone is the old woman. Occasionally this begins in the forties, as it has with me, when a woman determines that she has passed through the time of the mother. In my case, mothering ended prematurely, and assuming the role of the crone is comforting, fulfilling. I would argue, however, that I'm still edging into it and this stage will carry me through the rest of my life. More often, women are fifty or even sixty before assuming the role of the crone. This is the time of Ceridwen, of wisdom, of discernment. I would also argue that is the place of the Sacred Enchantress. The woman who knows and revels in her sexuality. This is also a place of post-menapause. This is the time of responsibility and taking responsibility for one's community. This is the waning moon. This is the place of death, of mystery. The chill of winter.

So yes, age and experience have a lot to do with the differentiation between these stages of life. I believe them to be highly individualistic and somewhat self determined. I've been told I'm too young to be a crone, yet my inner wisdom rejects that belief. I'm post menapausal, my children haven't lived home in many years, and in fact, I rarely see them. Because of youthful appearance, folks often say that I project a motherly affect. However, I don't feel motherly -- I believe it to be a step removed and more grandmotherly (which I am a grandmother of two).

Also, I find a lot of psychological healing in restorying my place in life as a crone. Mothering is associated with a great deal of pain and loss. While I care deeply for my clients and patients, I also keep very firm bounaries in place and do not mother them. I find that as I move into the crone aspect, I also move with more confidence, trusting in what I have learned. I also find myself moving into places of responsibility I shied away from when I was younger. But that is my journey, which is different from everyone else.

Church changes signage after controversial vote on homosexualilty

Meet the man that believes gays brought the tornado to Minneapolis. If I encounter a burning bush, I'm out of here!

Seriously, I find it hypocritical to welcome homosexuals but then denounce them and also deny them clergyship. The whole "love the sinner, hate the sin" has always struck me as arrogant and judgemental. I would never attend church where I would be welcome as an act of generosity because they love me as a sign of sin.

**************

by Charlotte Ferrell Smith
Daily Mail staff


CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- As parishioners approached St. Timothy Lutheran Church on Sunday morning, something unusual was apparent.

On the signs outside the church, the word "Lutheran" was draped in black. Only the words "St. Timothy" remained visible.

"I asked that be done because I'm ashamed," the church's pastor, Richard Mahan, told the congregation later Sunday morning. "I'm ashamed of what the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has done to a church I've loved for 40 years."

Last week, leaders of the Evangelical Lutheran Church voted to remove a ban on gay clergy and also to recognize gay marriage within the church.

Mahan, pastor of the local Lutheran church along Corridor G, attended the conference in Minneapolis and spoke out against the change in policy. His message was widely received because he was interviewed by The New York Times and later quoted by The Associated Press in an article that ran worldwide.

Mahan's entire Sunday sermon concerned the homosexual issue, and what the church should do.

"We welcome the sinner, but we do not welcome the sin," he told the congregation. "All are welcome, but the sin is not.

"We have always welcomed gays and lesbians to our church, but according to the word of god, we do not believe they are to be ordained. I am not speaking out against the gay and lesbian community, but I am speaking out against the ordination of gays and lesbians as pastors and bishops and leaders of the church - and the blessing of same-sex marriages."

Mahan's church gave him a standing ovation as he began to give the announcements Sunday morning, but not all comments -- mostly delivered by e-mail or on Web sites -- have been supportive.

"I have been called homophobic, a racist, a hatemonger," Mahan said. "God is in control. Maybe he just wants me to stand up for what I believe in."

Other comments e-mailed from across the country took a different tone. He said one e-mail read, "May God bless your nailing this statement to the Internet door."

Mahan was one of the representatives in attendance in Minneapolis last week as the issue came up for a vote that has been anticipated for at least six months.

He said he saw symbolism in some of the things that happened there.

For example, a tornado that shook the congregation hall brushed across Minneapolis just before the vote. Mahan said he received a text message from another representative in opposition to the new policy, saying "Rich, God shot a cannonball across the bough of the ship of the ELCA to change her direction."

Then, the vote needed to carry a two-thirds supermajority, and it did exactly that - 66.67 percent of the delegates.

"Six-six-six-six!" Mahan told his congregation Sunday. "Was God saying something? Not many people were listening."

After the service ended Sunday, many members of the congregation stayed to take part in a discussion of what the church would do. Discussion at the church, where between 300 and 400 people attend each Sunday, focused mainly on whether to stay with the ELCA, branch off with another Lutheran synod or link up with another denomination altogether.

Mahan urged parishioners to pray and suggested the congregation would have to weigh the options heavily. He said nothing about the church's mission would change in the mean time.

"Let me assure you, nothing is going to change here at St. Timothy," Mahan said. "Jesus is still the same. The Bible is still the divinely inspired word of God. People may say things to hurt you. Take out the sword of the word of God. We are the church militant in the battle against Satan himself."

The assembly, the chief legislative authority of the ELCA, met at the Minneapolis Convention Center last week with 2,000 participants, including 1,045 ELCA voting members.

St. Timothy Lutheran Church, located at 900 Lawnadale Lane in Charleston, is one of 65 congregations in the West Virginia-Maryland Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America.

"The ELCA has lost 490,000 members in the past eight years," said Mahan, who believes membership will decline sharply in light of recent votes.

"We don't know what we will do as a congregation," he said Friday. "It's up to individual congregations whether to stay in the ELCA or pull out. This is going to split the church."

When votes were tallied last week on the ordination of homosexuals, there was a mixed reaction in the crowd. Some were solemn while others hugged and rejoiced.

Mahan said he wept.

"I love everyone," Mahan said Friday. "I love all people. This is just completely contradictory to the word of God.

"I love homosexuals, have ministered to them, and had homosexuals in my congregation," he said. "Nowhere in the Bible does it say you can have same-sex marriage."

Mahan said one gay pastor told him he attended to vote his own intention but after hearing Mahan speak on the assembly floor he was going to change his vote to mirror Mahan's conscience.

"It was the most powerful thing that ever happened to me," Mahan said.

While he may leave the denomination, he intends to stay true to his faith.

"I am not leaving Christianity," he said.

Street Tolerance

This was posted to my Christian/Gay elist. The comment was written by Lawrence, the moderator and minister of the group. The article follows.

****************

Talk about your "fools for God." I expect any day to hear a report that Kenny Gallo has been gunned down on the street. He has several strikes against him -- he's a 'former' Mafia soldier (and it's said that there's only one way you leave that life); he was a long-time FBI informant; he's written a book about his criminal days; and now he's attempting to transform ingrained gangster homophobia into something more like tolerance, if not actual acceptance. Any one of those could put a bullseye on his back -- taken together, I'm thinking, his days are numbered.

Those of us who shrink from too much honesty in our lives (and that includes me more often than I'd like to admit) are surely put in the shade by Gallo's kind of gutsiness. Maybe only a reformed gangster could do it -- and maybe only an avowed heterosexual could survive ... IF he does. Why would a man who isn't gay himself put himself so at risk? He provides an answer, but for those of us conditioned to the fears of modern living (and who isn't?), it seems woefully inadequate, without a huge infusion of religious spirit.

Gallo doesn't use that terminology, though he does speak of redemption. And maybe religious talk isn't the place where he feels comfortable; a lot of us can identify with that. We often shrink from faith-talk even among our TLGB friends, from whom we have nothing to fear but a little doubt or disdain.

Lawrence
~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~
Clipping: EDGE San Francisco, Aug. 17, 2009
http://tinyurl. com/n2nubq

GANGSTER TO GAY RIGHTS ACTIVIST:
KENNY GALLO'S ROAD TO REDEMPTION

By Scott Stiffler, EDGE Contributor

What would a heterosexual career criminal be doing devoting himself to gay rights? If you believe Kenny Gallo, it's part of his personal redemption-- the second act of a live fully lived.

Several lifetimes after F. Scott Fitzgerald famously chided "There are no second acts in American lives," our culture's boundless appetite for hot topics is best fueled by tales of redemption and reinvention. From scandal-plagued politicians who win reelection to celebrities who go from hot to has-been to hot again; America loves to bestow upon its fishbowl residents nine lives rather than a mere two acts.

Add now, Kenny "Kenji" Gallo to that list of those who've sinned, been given a second chance and emerged from the process determined to change not only their public persona, but their purpose. Beginning his criminal career at the age of fourteen, Gallo worked with such feared criminal organizations as Pablo Escobar's Medellín Cartel, Los Angeles' Milano Mafia family, and New York's Colombo Mafia family.

Beginning in 1997, he spent eight years working for the FBI and NYPD -- wearing a wire and living as a clandestine undercover operative against organized crime. He was relocated by the federal government under a new identity and has since lived out of the public spotlight and apart from the violent criminal world of which he was once a part.

Gallo's self-imposed anonymity and low profile, however, is about to change. His memoir of life in the Colombian cocaine trade, porn industry, and the American Mafia ("Breakshot: A Life in the 21st Century American Mafia") was released earlier this month. In June, Gallo announced his conversion from gangster to gay rights activist. To that end, he has created the LGBT rights initiative "Street Tolerance," which seeks to promote tolerance of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people by reaching out to the notoriously homophobic world of gangster and Mafia culture.

Though a straight man, Gallo believes that the best way he can atone for a lifetime spent victimizing the vulnerable and the weak is to defend GLBT Americans, one of the most vulnerable and victimized minorities in American society. "As a criminal, I committed sins for which no punishment could ever suffice and no penance could ever atone," says Gallo. "It was thanks to the love of one woman who believed in me that I was able to reform myself," continues Gallo, "so it is unbelievable to me that GLBT Americans are persecuted for something as beautiful as the act of love. I owe it to the people I hurt on the street to strive to make a difference on behalf of the victimized, oppressed, and defenseless. "

Since the launch of Street Tolerance, Gallo has been speaking to criminalized teens, ex-cons, men with troubled backgrounds and violent tendencies. His message focuses on getting others to accept (or at least tolerate) others for "the way people are born. I am half Japanese. I didn't choose this; this is what happened. This is me."

Gallo acknowledges that even though his criminal background gives him status and credibility in the eyes of others, "You can't change them. You have to educate them." Speaking recently to a group of 15- to 19-year-olds in Orange County who were "real close to be getting into trouble with gangs and drugs, I explained to them that it's OK to talk about it (LGBT issues)." Gallo says he sees the current generation as being "a little bit more accepting" of LGBTs, but intolerance and ignorance is "still ingrained in the culture."

True crime writer Matthew Randazzo V is the co-founder (along with Gallo) of the BreakShotBlog, which offers insider commentary on the American underworld. His book, "Mr. New Orleans: The Life of a Big Easy Underworld Legend," offers an insider account of life within the New Orleans Mafia and will be released in November 2009.

Randazzo says Gallo has an uphill battle in his campaign to change the hearts and minds of the criminal underworld. "The American Mafia is extremely homophobic traditionally, " notes Randazzo. "Things have changed over the last couple of decades, but historically, if you were found to be a gay or bisexual man, it was a death sentence."

As for street gangs, "Hispanic and black gangs are virulently homophobic outside of a prison setting where things get a bit vague; but on the street, it's very unlikely you could be an out homosexual and a gangster at the same time."

'HE'S EXTREMELY TOUGH'

Randazzo believes Gallo has "some chance of success in moving delinquent and criminalized teens, because a lot of people in the underworld believe homophobia is a prerequisite to being tough. He's a guy who has crossed major mafia families and made major enemies. He's extremely tough, and the fact that he's tolerant and gay friendly has the potential to reach people who are at the stage where they can be influenced."

Randazzo also notes Gallo has a unique credibility with, and opportunity to influence, "Asian American gang members and teenagers, because there are so few famous or well known Asian American gangsters." Coming from Gallo, the Street Tolerance message may be "a revelation to these kids who are trying to emulate the African American gangbanger culture. He can get the message across that it's possible to be street tough without it having anything to do with how you treat people who have nonconformist sexual or gender identities."

Gallo's mission, and message, has not come without its risks or consequences. Enemies remain from Gallo's days in the Mafia as well as the new ones he may incur through his gay rights work. Despite that, Randazzo says, "He's not scared for his life, he's not in hiding. Though I don't think this will increase the danger he's in, I've seen firsthand the amount of hostility" to Gallo's gay-positive blog postings -- which has "risen sharply, almost 400 percent."

"In the end," says Gallo, "I hope StreetTolerance.com and the work I do going forward will help promote the idea that bigotry is a sign of weakness, and tolerance is a sign of toughness. Take it from a guy who has gone to war against Colombian drug dealers on the street, bedded world-famous porn stars, and fought world champion martial artists: a real man is secure enough with himself that he accepts everyone, no matter their sexual preference or gender."

[Scott Stiffler is a New York City-based writer and comedian who has performed stand-up, improv, and sketch comedy. His show, "Sammy's at The Palace ... Don't Tell Mama" -- a spoof of Liza Minnelli's 2008 NYC performance at The Palace Theatre, recently had a NYC run. He must eat twice his weight in fish every day, or he becomes radioactive. ]

Copyright 2009 EDGE Publications Inc.

Turn of the Spiral

First step: flashback

Invoke the usual "I was abused as a child" tale. My mother was diagnosed with Paranoid Schizophrenia. Never told the school counselor, whom I saw bi-weekly, what was really happening. Use your imagination.

My Diagnosis: Attachment Disorder.

First turn of the spiral: Pregnancy

Age 19. I loved my child. Received Christian pastoral counseling. No help. I was separated from my husband, pregnant by another man, taken in by an adoption agency and emotionally abused by a "shepherding father" who felt I was a bad influence for his teen daughters. Guess he expected a nice, contrite, never been married, didn't work kind of girl who would be grateful (meaning obedient). Received yet more counseling with different counselor. I fled, keeping my baby.

Second turn of the spiral

Age 20. Divorced from first husband, remarried the day before the baby was born to another young man with no idea of what he was getting into. He said he loved me. I was desperate. Living back home with the schizophrenic mother and codependent father. Two weeks later, moved 150 miles to where my husband lived. My husband never really understood what he had on his hands. I called it alcoholism (wait, don't I need a drunk-a-log for that? But alcoholics are just like me, except I never drank).

Diagnosis: Borderline Personality Disorder

Third turn of the spiral

Age 23. I have no more parenting/mothering skills than my mother had. I live in a town where I know no one. I stay at home with the baby. And with the next one. I convince my husband to join the church of my childhood. My husband works full time, and the romantic idea of a wife and ready made family doesn't match the reality. Received marital counseling. No help.
Husband's diagnosis: Major Depressive Mood Disorder, Chronic.

Forth turn of the spiral

Age 24. Desperation. Received individual counseling. I call child protective services on myself out of fear. I have a infant and a toddler, I am exhausted, depressed, strangling on inner emptiness and still isolated. I hear the anger in my voice. No one should yell at a three-year-old like that. I hit his diapered bottom too many times. I love my children, why is this happening? My husband is at a loss and has no clue. I call child protective services on myself. Child protective services can't see a problem and send me shopping (with what money? I have none) to get me out of the house for a few hours. They determine there's no problem.

Diagnosis: Post Partum Depression; Major Depressive Disorder, Chronic; Borderline Personality Disorder.

Fifth turn of the spiral

Isolated. I don't fit the Tuesday morning Women's Bible Study Group. They are kind, but carefully distant - perhaps judgemental. The minister brought us into the church, and abandoned us after orientation classes (after I had been baptized for the forth time). No friends. No family. Out of desperation, I create MAJOR DRAMA. My husband is self-righteously hurt, and I feel guilty and justified in leaving my children in his care...in reality, I am fleeing because I fear I might harm them, might become an abuser, even as I was abused. I surrender my children because of something I haven't done. They were not abused. I feared only that I might.

Cultural detail: Even today billboards in this state proclaim: Spare the rod and spoil the child. No wonder the church/child protective services didn't really see a problem. Or understand my fear.

Continual turns of the spiral

Married four times, divorced three times, widowed once, one broken engagement

Intermittent counseling, some help

Got my GED and then went on to college and received my degree in Bachelor of Sciences, major: English
Continued on to Graduate School

Segues: Extreme Marital abuse (3rd and 4th husbands)

Turn of the spiral

Discover Goddess centered spirituality.
Break old patterns and old habits...
Receive spiritual counseling. Tremendous help.

Move again.
Age 40: Come Out as Lesbian.

Enter into life partnership/marriage with Cameron - a healthy, stable loving relationship.

Fabulous Therapist...amazing progress. Much healing.

Return to Graduate school for a Masters in Marriage and Family Therapy.

Meaningful, powerful work as a Substance abuse counselor.

Diagnosis: Borderline Disorder burned out and passed, stabilizing, happy, strong - what diagnostic tools do we have for Mental Healthiness?

Turn of the spiral

Transformation: I know what I'm called to be: Lesbian, Priestess, Therapist

Today

I'm behind on supervision hours, as I was reminded in clinical evaluations yesterday. So Play Therapist Supervisor invited me to sit in her group supervision today. I didn't know until I arrived that the morning session had been devoted to completing the training of several play therapy supervisors and I was the Guinea Pig. She asks if I have a DVD of a play therapy session I have run.

Yes, I have a play therapy DVD. Yes, it's the one I turned in for my summer for class. Yes, I perceived it as the worst one I've ever recorded because I handled limit setting so badly.

Play Therapist Supervisor states it's nowhere as bad as I portray it. I don't believe her. She's just being nice, because she's like that, you know. So I play the DVD, proud that I'm calm while showing it to Play Therapist Supervisor, four licensed play therapists that are finishing certification this week for supervising, two Marriage and Family Therapy Interns, and one Marriage and Family Therapy student. And while I'm trying to tell them what I terrible job I've done, they are shaking their heads and offering amazing and insightful comments about how good it is. My supervisor says that I am one of her best student play therapists.

Then one of them offers a comment. He uses one of my favorite metaphors about time being a three dimensional spiral. As we circle around we reencounter old lessons, challenges ectera, but we encounter them at a new level and learn new things. He suggested maybe that's the process I was in while making the DVD and in how I perceive it. Then Play therapist Supervisor asks me: "Working from the framework as self-as-a-therapist, what old button does this video hit?"

In one blinding, clarifying moment I know why I have backed away from doing play therapy for the last three months. Because for one moment, for 1/10 of a second, I sounded like my mother as I struggled to lay down a boundary with a beautiful developmentally delayed three-year-old child. Before I got his name past my lips, I had heard my tone of voice and shifted. But all I remembered was that tone and the slump of his shoulders as I broke his trust with my "mom" voice. It had broken my heart. And although I caught it immediately, the limit then set appropriately, and reparation made, I carried that wound away with me. I clutched it to my heart, hidden and filled with pain. No true damage was done, yet my inner guilt from the past rose up to swallow me.

And in front of all those people, I looked at my supervisor, tears in my eyes, was handed a Kleenex, took a deep breath, asked for a moment, and told my story as briefly as possible. And I recognized that the past was blocking me with old pain and guilt. That I am actually good at child play therapy. That my peers think well of me and praise me. And that room full of therapists heard me, assured me, and offered this spiral of growth and healing.

Pastor Blames Tornado on Gays

All it takes is a heading like this to have me off and running again! Shesh! Have they lost their minds????

Here's the article, as found at Advocate.com (and their art!):

By Julie Bolcer

A Baptist pastor in Minneapolis said a tornado that damaged a Lutheran church on Wednesday was a divine sign of opposition to the proposal to lift restrictions on non-celibate gay and lesbian clergy in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, reports WCCO-TV.

Pastor John Piper of Bethlehem Baptist Church wrote a blog post on Thursday that called the tornado a “gentle but firm warning” for the Lutheran general assembly, which is currently meeting in the city, to “turn from the approval of sin.”

The storm damaged the steeple on Central Lutheran Church in the downtown area, across the street from the convention center where church delegates are meeting.

Shortly after the storm struck, more than 1,000 delegates at the general assembly passed by one vote a social statement that allows congregations to bless same-sex relationships if they wish, but does not force congregations to do so if they are opposed.

The Lutheran general assembly is expected to vote on the question of allowing non-celibate gay and lesbian clergy on Friday.

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Well, alrighty then. Soon we'll be parting the Red Sea and walking on water.