Lexie Carroll > Recent Status Updates

Broad Components of Effective Trauma Therapy:
1. Overall approach: respectful, positive, compassionate; attuned therapeutic relationship.
2. Psychoeducation on trauma & symptoms.
3. Stress reduction & affect regulation training
4. Cognitive interventions to address harmful beliefs
5. Developing coherent narratives of the event
6. Memory processing. 7. Process relational issues. 8. Increase self acceptance

Sabbath is the day we hopefully feel most connected to God, our family & friends, and our own soul. A Life giving day to expect joy. Truly living the sabbath will make us live all the other days differently. “True restfulness is a form of awareness, a way of being in life. It is living ordinary life with a sense of ease, gratitude, appreciation and prayer. WE ARE RESTFUL WHEN ORDINARY LIFE IS ENOUGH.”

Sabbath is not just about rest and worship, but is also an act of resistance against consumerism and the oppression of the poor. Sabbath is a life-giving practice against the twin evils of accomplishment and accumulation, which often take advantage of the poor and make slaves of people. Instead we need to take time to enjoy what we have, to drink deeply from the well of ordinary life. To practice contentment.

A regular day of rest is a rhythm instituted and followed by God. If we go against it we go “against the grain of the universe”, and if we go against the grain of the universe “we get splinters”. Sabbath means “to stop” but can also mean “to savor”, hence why it should be a delight. But due to our immaturity, dysfunction & addiction, God has to COMMAND us to do this life giving thing: rest.

Our desires are infinite because we are made by God and our spirits are infinite, yet we are confined to a finite body and world. Having infinite desire and a finite vessel leads to chronic restlessness, which is part of the human condition. Advertising is literally an attempt to monetize our restlessness. Human nature and the digital age form a foreboding alliance against a spirit of restfulness.

Soconusco is the epicenter of ancient Mexican heirloom cacao. Barra pottery from the Mokaya people predated the Olmecs, making the first pottery in Mesoamerica about 1900 years BC. Olmec pottery came afterwards, around 100 BC. Traces of theobromine can be detected in these neckless jars which were apparently saturated with liquid chocolate. Soconusco people have been farming and drinking cacao for 4 millennia!

“Criollo’s reputation for being a poor producer is a myth, propagated by ‘experts’ who had only worked with modern hybrids.” They can be equal or better producers (to Forastero), but require the right conditions: lots of overstory shade and unique regimens of weeding, pruning, nutrition and fermentation. Erick’s Guatamalan Criollo routinely produces 1,000 kilo/hctr, vs typical African 250 kilo/hctr!

It’s thanks to Matt Caputo that we have Juruà chocolate today! If he hadn’t been willing to take the financial risk to support the Amazonian ribeirinhos and Luisa Abram during covid (and 2 years of intense River flooding), then this incredible cacao preservation wouldn’t have survived. Enjoying this delightful perfumed chocolate today is a gift and represents so much dedication, hard work and faith.

The Juruà cacao is a floral delight! Absolutely perfumed with notes of Jasmine and tropical fruit notes. It ended up being a totally new genetic family- not overlapping with any of the other original 11 families of cacao. It became unique family no. 12.

“In seasons of business we need MORE time in the quiet place, not less” (even though that’s usually the first thing to get crowded out by a busy schedule). Luke’s Gospel makes it really apparent that “the busier and more in demand and famous Jesus became, the MORE he withdrew to his quiet place to pray.” We need not just a break from external noise and busyness, but relief from distracting internal noise.

Jesus spending time repeatedly in the wilderness demonstrates the importance of silence & solitude. The devil did not tempt him in the wilderness because he was trying to catch Jesus at his weakest, but rather because Fasting and praying in the wilderness gave him the strength to withstand. He goes to the wilderness after busy days of healing and teaching. It is how he recharges. The quiet place gives strength.

“How do we have any kind of spiritual life at all if we can’t pay attention longer than a goldfish? How do you pray, read the scriptures, sit under a teaching at church, or rest well on the sabbath when every chance you get, you reach for the dopamine dispenser that is your phone?”

The Twelve First Families of Cacao: 1. Amelonado, 2. Beniano, 3. Contamana, 4. Criollo, 5. Curaray, 6. Guiana, 7. Iquitos, 8. Juruá, 9. Marañón, 10. Nacional, 11. Nanay, 12. Purús.
Genomes sequenced and named by Juan Carlos Motomayor of USDA in 2008.

Spiritual disciplines (habits, practices) are HOW we follow Jesus. They are the trellis that hold up (support) the vine. “When spiritual disciplines (scripture, reading, prayer, Sabbath, and so on), become an end in and of themselves you’ve arrived at legalism. Therein lies death, not life.”

Treating the wanwu (myriad things) as friends and equals does not mean that we should anthropomorphize the ‘things’ of nature, endowing them with human qualities. Each ‘thing’ has its own mode of existence and consciousness which is entirely different from our own and must be respected for what it is. The modern failure to foster a reverence for these things has resulted in our serious environmental crisis.

The idea of concentric circles asks us to look outside of our immediate selves to family, community, and humanity. “But to that we should add a new circle, which transcends our focus on humanity. When finally we realize that our very existence depends upon nature, it will be time to surrender our anthropocentrism and include the entire cosmos in our ultimate concern.” Confucius: Establish others to establish self

At a time when our own thinking is becoming increasingly isolationist, focusing intensively on our own family, nation or culture, it is important to remember that from very early in their history the Chinese were deliberately, thinking globally…in the dynamic of concentric circles, the extension of each circle signifies a moment when we are compelled to transcend ourselves and our obsession with “me and mine”.

We should contemplate the life force of each thing we encounter…They are all alive in their own mysterious, fascinating way. We should extend the Golden Rule to include all (even seemingly insignificant) species. Their silence should inspire us to use our imagination to enter their lives and make ourselves aware of their sacrility, fragility, and unique identity.

Jainism never became a world region but its insistence on kindness and non-violence became embedded in Buddhism, Hinduism & Indian Islam. In the West we seem to have sometimes forgotten that “To do harm to others is to do harm to oneself… We corrupt ourselves as soon as we intend to corrupt others. We kill ourselves as soon as we intend to kill others.” (Acaranga Sutra 1.1.2.1.5.5)

Ahisma: profound non-violence. Mahavira (founder of Jainism) found it to be the key to enlightenment; that practicing Ahisma fundamentally altered his humanity, helping to transcend normal consciousness and achieve absolute fraternity with all things. He insisted that it was accessible to anyone- following the regimen could help one conquer their own selfish & aggressive tendencies.

Neo-Confucians equally emphasize concern for humanity, and the natural world- they are inseparable- something that we in the West fail to appreciate. Crucial too is their cultivation of reverence. In the West we rather glorify irreverence, regarding it as a courageous challenge to the establishment and a mark of individuality, but it can be pure egotism.

Selflessness and reverence can be cultivated by a deep study of a “principle of Heaven” that exists at the heart of all things. “Every blade of grass and every tree possesses a principle and should be examined.” (Cheng Yi 1033-1107). The Western Inscription reminds us that the myriad things are not lifeless objects, but our companions.

We depend on the “myriad things” for our very existence, so by serving, honoring and protecting them we participate actively in the creative processes of the cosmos and help to reconstitute the world. We don’t need to look for supernatural revelation. We simply need to recognize the sacrality of everything around us and observe how the myriad things tirelessly support one another.

Neo-Confucius texts require that humans align their behavior with the natural rhythms of the universe. We are not Lords of the world, we share the universe with the wanwu and must live in harmony with them. Only if human beings form a deep partnership, a Trinity, with heaven and earth, and treat all the myriad things as we would wish to be treated ourselves then we will become Ren.

Confucians were not working to edify their “souls”; instead they employed these virtues to develop a fulfilling daily practice and wider social ecosystem based on respect. Confucius reminds us of the importance of human dignity. In honoring the other, we learn to lay aside the ego that is constantly clamoring for attention and preeminence. External habits of respect help us to cultivate these virtues internally.

Confuc. emphasized the importance of Li (ritual) because (he knew) physical behavior could moderate internal feelings (it wasn’t enough to simply focus on cultivating interior attitudes of goodwill). The Chinese understood that ritualized gestures of respect can teach us more deeply than rational lessons to honor the dignity of others. Gestures of Li also transformed those who performed them as well as received.

The golden rule was developed independently by all the great religious traditions. It seems deeply rooted in human morality. It requires us to look into our hearts, identify what causes us pain and then refuse to inflict that on anybody else. Compassion is the essence of religion and morality. It is essential to the survival of humanity. That we constantly fail to put it into practice is perhaps not surprising.

“The ancient Egyptians did not take the natural order as a given, but celebrated it as divine every day. For them the rising and setting of the sun was a sacred occurrence.” Every morning, Ra, (sun), rose from the darkness, his course tracked by the priests. Sunrise could never be taken for granted. (every night the sun died and was reborn the next day). Nature was a series of miracles which had to be celebrated.

“The Quran constantly urges Muslims to make themselves aware of God‘s benevolence in nature. The natural world is an epiphany that our ordinary modes of thought cannot always perceive. So Muslims must train themselves to see through nature‘s appearance and glimpse the divine power within... Muslims are to observe the life force in the regular rhythms of nature and make themselves aware that it is divine.”

“Muslims are far more impressed by the regular rhythms of nature, then by the supernatural miracles celebrated in the Jewish & Christian scriptures because in the Quran, the natural order IS the revelation of divine power and wisdom. So… (early on), Muslims advanced the natural sciences, which they regarded as sacred…nature itself is the supreme example of Islam, the wholehearted surrender to the divine…”