I'm Lisa Rokusek
My email is lisa@rokusekrecruits.com
text me at 314.409.5633
My calendar is https://tidycal.com/m268n51
NOTES
- 1.
The bomb factory story. Thich Nhat Hanh, Creating True Peace: Ending Violence in Yourself, Your Family, Your Community, and the World. Free Press/Simon & Schuster, 2003. The passage about the businessman who designed atomic bombs appears in the chapter on taking practice into the world. Thich Nhat Hanh (1926-2022) was a Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk, poet, and peace activist nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Martin Luther King Jr. in 1967.
- 2.
Tech amplifies what is. My own formulation, first stated publicly in October 2014: "If we do not learn to be just and compassionate in our present, our tech will not solve our human problems. Tech amplifies what is."
- 3.
Ferguson 2014. Michael Brown was killed by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson on August 9, 2014. The grand jury declined to indict Wilson in November 2014. The uprising that followed is part of the documented public record and was foundational to the Black Lives Matter movement.
- 4.
Stockley 2017. Jason Stockley, a St. Louis police officer, was acquitted on September 15, 2017 of first-degree murder in the 2011 shooting death of Anthony Lamar Smith. The acquittal triggered weeks of protest in St. Louis. "Who do you protect? Who do you serve?" was a chant directed at law enforcement throughout those protests and during the Ferguson uprising before it.
- 5.
Joanna Macy. The framing of presence over brittle optimism runs throughout Macy's body of work. Most direct statement: "I'm not insisting that we be brimming with hope - it's OK not to be optimistic. Buddhist teachings say feeling that you have to maintain hope can wear you out, so just be present." Macy is an environmental activist, Buddhist scholar, and systems theorist. Key texts include Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We're In without Going Crazy (with Chris Johnstone, New World Library, 2012) and World as Lover, World as Self (Parallax Press, 2007). Also the best podcast ever "We Are the Great Turning" https://www.soundstrue.com/a/resources/we-are-the-great-turning-podcast/
- 6.
Paul Hawken on hope. "Hope is a mental narcotic that masks our fears. Fear arises from attachment. We need a movement that is fearless, not hopeful." From an interview with Tricycle magazine, subsequently cited by the Buddhist Peace Fellowship and widely reprinted. Hawken is the author of Blessed Unrest (Penguin, 2007) and editor of Drawdown (Penguin, 2017).
- 7.
Joan Halifax and GRACE. The GRACE model was developed by Roshi Joan Halifax, founder and abbot of Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico. First published in peer-reviewed form as "G.R.A.C.E. for Nurses: Cultivating Compassion in Nurse/Patient Interactions," Journal of Nursing Education and Practice, Vol. 4, No. 1, 2014. Fullest treatment in Standing at the Edge: Finding Freedom Where Fear and Courage Meet (Flatiron Books, 2018). Upaya Zen Center: upaya.org.
- 8.
Mark Epstein and the steady mind. Mark Epstein, The Trauma of Everyday Life (Penguin Press, 2013). Epstein is a psychiatrist and Buddhist practitioner who bridges Western psychoanalytic theory - particularly D.W. Winnicott's concept of the holding environment - with Buddhist psychology. His central argument is that trauma is not exceptional but the ordinary texture of human experience, and that the Buddhist practice of nonjudgmental awareness is itself therapeutic. The steady mind he describes - able to hold difficult experience without collapsing into it or armoring against it - is the same capacity Halifax's GRACE model is designed to build. The Winnicott line that has stayed with me since 2014: "Tenderness can only be arrived at by successfully navigating anger's terrain." Other useful Epstein titles: Thoughts Without a Thinker (Basic Books, 1995) and Open to Desire (Gotham Books, 2005).
- 9.
Rebecca Solnit and Impuritanism. Solnit uses the term and concept across multiple collections including Call Them by Their True Names (Haymarket Books, 2018) and Whose Story Is This? (Haymarket Books, 2019). Essays at https://www.meditationsinanemergency.com/ Full body of work at http//www.rebeccasolnit.net
- 10.