Growing into 2020: BPF is Hiring!
Now Hiring:
Interim Executive Director for Buddhist Peace Fellowship
A Message from Managing Director Katie Loncke
Dear BPF fam,
It's been almost 8 years — a career lifetime for someone my age! — since BPF beckoned me into its bare winter garden as a Co-Director. Little was visible then, programmatically speaking, in the cold, hard, dirt.
But in the years since…
The better part of a decade later, much has flowered. And while I'm deeply grateful for this abundant experience, I'll avoid the cliché of expressing pride in "how far we've come." Focusing exclusively on expansion feels too linear, too disconnected from circles and seasons, too comfortable with noxious fairy tales of eternal economic growth, as Greta Thunberg put it. Buddhist scholar and priest Duncan Ryūken Williams reminded me recently that it's ok for even historians to view the world in cycles, rather than measuring it in progress. So yes: rather than proud of how far we've come, I'm grateful for how well we're cycling. How earnestly we are combining spiritual practice + passion for justice, pouring this elixir into allllll manner of our movement work. How vibrantly we are striving to be present and compassionate at each point along the way — without faking or fooling ourselves into new identity-traps, without posturing as unerringly woke authorities. How freshly we keep sprouting new-yet-informed-by-the-past, creative possibilities for what engaged Buddhism can look like.
For BPF, notable growth points in this 8-year cycle include:
- We regularly connect in person and online to do the work
- We solidly exceeded our income goals for 2019 (yes!)
- We value compensating people as well as we can, when we can
- Zen lineages used to dominate; now we're more buddhistically diverse
- It is self-evident that people who are not cis men can lead
- It is self-evident that people who are not white can lead
- Internationalist connections can be held by people with diasporic ties
- Conversations about race expand beyond black-white binaries
- Conversations about gender flourish beyond man-woman binaries
- Nonviolent actions involving meditation are becoming more strategic
- We are learning to notice, name, and shift ableism in both our buddhist and our movement cultures
And most importantly, at least to me: we continue to pay attention. To act when necessary, as best we can. And have fun, for goodness sake!
This is our practice.
Remain awake as much as possible, with the stuff of life and (r)evolution.
Despite the dangers and cruelties of this world, we find refuge in Buddhas, dharma, and sangha. Buddhas, the people and beings who remind us what it's like to wake up, to be fully alive. Dharma, the teachings that help us remember our true nature. Sangha, the community that holds us both firmly and gently along the way — mirroring, mentoring, sometimes goading us irritably toward enlightenment. (Ha!) In the Triple Gem we seek refuge from this world of suffering, and perhaps we learn to be refuge for others.
As we continue to pay attention, I am heartened to welcome a time for new leadership at BPF.
Now Hiring: Interim Executive Director for Buddhist Peace Fellowship
And not just any new leadership — but someone who can help BPF dive in to a decades-ripening question: should we become a staff collective, or continue in the more traditional nonprofit staffing model?
It's such a privilege to be part of an organization that fully inhales this question. Doesn't shy away. We know that birthing economic justice in the world, nonprofit sector included, asks that we learn to live our values at all levels, which sometimes requires questioning rote ways in which power operates. I think my generation of economic visionaries has pretty well concluded that this 1% vs 99% b.s. ain't cutting it. At all. We're keen to block workplace exploitation — both the kind from bosses / managers, and also the self-exploitation still haunting co-operative worker-owners, blessed with autonomy yet still squeezed to produce. (Harried, haggard, and happy? Is this the best we can expect? Perhaps. Funnily enough, I hear reports of a similar mind-bending emotional cocktail in certain temples and monasteries.) In any case, among young workers who have batted their idealistic wings against gilded cages of ostensibly safe neoliberal employment, many seem to be seeking better models. Inspired by versions of collectivity, feminism, pre-colonial / decolonial economies, and reconnecting with nature, lots of us are jazzed at the prospect of more workplace horizontality. Again, not really new; certainly a cycle. Here we are again; and for the first and only time.
On the flip side, I'm thankful that BPF is taking the time to inquire, rather than leaping in. Sometimes I think we get so fed up with status-quo forms that we pendulum swing hard in another direction, without really asking if that direction is right for us, or how to do it well. (Compulsory monogamy to messy polyamory, anyone? Lol! Another coming-of-age pattern I affectionately recognize in my generation, while cheering us on for our love of consent, wise communication, and pleasure activism.)
If you have the skills of an Interim Executive Director, deep love for engaged buddhism, and if this juicy question of structural form calls to you — well, I hope you're reading. And I hope to meet you soon!
With metta and solidarity,
Katie Loncke
Managing Director, Buddhist Peace Fellowship