The Art of Appreciative Attention — with Poet & Teacher John Brehm

As we approach the end of the year, Geoff and I wanted to offer something a little different—something quieter, more spacious, and genuinely nourishing. This week’s Peacemakers Podcast feels like exactly that.

Geoff opens with one of his own poems, a tender moment he rarely shares publicly, and we talk together about how poetry has shaped his way of slowing down and really seeing what’s right in front of us.

We’re joined by our friend John Brehm, poet, teacher, and longtime companion of Zen Peacemakers, who leads us into what he calls the art of appreciative attention. John invites us to lay down the old habit of treating poems like riddles to decode, and instead approach them as living presences—something we enter, savor, and let work on us from the inside out.

Through Joy Harjo, Elizabeth Bishop, Rilke, and his own new anthology The Poetry of Grief, Gratitude, and Reverence, John shows how poetry can dissolve the boundary between ourselves and the world, opening a gentler, more curious way of being.His teaching is beautifully simple:Notice what you love, and let that be enough.

As we close out the year, we’re grateful to share this unique, heartfelt episode—an offering to help us pause, reconnect, and remember the deeper threads of our practice.

Thank you for listening, for practicing with us, and for being part of this circle.

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In this episode of the Peacemakers Podcast, we walk after dark with San Francisco Night Ministry, a multi-faith community offering spiritual care on the city’s streets and phone lines. No preaching, no agenda—just presence.

Our guest, Rev. Trent Thornley, shares how these night walks become both an expression and inspiration of faith—moments of deep listening, compassion, and unexpected connection. You’ll also hear about their moving annual reading of names, honoring neighbors who died while unhoused.

If this conversation moves you, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. You’ll get access to all of our content—podcasts, articles, event recordings, and more—and help sustain the work of Zen Peacemakers.Learn more at www.zenpeacemakers.org

We invite you to support this work. Become a paying subscriber to the Peacemakers Podcast or join the Zen Peacemakers community as a member.

Show Credits:

* Speaker: Rev. Trent Thornley

* Recording Date: November 17, 2021

* Hosts: Geoff Shōun O’Keeffe, Jim Hōden Fricker

* Audio & Video Editing/Engineering: Jim Hōden Fricker

* Event Coordinators: Micka (妙心) Moto-Sanchez, Geoff Shōun O’Keeffe

* Related Video: HERE

In this episode, two of Bernie’s dear friends—Jeff Bridges and Krishna Das—sit down with us for a funny, tender, deeply alive conversation about courage, friendship, and the love that keeps cooking long after the meal. We open with Krishna Das recalling how Bernie invited him to turn lines from the Gate of Sweet Nectar into a singable prayer—what became the beloved song “Hungry Hearts.”

Recorded in 2022, not long after Jeff’s recovery, the conversation turns to “instructions to the cook”—meeting life with what’s in the pantry—and how facing illness, fear, and uncertainty can become a doorway to gratitude. You’ll hear the refrain “scary, but okay,” and a spacious exploration of how courage and fear sit at the same table.

If this conversation moves you, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. You’ll get access to all of our content—podcasts, articles, event recordings, and more—and help sustain the work of Zen Peacemakers.Learn more at www.zenpeacemakers.org

We invite you to support this work. Become a paying subscriber to the Peacemakers Podcast or join the Zen Peacemakers community as a member.

Show Credits:

* Speakers: Jeff Bridges & Krishna Das

* Recording Date: January 20, 2022

* Hosts: Geoff Shōun O’Keeffe, Jim Hōden Fricker

* Audio & Video Editing/Engineering: Jim Hōden Fricker

* Event Coordinators: Micka (妙心) Moto-Sanchez, Geoff Shōun O’Keeffe

* Related Video: HERE

In this episode of the Peacemakers Podcast, hosts Jim Hōden Fricker and Geoff Shōun O’Keeffe sit down with Jared Seide of Beyond Us & Them to explore a simple, radical practice: sitting in a circle and truly listening. What begins as “ordinary” turns out to be transformative—calming classrooms, easing tensions in neighborhoods, helping people heal in prisons and police precincts, and weaving connection where stress and isolation have taken root.

Jared traces the arc of Council from its early days in Los Angeles schools to deep work in reentry, law enforcement, and global bearing witness contexts—from Auschwitz to Rwanda. We hear how “everyone needs to feel seen and connected and valued,” and how Council offers a reliable structure for belonging—one voice at a time—embodying Taking Action, the third of the Zen Peacemakers’ Three Tenets.

If this conversation moves you, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. You’ll get access to all of our content—podcasts, articles, event recordings, and more—and help sustain the work of Zen Peacemakers.Learn more at www.zenpeacemakers.org

We invite you to support this work. Become a paying subscriber to the Peacemakers Podcast or join the Zen Peacemakers community as a member.

Show Credits:

* Speakers: Jared Seide

* Recording Date: February 20, 2025

* Hosts: Geoff Shōun O’Keeffe, Jim Hōden Fricker

* Audio & Video Editing/Engineering: Jim Hōden Fricker

* Related Video: HERE

In this episode of the Peacemakers Podcast, hosts Jim Hōden Fricker and Geoff Shōun O’Keeffe welcome Seth Zuihō Segall and John Murphy to present the vision of the newly formed Buddhist Coalition for Democracy.

Seth Zuihō Segall is a Zen priest ordained in the White Plum and Zen Peacemaker Order lineages, and a retired clinical psychologist who served for three decades at the Yale School of Medicine. He co-founded the Connecticut Chapter of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship in 2003 and the Buddhist Coalition for Democracy in 2025. Seth is the author of The House We Live In: Virtue, Wisdom, and Pluralism (2023), Buddhism and Human Flourishing (2020), and several other books and scholarly works, and is a contributing editor for Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

John Murphy is a longtime practitioner at the Philadelphia Shambhala Center, where he serves on its Central Governance Circle. He is also on the Board of the Secular Buddhist Network, and a founding member of the Coordinating Committee of the Buddhist Coalition for Democracy. With a career spanning senior leadership roles in both corporate and nonprofit sectors, John has guided organizations in strategic planning, fundraising, donor relations, and board development.

Together, Seth and John present a fresh and inclusive vision for the Coalition—one that invites Buddhists and non-Buddhists alike, conservatives and progressives, to join in protecting the foundations of democracy with compassion, dignity, and care. Their principles are clear: free and fair elections, the rule of law, free inquiry, human dignity, and care for the planet. Their actions are wide-ranging—bearing witness, supporting the vulnerable, educating about threats to democracy, embodying right speech and nonviolence.

This conversation touches on the joy of working together across difference, the courage to remain “for” something rather than merely “against,” and the deep listening that allows dialogue to transform us.

Find out more about the Buddhist Coalition for Democracy

If this conversation moves you, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. You’ll get access to all of our content—podcasts, articles, event recordings, and more—and help sustain the work of Zen Peacemakers.Learn more at www.zenpeacemakers.org

We invite you to support this work. Become a paying subscriber to the Peacemakers Podcast or join the Zen Peacemakers community as a member.

Show Credits:

* Speakers: Seth Zuihō Segall and John Murphy

* Recording Date: September 16, 2025

* Hosts: Geoff Shōun O’Keeffe, Jim Hōden Fricker

* Audio & Video Editing/Engineering: Jim Hōden Fricker

* Event Coordinators: Clotilde Wright, Geoff Shōun O’Keeffe

* Original Video: HERE

In this new Peacemakers Podcast episode, poet and Zen practitioner Jane Hirshfield sits down with Geoff O’Keeffe for a luminous, grounded conversation about how poems—and practice—help us meet a fractured world. From her seven-word distillation of the dharma (“Everything changes. Everything is connected. Pay attention.”) to the vow that undergirds compassionate action, Jane invites us into a way of seeing that is precise, permeable, and tender.

Together we travel through themes of Questioning, Being Still, Bearing Witness, Stepping Forward, Failing, and Listening—touching poems such as “After Long Silence,” “Let Them Not Say,” “Like Others,” “Changing Everything,” and the wry kitchen-table parable of a frozen egg. Along the way, Jane reflects on why witnessing itself is a form of action, and how abiding in Not-Knowing helps keep our responses spacious and humane. We hear of fires faced (or sometimes fled), of vows renewed, and of the small, almost invisible gestures that can ripple outward—poetry as a way to not despair and to remain in love with the world.

The Asking: New & Selected Poems (Knopf, September 12, 2023)https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/715681/the-asking-by-jane-hirshfield/

Bonus Content:

If this conversation moves you, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. You’ll get access to all of our content—podcasts, articles, event recordings, and more—and help sustain the work of Zen Peacemakers.Learn more at www.zenpeacemakers.org

We invite you to support this work. Become a paying subscriber to the Peacemakers Podcast or join the Zen Peacemakers community as a member.

Show Credits:

* Speakers: Jane Hirshfield & Geoff Shōun O’Keeffe

* Recording Date: April 24, 2024

* Hosts: Geoff Shōun O’Keeffe, Jim Hōden Fricker

* Audio & Video Editing/Engineering: Jim Hōden Fricker

* Event Coordinators: Clotilde Wright, Geoff Shōun O'Keeffe

* Original Video: HERE

More From Jane Hirshfield

https://poets.org/text/blaney-making-invisible-visible (text)

New Profile/Conversations:

McSweeney's, with Ilya Kaminsky: https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/jane-hirshfield

The Nation, with Wen Stephenson: https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/while-this-all-over-crying/

Interviews:

EZRA KLEIN SHOWOpinion | What a Poetic Mind Can Teach Us About How to Live - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

TRICYCLE https://tricycle.org/magazine/jane-hirshfield-poetry/

ORIONOrion Magazine - Jane Hirshfield Answers the Orion Questionnaire

Zen Peacemakers founder Bernie Glassman taught that practice doesn’t end on the cushion—it must move into the world. In this episode of the Peacemakers Podcast, we see how a Zen Peacemaker Affiliate, the Zen Center of Denver, brings this vision to life through their ongoing work at Metro Caring.

What emerges is a reminder that service isn’t about charity, but about belonging—creating spaces where dignity and connection flourish.

Bernie’s vision points us back to our own neighborhoods. Each of us has a “Metro Caring” close to home, a place where our practice can meet the world’s needs in simple, human ways.

Join us for this conversation about practice, service, and the everyday work of peacemaking.

🌱 Support our work: Become a paying subscriber for full access to our podcasts, writings, and events—and help sustain the Zen Peacemakers’ global community. Learn more at www.zenpeacemakers.org.

* Show Credits:

* Recording Date: April 17, 2025

* Hosts: Geoff Shoun O’Keeffe, Jim Hōden Fricker

* Audio & Video Editing/Engineering: Jim Hōden Fricker

* Special Thanks to Metro Caring and the Zen Center of Denver

What if being ethical wasn’t about being good, but about being whole?

In this moving and revelatory episode of the Peacemakers Podcast, Zen teacher Nancy Mujo Baker Roshi invites us to experience the Buddhist precepts not as commandments or even ideals—but as expressions of oneness itself. Through stories, teachings, and poetic insight, she guides us through the subtle terrain of “non-killing, non-stealing, non-lying” and the journey toward a life lived without a “why.”

Together we explore how exposing our delusions, embracing our sorrow, and dropping our self-protection can awaken a deeper way of being—one rooted in Zazen, intimacy, and spontaneous compassion.

Whether you’ve studied the precepts for years or are just beginning to reflect on your actions in the world, this episode offers a profound invitation: to meet all of it—your confusion, your care, your contradictions—as Buddha Nature itself.

Join us as we walk hand in hand with sorrow, and step into the great unfolding.

🌀If this conversation moves you, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. You’ll get access to all of our content—podcasts, articles, event recordings, and more—and help sustain the work of Zen Peacemakers.Learn more at www.zenpeacemakers.org

We invite you to support this work. Become a paying subscriber to the Peacemakers Podcast or join the Zen Peacemakers community as a member.

Show Credits:

* Speakers: Nancy Mujo Baker Roshi

* Recording Date: January 28, 2023

* Hosts: Geoff Shoun O’Keeffe, Jim Hōden Fricker

* Audio & Video Editing/Engineering: Jim Hōden Fricker

* Event Coordinators: Clotilde Wright, Geoff Shoun O'Keeffe

* Original Video: HERE