A Place of Rage: Book Club with Alexandra Cain, M.Div

February 14, 2026 | Events

Register

🗓️ March 1, 2026 @ 1:00 – 2:30 pm ET

📍Online

A book club conversation with the author of the Substack newsletter, Constant Craving.

Participants are encouraged to read Chapter 1 of The Fire Inside and come ready to think and co-create with fellow readers.

The opening chapter of this book turns toward Palestine and asks what solidarity actually requires of us. Drawing on ancestors like Audre Lorde and James Baldwin, Dr. Rima Vesely-Flad models a reflective process that refuses innocence and moves toward accountable action.

It is a living example of what the Buddha called wise attention (yoniso manasikāra): turning toward the root, not the surface.

More from Dr. Rima Vesely-Flad

James Baldwin argued that racism is not a “Black problem” but a white fear-driven delusion that scapegoats Black people and evades interior work. Drawing on Baldwin’s essays and testimony, we discuss his critique of white moral pretentiousness, evasion, and the projection of shame and fear—especially the fear of death—onto Black bodies. We also see how Baldwin’s analysis relates to Buddhist teaching on dependent origination from the Rice Seedling Sutra.

 

In this dharma talk, we investigate the role of Sati—which is translated as knowing, awareness, presence, or mindfulness—in the writings of James Baldwin and Audre Lorde, in conversation with early Buddhist writings.
In this dharma talk, we understand the weight of suffering through the eyes of James Baldwin and Audre Lorde. We learn how Baldwin gleaned the difference between suffering due to the violence of racism, and suffering that is central to the human experience. We learn about Lorde’s embrace of the idea that pain can teach us something important, but that we need not suffer uselessly.

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