The Myth of Peace Acknowledgments

For Aidan

 

Lisa Strykowski WilliamsCraig will receive thanks both first and last, as is just and proper. I offer heartfelt gratitude as well to:

David Williams, my Father: constant boon companion through my life and daily editor (via the marvels of aviation and information technology) throughout this writing process, without whose surpassing faithfulness, truly, none of this would be; Paula Craig, my Mother: juiciest of crones, singer of songs, lifter of prayers, poet, prophet, and muse, who continues to introduce children to wonders and birthed in me this work and my vocation, many years gone by; Meghan, Isaiah, Valliant, Elijah, Julie, Heidi, Nicole, Francisco, and my whole extended family, without whose love I might have become the scariest thing in the forest.

Iris McGinnis, Leon Regelson, Marilyn Madsen, Dr. Patricia Becker and Association Building Community over time; Kayla Feder Sensei, Richard Page, all of Aikido of Berkeley and my Free Aiki students; Dr. Don Levine and Aiki Extensions, Paul Baker's Dallas Theater Center; too many Montessorians, Jesuits, actors, directors, musicians, and martial educators to name; Odette Lockwood-Stewart, Lindsey Kerr, and the Epworth UMC community in Berkeley. These are fierce and loving people, the inspiration for any creative power alive in the words that follow.

Drs. Slattery, Knowles, and Barnes: Dissertation Committee most rare, without whose patient guidance even my dogged determination would have been for naught. It is by their hands that my "baroque prose" is (partly) mended. All remaining errors are, of course, mine. After all, if it ain't baroque...

The Pacifica Graduate Institute community, and colleagues in the world of the Process Arts, who have pruned my ideas and resisted my enthusiasms with care and whose co-creative gifts open innumerable doors of discovery and practice..

Dr. Huston Smith, my friend, whose inductions, invitations, writing, tea, perspicacious questions, and example never fail to spur me toward taking myself less seriously and practice more so.  

There are many others who do not appear here, and are thereby poorly rewarded for their friendship. For this I may only apologize and ask that they take me to task for it, vigorously, if possible.

First and last: Lisa, my love, who supported me well beyond the call of duty, through almost every imaginable set-back and very dark times indeed, so that tomorrow might begin.

 

These are the ones
~ without whom none of this ~