Newsletter Spring 2022
Falling In Love With the World
“In its solitariness the spirit asks, What, in the way of value, is the attainment of life? And it can find no such value till it has merged its individual claim with that of the objective universe. Religion is world-loyalty.”
—Alfred North Whitehead
Eros in Process
“Along this earthen wonderland
My heart falls in green love;
As I gaze awestruck to the trees
Sharing grace from above.”
—Angie Weiland-Crosby
Hanami 花見, means "flower viewing" in Japanese. As the cherry blossom trees start to bloom, families plan picnics to sit under the pink flowers known in Japan as sakura trees. The Japanese recognize that the spring "sakura" blooming is breathtakingly beautiful and they want to take it in before the season changes to summer. The first buds of the sakura begin in March and they reach their climax at the end of April. The Japanese love the sakura trees in a way that holds a lesson for the rest of the world.
Below you can listen to the Japanese folk song, a love song to the sakura trees.
We need to fall in love with the world...I mean head-over-heel-big love. We need to see God in every frog and stone, sit under a sakura tree with a picnic basket. We should talk to bees and sing to flowers. Maybe some of you already do that, so I'm preaching to the choir. In this month that celebrates love, I wish that I could send cupid with his quiver of arrows around to all the leaders of countries and their politicians, as well as all the money behind the bad decisions, and have cupid do his magic to make them fall in love with our earth. They need to love it more than money. We need to change the underlying philosophy of our culture and change our religion to compassion. May world loyalty and world love fill our hearts and move humanity in a new direction.
Cupid, you have some work to do!
–Kat Reeves
Sakura Sakura
(Japanese Transliteration)Sakura sakura
Noyama mo sato mo
Miwatasu kagiri
Kasumi ka kumo ka
Asahi ni niou
Sakura sakura
Hana zakariSakura sakura
Yayoi no sora wa
Miwatasu kagiri
Kasumi ka kumo ka
Nioi zo izuru
Izaya izaya
Mini yu kanCherry Blossoms, Cherry Blossoms
(English Translation)Cherry blossoms, cherry blossoms,
Blanketing the countryside,
As far as you can see.
Is it a mist, or clouds?
Fragrant in the morning sun.
Cherry blossoms, cherry blossoms,
Flowers in full bloom.Cherry blossoms, cherry blossoms,
Across the Spring sky,
As far as you can see.
Is it a mist, or clouds?
Fragrant in the air.
Come now, come,
Let’s look, at last!
Moment of Gratitude
In the mid 1970s John Cobb began writing and discussing issues of climate change and issues of sustainability. His work has been important at focusing us early on issues that he knew would not go away easily. As the Cobb Institute continues John's work we want to thank you for your continued support and commitment this past year.
Ken Edwins
Board Member, Community Relations
Changes in Leadership
Introducing the Cobb Institute's New Executive Director
Most of you are familiar with Richard Livingston working behind the scenes, running zoom meetings, emailing about upcoming classes, and answering your emails. Some of you might even remember the class he taught on Bob Mesle's book Process-Relational Philosophy before we moved from a meeting room at Pilgrim Place to a larger audience on Zoom. Having served as Director of Operations from September 2019 to December 2021, Richard is the perfect choice for the role of executive director.
He is not only a technical wizard, building and managing the Cobb Institute website, as well as sites for the Claremont Process Nexus, Process & Faith, and several others. He is also a gifted teacher and adds a creative touch to everything he does. He earned his PhD in Philosophy of Religion & Theology from Claremont Graduate University in 2015, specializing in process-relational thought, and has thirty years of experience in information technology. It's rare to find a person who has academic experience, technical abilities, and creative gifts. We are fortunate to have Richard Livingston as our new Executive Director.
Outgoing Chair
It's time to say goodbye to John Fahey as Board Chair of the Cobb Institute. But we won't let him go too far. He is staying on as a board member. We thank John for his leadership in 2020-2021. During that time the Cobb Institute tightened up its procedures, became more organized, and grew faster than we thought possible. We are grateful to him for giving so much time, attention, and financial support to help us move forward.
Thank you John Fahey!
Message From the Incoming Chair
I very much like the idea of falling in love with the world. I have friends who remind me that much of the world is frightening, unjust, violent, and self-destructive. We at the Cobb Institute are very much aware of this side of things. After all, it was Whitehead who insisted that philosophy must consider the multiplicity of life: “the fairies dance, and Christ is nailed to the cross.”
But we in the process community also think that there are things in the world and in ourselves that are immensely beautiful: the face of the stranger, a meal with a loved one, a kiss, the courage of people as they deal with suffering, the rolling surf, the starlit sky, the intricacy of a dragonfly wing, and, in a certain deep sense, life itself.
Truth be told, Whitehead believed that there is something enjoyable in every moment of actuality. In Process and Reality, he speaks of the very essence of actuality as self-enjoyment. The poet Gerard Manley Hopkins speak of it as the Freshness Deep Down in Pied Beauty.
This self-enjoyment, this freshness, this pied beauty, is part of an entity’s vitality and intrinsic value: its value for itself. When we fall in love with the world, we fall in love with the freshness that we sense in all things: the hills and rivers, trees and stars, plants, and animals; and other people: all of them. And in the very presence of the world with its freshness, as fellow travelers on a small but beautiful planet, we enjoy what the theologian Mayra Rivera calls “a touch of transcendence.” We can name the transcendence differently, each in our way: God, the Mystery, the Matrix, the Beauty. Let a thousand names bloom.
But we are also together as a family of sorts, sensitive to the Freshness. My own hope is that the Cobb Institute can help us all fall in love with life, find those touches of transcendence that give us joy, and help us grow into the great work of our time, which is to help heal a broken world.
Our mentor, John Cobb, is all about this healing: he’s given his life to it. Let us do the same, not with sadness alone much less righteous indignation, but with a love of life as that quality of heart and mind which inspires our action. In the beginning, and maybe even in the end, is the beauty.
–Jay McDaniel
New Board Members
We are very pleased to announce that six new board members have recently joined our team.
Richard Bunce
Richard Bunce is retired from a career in social service management and pastoral ministry. Currently, he is an active volunteer in organizations addressing social challenges such as poverty, homelessness, and the climate crisis. He lives with his wife in Pomona, California.
Mary Elizabeth Moore
Mary Elizabeth Moore is Dean Emerita and Professor of Theology and Education in Boston University School of Theology. Her passion is to journey with others to build compassionate and prophetic communities, and a more just, peaceful, and sustainable world. She feels privileged to work toward those ends as a board member of the Cobb Institute, especially in the practices of nurturing spirit, building justice, resisting violence, struggling against oppression, and caring for the earth. Her books include Teaching as a Sacramental Act; Covenant and Call; Ministering with the Earth; Teaching from the Heart: Theology and Educational Method; and Education for Continuity and Change. She has engaged actively in justice work in the church and in intercultural, interreligious relationship-building in local, professional, and academic settings.
Catherine Keller
Catherine Keller is the George T. Cobb Professor of Constructive Theology in the Theological School and Graduate Division of Religion of Drew University. She teaches courses in process, political, and ecological theology, and practices theology as a relation between ancient hints of ultimacy and current matters of urgency. Within and beyond Christian conversation, she has mobilized the transdisciplinary potential of feminist, philosophical, and pluralist intersections with religion. Her books include Facing Apocalypse: Climate, Democracy, and Other Last Chances, Political Theology of the Earth: Our Planetary Emergency and the Struggle for a New Public, Intercarnations: On the Possibility of Theology, and Cloud of the Impossible: Negative Theology and Planetary Entanglement.
Meijun Fan
Meijun Fan, Ph.D., former Vice-Chair and Professor of the Philosophy Department at Beijing Normal University, China. She completed doctoral studies at Beijing Normal University, specializing in Chinese traditional aesthetics and aesthetical education. She is the author of six books, and a co-author of six books. Her book, Contemporary Interpretation of Chinese Traditional Aesthetic, was granted the “Excellence Award in Philosophy and Social Science” in China in 1998. As Co-Director of the China Project, Meijun is primarily responsible for Cultural Communication, a newspaper of the China Project. She is also responsible for the Chinese visiting scholar program and works on publicity and web development.
Ken Edwins
Ken Edwins is chair of the community development and fundraising committee.
Mary Jo Maffei
Mary Jo Maffei is a climate activist, project manager, and garden designer. She was a climate leader and activist working with the legislative and executive branches of government in Massachusetts. Mary Jo has worked in process manufacturing (steel), as a consultant to many manufacturers helping them implement new processes, and she has successfully planned and implemented many projects in a wide variety of environments. This experience dovetails nicely with process thought, because process calls us as individuals, communities, and the whole earth society to change for the betterment of all. Mary Jo’s vision is to create a way for process to become a world-wide phenomenon touching millions of lives. Mary Jo was also an assistant professor at Miami University in Ohio and enjoyed time as a stay-at-home mother. She has a BS and MS in Operations Management from Carnegie-Mellon University and a Ph.D. in Operations Management from the University of Cincinnati. She lives in Western Massachusetts with her husband and dog.
New Operations Assistant
Jared Morningstar
Jared Morningstar performs a variety of tasks for the Cobb Institute, from graphic design to social media to leading learning circles. He lives in Madison, Wisconsin with his partner Haley and their cat Johnny. He graduated from Gustavus Adolphus College in 2018 with degrees in religion and Scandinavian studies. During that time he also participated in the Gustavus Wind Orchestra and spearheaded interfaith events on campus. Since graduating he has stayed engaged with the field of religious studies through founding a digital Islamic studies publication, ‘Alif: Traditional Wisdom in Review, and hosting regular online reading groups focused on major texts in philosophy of religion. In his free time, Jared pursues hobbies of digital art, photography, and most recently, classical Ottoman music where he plays flute alongside friends in a three-piece ensemble.
Happy Birthday John Cobb!
97 Years Young on February 9th!
Many momentous occasions have gone into those 97 years.
Count your age by friends, not years. Count your life by smiles, not tears.
—John Lennon
Note From John Cobb
Much is happening both to lift up “ecological civilization” as a goal around which many can unite and to articulate clear and achievable content.The reductionistic materialism that has been considered cutting-edge is now often seen as out-of-date. Organic thinking has status and prestige. Many realize that real change is urgent. The process community is no longer so easily ignored.
David Korten has written a beautiful essay on “ecological civilization” that has been given recognition and even support by the Club of Rome. It is reaching thought leaders in ways that seemed until now far beyond our reach.
Ecological civilization calls for changing everything. In many respects those changes are already underway with supporting communities. Ecological economics as a theory is well-developed, although it is still ignored by the mainstream. Other breakthroughs in the same direction are growing.
The movement for real organic farming has been around a long time. We know what would be sustainable and healing to the planet, and there are many fine examples ready to become the standard way of producing food.
We think that Whitehead has shown us the way in philosophy and that it has implications for theology. Under the title “Open and Relational” this kind of theology is attracting worshippers while most other forms are crumbling.
Now we have a great breakthrough in education. Unless we bring children into the world in a humane and adventurous way, our progress may be more in agreeing on what an “ecological civilization” would be like than in living it. Lynn De Jonghe has written a book that very practically and realistically tells us how we can accomplish this.
We know that what she describes is possible for schools, because she has created such schools herself. They are not so different from other existing schools, such as Montessori. We know her methods work. But sadly, required public schooling has been moving in a different direction. Perhaps as parents and teachers are reminded of what is possible priorities can change. How to effect this change may become the issue of the day. Lynn’s book may set the norms for the next generation. Meanwhile concerned parents can be blessed by its wisdom.
–John B. Cobb Jr.
Community Collaboration
Compassionate Pomona
Ecological Wealth Building in Pomona
The Latino Latina Roundtable and the Institute for Ecological Civilization are partnering to create worker-owned cooperative businesses in the City of Pomona. The Cobb Institute has had representatives involved from the outset. A proposal is soon to go to the mayor, who welcomes this initiative and will help obtain funding for a detailed feasibility study. The proposal includes the hiring of two community organizers to work together in reaching out to underserved lower-income neighborhoods and building a coalition of community organizations in support of this vision.
This step toward an economics of wellbeing is happening within a city in which the governing leadership has signed on to the international Charter for Compassion. This public commitment to compassion recognizes longstanding city actions and newly emerging projects.
Spheres of compassionate action include low-income housing, an innovative service center for the unhoused population, a mayor’s Covid relief task force, urban farming, enrichment programs for children and youth, accommodation for an innovative nonprofit business supplying solar panel energy for low income families, re-entry programs for ex-felons, and restorative practices for at-risk youth. A citizen-led group called Compassionate Pomona meets regularly to stimulate and publicize such projects.
“The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.”
—Elie Wiesel
Educational Development
The Learning Lab at the Cobb Institute is growing in 2022. Patricia Adams Farmer’s course on Beauty and Process Theology concluded last week, our conversation series with Tim Eastman, Untying the Gordian Knot, will conclude on Saturday, February 12th. We also have several new classes beginning in February. Terry Goddard's The Process Thought of Loren Eiseley will meet on Wednesdays at 1:00 PM Pacific beginning February 9th, and Christina Hutchins will begin series of three courses on poetry, starting with Unfolding a Poem: Reading in a Process Perspective, which will meet on Wednesdays at 5:00 PM Pacific beginning February 23rd.
Find out more about all our educational offerings here.
The Arts
Introducing a New Series
Novel Becomings features artists of all kinds, such as painters, poets, calligraphers, musicians, weavers, architects, and landscape artists. Each person will share a story about their inspiration and the process of their creative advance into novelty.
Sincerity In Calligraphy
by Jared Morningstar
In this piece, Jared Morningstar describes the challenging but rewarding process of producing an artistic rendering of the 112th Surah of the Qur'an—Surah Al-Ikhlāṣ (tr: The Chapter of Sincerity). "I found the process of creating this work to be rather demanding. A high degree of precision was involved, both in perception in order to begin accurately reproducing the piece, but also with the strokes themselves, especially in the final pass with pen."
“Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Spiritual Integration
The spiritual integration team at the Cobb Institute has been focusing on Process and Faith 2.0, an ambitious multi-faith network for relational spirituality and the common good. Take a look at the updated website and sign up to be part of the community.
John Cobb & Friends Gatherings
| Feb 1st | Process and China: How Lives Are Being Changed: Jay McDaniel, Meijun Fan, Zhihe Wang, and others |
| Feb 8th | Celebration of John Cobb's 97th Birthday: Rebecca Parker, Mary Elizabeth Moore, Andrew Schwartz, and Rita Nakashima Brock |
| Feb 15th | The Cosmological Context of the Origin of Life: Matt Segall |
| Feb 22nd | To Be Announced |
The Process Community News
Modes of Sentience: Psychedelics, Metaphysics, Panpsychism
by Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes
Modes of Sentience is an essay collection by philosopher of mind Dr Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes that explores the extraordinary intersection of psychedelic experience with philosophy, the analysis of mind in relation to panpsychism, multiple dimensions of space, time, and other metaphysical matters. Keeping apace with the psychedelic renaissance in science and medicine, this collection proposes new philosophical models for discerning altered and alternate modes of sentience.
Process Cosmology: New Integrations in Science and Philosophy
Editors:
Expresses multivocal possibilities for the development of process cosmology after Whitehead. Reveals the international and interdisciplinary reach of Whitehead’s organic process cosmology. Explores the multidisciplinary relevance of process philosophy.
The heart of the Claremont Process Nexus is a network of organizations that share a common commitment to process-relational ways of understanding and living. The Nexus came into being out of the work of members of the Center for Process Studies (CPS). CPS wanted to promote interest in process thought, especially that of Alfred North Whitehead, among philosophers, scientists, educators, lawyers, and so forth. The Nexus builds on and expands that by providing a way for members of the process movement to better communicate, collaborate, and support one another.
Joining the Nexus does not mean that you need to take on anything additional or that anyone will tell you what to do. It does not mean that you commit your organization to any set of beliefs or practices. It does mean that you are comfortable relating to other organizations with a similar heritage to yours, at least on some topics.
As a member you will learn about other opportunities, and be invited to attend events about which you would not otherwise know. We hope there will be occasions when you support others and others support you. Some of you as individuals may enjoy discussing specific questions or new books. Others may be interested in finding resources or connecting with like-minded individuals. Our aim is for this endeavor to benefit all who participate.
Spirit and The Movies
Interfaith Explorations | Spring 2022
After we see a film (a movie, a documentary, a super bowl advertisement) we are inwardly moved. We wonder to ourselves: How did it inspire me? Challenge me? Move me? What did I learn from it? What questions does it raise for me? It is especially meaningful if we can discuss this with others - we grow through this discussion. In this eight-week session, we will make use of films and their reviews as springboards for our own soulful reflections.
