Theme: Responding to a Fractured World: Re-think, Re-act, Re-create

Topic: Trees Touching: Whitehead, Teilhard and the Matter of EcoCiv

Presenter(s): Catherine Keller

Trees are just one beautiful example of the liveliness of the nonhuman universe. Recent research shows that they communicate with one another in startlingly specific and supportive ways. And of course the service forests provide our species—the perpetrators of global warming—with their drawing down and storing of excess CO2 from the atmosphere lends current US policy an apocalyptic edge. But the point of this Process Exploration will not be to doom us to eco political gloom but to meditate on the matter—the materiality—of hope. Teilhard and Whitehead both offer persuasive, spiritually radical visions of human participation in planetary evolution. But the former is more optimistic, envisioning our movements towards an Omega point; the latter is more pluralist and open ended. Can our work toward EcoCiv root and branch in both visions? What kind of hope can feel honest enough to motivate the materialization of a livable and well forested future?

About the Presenter(s)

Catherine Keller is Professor of Constructive Theology at The Theological School of Drew University. She teaches and writes in the intersections of process, ecological, feminist, political, and pluralist theologies. She has authored many books, the most recent being No Matter What: Crisis and the Spirit of Planetary Possibility; and Facing Apocalypse: Climate, Democracy and Other Last Chances. Also she has led, and co-edited several volumes of, the Drew Transdisciplinary Theological Colloquium, most recently Assembling Futures: Economy, Ecology, Democracy and Religion.

If you experience any difficulty with the RSVP, please send an email to events@cobb.institute. If you would like to receive regular announcements and updates about activities and events at the Cobb Institute, please join our list of Friends. Can’t make it to the live session? Click here to access our recordings archive.