Memorial Service | John B. Cobb, Jr.
2025-02-15 15:00 - 16:30 (America/Los_Angeles)
The Center for Process Studies is planning a public memorial for Dr. Cobb on Saturday, February 15th, 2025 at the Claremont United Church of Christ. The Service will run between 3:00pm – 4:30pm PST. We will also be livestreaming the memorial on YouTube. A reception will be held immediately after the service, offering a time for fellowship and sharing memories of John.

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Course: Introduction to Process-Relational Thought & Practice 2025
2025-02-19 17:00 - 18:30, 2025-02-26 17:00 - 18:30 | Online Event
Discovering Dynamic Ideas for a Relational Life

This 6-week course provides an introduction to the process tradition by examining key ideas in Whitehead’s philosophy, exploring some general ideas that flow from his philosophy, and considering applications of these ideas in personal life and community development.

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Process Pop-Up: From Amipotence to All-Encompassing Mercy: Integrating Oord’s Theology of Love into the Islamic Tradition
2025-02-27 17:00 - 18:00
In this session, Adis Duderija, a scholar of Islamic theology, will explore his agreement with Thomas Jay Oord’s critique of classical theistic omnipotence and his compelling concept of amipotence.

Drawing from Oord’s work as well as his own scholarship, Dr. Duderija will guide participants through the theological landscape, examining both the obstacles and opportunities for integrating amipotence within the Islamic interpretive tradition. We’ll delve into how we can reframe our understanding of the Qur’an and its portrayal of God’s mercy, emphasizing that divine love and mercy are not just attributes but the essence of God’s nature.

Expect to engage in thought-provoking discussions about the implications for human flourishing and well-being within our faith traditions.

Topics include:

Human Flourishing and Well-Being: Analysis of how the concept of amipotence relates to human well-being and the challenges of defining and applying these concepts in various contexts.

Critique of Classical Theism: Examination of Oord’s critique of traditional concepts of omnipotence and the introduction of amipotence.

Integration into Islamic Tradition: Exploration of theological obstacles and opportunities for incorporating amipotence within the Islamic interpretive framework.

Understanding Divine Attributes: Discussion on the Qur’an’s portrayal of God’s attributes, particularly focusing on mercy (Ar-Rahman) and its implications for divine love.

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Process Explorations: Kathleen Wakefield
2025-03-11 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Via Zoom
Topic: Songs “Planted in Clay”

Presenter(s): Kathleen Wakefield

In this session of Process Explorations, Kathleen Wakefield shares her creative, trans-disciplinary thinking in a program that promises to be evocative for poets and artists, activists and philosophers alike. She will present “Songs ‘Planted in Clay,’” a plea for the liberating and healing power of Whiteheadian metaphysics and poetry. This theme was her Springboard Project for the 2024 Certificate Program in Process Studies.Kathleen explores how the process of writing exemplifies Whitehead’s theory of prehensions and how poetry as an art form evoking the thickness of experience “embodies a protest against the ‘bifurcation’ of nature.” (PR 289) Poetry is gradually recognized as a form of earth speech, aligning with Whitehead’s notion of a work of art as “a fragment of nature.” In the light of Process Thinking, a family trauma is excavated through family letters which provide new lures for healing, transformation, and poetic expression.

Kathleen A. Wakefield is the author of two books of poetry, Notations on the Visible World (Anhinga Press, 2000), winner of the Anhinga Prize for Poetry, and Grip, Give and Sway (Silver Birch Press, 2016). She holds degrees from Mount Holyoke College (Chemistry) and the University of Michigan (History of Art). She taught creative writing at the Eastman School of Music and the University of Rochester, worked as a poet-in-the-schools, and shares poetry through public libraries. Her work has appeared in numerous journals, including the Alaska Quarterly Review, Christian Century, Georgia Review, Poetry, Sewanee Review, and Visions International, with work forthcoming in Half-Mystic and Amethyst Review. She serves on the leadership committee of the Cobb Institute Certificate Program.

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Course: Whitehead's Process Philosophy 2025
2025-03-13 17:00 - 19:00, 2025-03-20 17:00 - 19:00, 2025-03-27 17:00 - 19:00, 2025-04-03 17:00 - 19:00, 2025-04-10 17:00 - 19:00 | Online Event
Diving Deeper Into Whitehead’s Philosophy of Organism

While “process philosophy” is wider than the work of Alfred North Whitehead, the depth and dynamism of his thought principally inspire its modern expression. This five-part course introduces students and life-long learners to the central themes, contours, and ideas of Whitehead’s “philosophy of organism.”

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Process Explorations: Jared Morningstar
2025-03-18 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Via Zoom
Topic: The Practice, Spirituality, and History of Ramadan

Presenter(s): Jared Morningstar

In this session of Process Explorations, Jared Morningstar will introduce the Islamic holiday of Ramadan. Jared will share his own experiences of the spiritual and physical practices central to this holiday, dwelling on the ways that this month of fasting offers opportunities for connecting more deeply with Muslim community, the natural world, and the Divine. He will also share the origins and the history of Ramadan, drawing connections with other religious communities and practices.

Rather than just introducing the basic features of this central Islamic practice, Jared will draw connections between aspects of Ramadan and central values and themes present in process thought. Through presenting Ramadan from both personal and academic perspectives, Jared hopes to share insights and make connections that may be taken up by Muslims and non-Muslims alike and carried forward long after Ramadan 2025 has concluded.

About the Presenter(s)

Jared is an independent scholar living in Madison, Wisconsin with academic interests in philosophy of religion, Islamic studies, comparative religion, metamodern spirituality, and interfaith dialogue. His work in these areas seeks to offer robust responses to issues of inter-religious conflict, contemporary nihilism, and the “meaning crisis,” among other things. Jared graduated from Gustavus Adolphus College in 2018 with degrees in religion and Scandinavian studies and currently works for the Center for Process Studies, the Cobb Institute, and the Psychedelic Medicine Association.

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Process Explorations: Eric Shafer, Sid Mohn, and Karla Leitzman
2025-03-25 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Via Zoom
Series: Responding to a Fractured World: Re-think, Re-act, Re-create
Topic: The US and its Global Leadership for Refugees

Presenters: Eric Shafer, Sid Mohn, and Karla Leitzman

In the aftermath of World War 2, the United States emerged as a leader in the resettlement of persons displaced by war. With the birth of the United Nations, the global community articulated a commitment to the protection of refugees to which the US was party, and which was ultimately codified into U.S. law in 1980. The Trump Administration in its first term significantly reduced refugee admissions and within the initial weeks of Trump’s second Administration, all refugee admissions were suspended. The Rev. Dr. Sid Mohn, The Rev. Eric Shafer, and Karla Leitzman will join us for a discussion of the history of refugee resettlement and its current realities.

About the Presenter(s)

The Rev. Eric C. Shafer, a pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), is Global Refuge’s “Pastor-in-Residence.” (Global Refuge is the new name for Lutheran Immigration and Refuge Service). He recently retired after more thaneight years asSenior Pastor at Mt. Olive Lutheran Church in Santa Monica, CA. There he helped open the Students4Students Shelter at Mt. Olive, the first shelter for homeless college students in the USA. For this work he has received awards from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, the Santa Monica Rotary Club, and the Westside Coalition for Housing, Hunger, and Health.” His previous positions include Senior Vice President for Odyssey Networks in New York City and Director of Communication for the ELCA in Chicago. Shafer has taught in South Africa and Madagascar and made multiple trips to Jerusalem and the West Bank. He is the host of the YouTube program Hope Matters and a regular contributor to the Church Anew website.

Sid Mohn is Director of Interfaith Action of SW Michigan, a peace and justice collaborative of more than thirty faith-based communities. As a non-profit leader, he has focused on human rights advocacy, especially migrant rights and child rights. He was President and CEO of Heartland Alliance for Human Needs and Human Rights for thirty-five years (1980–2015), launching such initiatives as Neon Street Center for Homeless Youth, International Children’s Centers for Unaccompanied Minors, Kovler Center for the Treatment of Survivors of Torture, and Mexico-US Advocates Network. He also worked closely with the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement. For twenty-five years, Sid oversaw Heartland Alliance’s unaccompanied child migrant programs, working with governmental, legal, and social service organizations. Further, he coordinated the second sanctuary church in the U.S. (Wellington Ave United Church of Christ, Chicago), providing safe haven to refugees from El Salvador. His awards include: Executive Director of the Year (United Way of Chicago), Wright Award for Human Rights Leadership (Chicago Commission on Human Relations), LGBT Hall of Fame of Chicago, Founder’s Award (Illinois Coalition on Immigrant & Refugee Rights), and Human Rights Leader’s Award (Centro Romero).

Karla Leitzman has served as a Philanthropic Advisor with Global Refuge/ LIRS for two and a half years. A native Minnesotan who lives in St. Paul, Karla is responsible for connecting with donors in the Midwest and Southern California to solicit and steward support for the missions and ministries of Global Refuge. In addition to her work, Karla is also an endorsed candidate for Word and Sacrament in the St. Paul Area Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and is a senior Master of Divinity Student at Luther Seminary. She is currently serving as a part time vicar/ pastoral intern at Faith Lilac Way Lutheran Church in Robbinsdale, MN, a northern suburb of Minneapolis. Karla is passionate about the church’s role in justice- and peace- making around the world, and she is grateful for the multiple hats she is fortunate to wear during such a tumultuous time.

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Process Explorations: Sheri Kling
2025-04-01 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Via Zoom
Series: Responding to a Fractured World: Re-think, Re-act, Re-create
Topic: Healing our Collective Pain: Whitehead, Jung, and Transformation

Presenter(s): Sheri Kling, Director of Process and Faith

Can we understand both cosmos and psyche in a way that promotes integration rather than fragmentation? Our present societal landscape, particularly in the West and the United States, is marked by fragmentation and division across multiple dimensions. Societally, there is significant polarization. Interpersonally, many individuals face growing loneliness and isolation. Intrapersonally, there is a surge in antidepressant use and a clear link between early adverse experiences and adult challenges. This highlights a deep-rooted crisis in how individuals perceive their existence and connections with others.
To heal our fragmentation, we must seek an understanding of both the cosmos and the psyche that unifies rather than divides. In this talk, Sheri D. Kling, Ph.D., will offer Whitehead and Jung as integrating resources that reveal a Reality that shows us that we matter, we belong, and we can experience positive change.

About the Presenter(s)

Sheri D. Kling, Ph.D. is the director of Process & Faith with the Center for Process Studies and interim minister of Redeemer Lutheran Church in Bradenton, FL. Sheri earned her Ph.D. in Religion: Process Studies from Claremont School of Theology and her MATS from the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. She is a theologian, songwriter, and spiritual teacher who draws from wisdom and mystical traditions, relational worldviews, depth psychology, and the intersection of spirituality and science to help people find meaning, belonging, and transformation. Sheri is a faculty member of the Haden Institute, adjunct faculty with Claremont School of Theology, and the author of A Process Spirituality: Christian and Transreligious Resources for Transformation as well as a contributor to several other books. She regularly delivers dynamic “Music & Message” presentations to groups, and offers courses, concerts, and spiritual retreats. Sheri may be found online at sherikling.com

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Process Explorations: Thandeka & Jennifer Jennings
2025-04-08 10:00 - 12:00
Series: Responding to a Fractured World: Re-think, Re-act, Re-create
Topic: The Untrolling Project

Presenter(s): Thandeka & Jennifer Jennings
Untrolling America is a new multimedia series created by Thandeka and Jennifer Jennings as part of a grassroots initiative to unite Americans across their partisan divides and cultural war battlefields.
Will they succeed?
Will their series create new actions everywhere, the kind that John B. Cobb Jr. called for in his 2024 public lecture on earthism at Peking University? Will it galvanize persons “to love the whole in its complex wholeness in a way that leads us to care about the consequences of our actions everywhere”? Will it change the way we feel, think and act?
Thandeka and Jennifer will ask us to reflect on, discuss, and answer these questions after a screening of the first episode of Untrolling America—which John helped fund— on April 8, 2025 on Process Explorations.

About the Presenter(s)

Thandeka is a Unitarian Universalist theologian, minister and congregational consultant, founder and President of Love Beyond Belief ™ Inc., co-creator and co-producer of the Universal Connections small group project and The Untrolling Project, and a former Emmy award-winning television producer.
Thandeka has spent more than two decades studying the brain science of emotions—Affective Neuroscience (AN). As a result of her work in AN, she founded Contemporary Affect Theology (CAT), which investigates the links between religion and emotions, differentiating spiritual experiences from religious beliefs.
Jaak Panksepp, the founder of AN, commends Thandeka’s “decisive historical-philosophical analysis” as work that can provide “a universal substrate for nondenominational religious experience” (The Archaeology of Mind, 391).
Her books and essays have helped secure her place as a “major figure in American liberal theology,” as Gary Dorrien notes in The Making of American Liberal Theology: Crisis, Irony, and Postmodernity, 1950-2005 (John Knox Press, 2006).

Jennifer Jennings is a CPA with 27 years of financial accounting experience, including 17 years as the Director of Financial Reporting at a major corporation in Dallas. She is Vice President of Finance & Operations at Love Beyond Belief ™ Inc, and Co-Director of Universal Connections and The Untrolling Project.
In 2007, her inward journey of self-discovery sparked an intense spiritual pilgrimage seeking new ways to connect all the people of this planet in creating better ways to live together. The journey led to her finding Unitarian Universalism and The First Unitarian Church of Dallas where she has served on the Church Board, the Board of North Texas Unitarian Universalist Congregations, its Love Beyond Belief Steering Committee, its New Life School of Uganda Partnership Committee and as a Circles Small Group Facilitator and facilitator of Adult Religious Education offerings like Coming of Age for Adults and Turning Points in UU History. When she took Thandeka’s Universal Connections small group workshop, she found what she’d been seeking: a way to affirm the spiritual common ground of humanity for life-enhancing work on planet earth. Jennifer now works with Thandeka full time

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Process Explorations: Chris Hughes
2025-04-15 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Via Zoom
Series: Responding to a Fractured World: Re-think, Re-act, Re-create
Topic: As We Think, We Live: Critical Challenges for Educational Systems and Teachers

Presenter(s): Chris Hughes, Dean of Cobb Institute Certificate Program
Public education serves the needs of a country, but what happens when those needs become too narrowly articulated, even partisan, and the deep learning of young people is forgotten? Deep learning shifts thinking towards the big stage of speculative philosophy and open horizons. Narrow learning pushes a selected set of possibilities.
PROcess is a seven-session course for young people. Why do we need it? The world is on a dangerous trajectory. It is young minds that carry the thoughts for tomorrow’s actions. Students breathe in not only the subjects they are taught but also how these subjects are framed by their teachers. Subject and frame together create transformative learning. Subjects and frames are fragmented in our schools today. At the heart of Whitehead’s thinking is a healing unity. For many people a first encounter with Whitehead’s vision is a romance, a felt sense in the body, a shift in the ground under their feet. Whitehead himself saw romance as the first, and necessary, stage of deep learning. I think we can spark such a romance in young people. PROcess is a first attempt in this direction. This session explores both the need and the how of this attempt.

About the Presenter(s)

Chris Hughes is the current Dean of the Certificate in Process Thought and Practice at the Cobb Institute. He came to Canada from the UK in 1975 after earning a BA in Psychology from Durham University. In 1986 he earned a B.Ed with a major in Science from the University of Calgary. Along the way he picked up courses and skills in experimental psychology from the University of McMaster and in philosophy from the University of Calgary. Prior to 1986 when he started a 30+ year High School teaching streak (Maths and Physics), he worked with young people who were “at risk” or who had custodial sentences. Towards the end of his teaching career, he trained as a Mindfulness Instructor with the British Mindfulness in Schools Project and taught Mindfulness to both students and teachers. He lives in Calgary, Alberta. During his teaching career he received the Prime Minister’s Award for Teaching Excellence and the APEGGA Teaching Award. (The Association of Professional Engineers, Geologists and Geophysicists of Alberta).

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Process Explorations: Robert McDonald
2025-04-22 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Via Zoom
Theme: Responding to a Fractured World: Re-think, Re-act, Re-create
Topic: Is There a Process Theology of Food? Considering our Fractured World and How to Respond

Presenter(s): Robert McDonald

Despite claims to the contrary, we find ourselves in the midst of an ecological crisis involving and/or caused by many aspects of modern Western civilization. One such area is the industrial agricultural complex, also called “agri-business,” where the pursuit of profit supersedes—and denigrates—the pursuit of the common good. From a religious perspective, this is a problematic turn of events. This raises an apropos question: our various traditions of belief or unbelief, specifically process thought, have anything to say on the matter of the (a-)theology of food?
While the “theology of food” may seem to be a relatively new area of theological concern, this is not the case, though it may be anachronistic to call it such prior to the early 2000’s. Since there is a history of theological consideration regarding food within at least the broad Christian tradition, and because much can be gleaned from dialogue with other traditions, it is important to consider what process thought may have to offer concerning several related issues: health, finances, sustainability, Creation, the eschaton, the Eucharist, and many more. To wit, the thought of early process thinkers like Whitehead and Teilhard, as well as those who have followed them, has much to teach us regarding a possible process theology of food.

About the Presenter(s)

Robert McDonald is a current PhD candidate in Religion with the Claremont School of Theology where he began his doctoral work in Process Studies in 2017. He is currently working to complete his dissertation under the direction and mentorship of Philip Clayton, PhD, the theme of which is a comparative religious approach toward industrialized animal agriculture; specifically, his work seeks to address the issues, for both human and more-than-human communities, presented by what are referred to as “CAFOs.” His own religious perspective within this work is Roman Catholicism, about which he argues that the Church should move toward a minimally plant-based diet.
No longer in course work, Robert lives in Richmond, VA with his wife of nearly three years, Meg, and their two cats, Toshi and Clementine. When not spending time with his family or engaging in research and writing, Robert either plays or runs TTRPGs (“tabletop role playing games”) as an additional creative outlet. He is also an avid fan of various genres of fiction by the likes of Asimov, Tolkien, and Vonnegut, to name a few. He will also watch TV on occasion, especially enjoying the BBC show “Father Brown.”.

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Course: Processing Religion & Wisdom Traditions
2025-04-22 17:00 - 19:00, 2025-04-29 17:00 - 19:00, 2025-05-06 17:00 - 19:00, 2025-05-13 17:00 - 19:00, 2025-05-20 17:00 - 19:00, 2025-05-27 17:00 - 19:00, 2025-06-03 17:00 - 19:00
Diving Deeper Into Whitehead’s Philosophy of Organism

We live in a world marked by great diversity, and if humans are to live peaceably together, we must seek to understand each other. In this course, participants will explore various world religions, as well as indigenous/traditional ways of thinking and living, through a lens of process and relational thought. Over the course of seven sessions, we will discuss Indigenous/Traditional Ways, Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity.

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Process Explorations: Mark Davies
2025-04-29 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Via Zoom
Theme: Responding to a Fractured World: Re-think, Re-act, Re-create
Topic: Re-thinking and Re-creating Higher Education in a Time of American Fascism
Presenter(s): Mark Davies

Our colleges and universities must not lose their souls by appeasing American fascism.
It is an evil and intolerable situation for international students at our colleges and universities to be abducted, detained, and deported for using their right to think freely, speak freely, and act freely in ways that are doing no harm to others; but this is the situation we currently face as American fascism attempts to assert its control over our colleges and universities, the students who attend them, and the faculty who teach and do research at them.
It is also intolerable that American fascism is attempting to force colleges and universities to accept federal government oversight and control or risk losing federal funding for research or even their non-profit status. How can institutions of higher education work together in solidarity to resist the current efforts to destroy academic freedom, freedom of speech, religious freedom, and freedom of assembly on our campuses? How can we re-think and re-create higher education to effectively resist efforts of American fascism to co-opt it?

About the Presenter(s)

Rev. Dr. Mark Y. A. Davies is the Wimberly Professor of Social and Ecological Ethics, Director of the World House Institute for Social and Ecological Responsibility, and Executive Director of the Leadership. Education, and Development (LEaD) Hub North United States for the General Board of Higher Education and Ministry (GBHEM) at Oklahoma City University where he has worked in both teaching and administration for 28 years. He is an ordained elder in the Oklahoma Conference of the United Methodist Church where he has served as Chair of the Board of Church and Society from 2015 to 2018 and 2023 to the present.

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Process Explorations: John P. Clark
2025-05-06 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Via Zoom
Theme: Responding to a Fractured World: Re-think, Re-act, Re-create
Topic: The Transfigurative Community
Presenter(s): John P. Clark

It is important that we situate ourselves clearly within the present moment of Earth history, with an acute awareness of all its momentous problems, and all its inspiring possibilities. We are now leaving the Cenezoic, an era of new life on Earth, and entering the Necrocene, an era of mass extinction and death on Earth. We are seeing the final results of a long history of various forms of Empire and domination, and of certain dominant forms of egoic identity. We are faced with the choice of either continuing on the path of social and ecological disintegration, or of initiating a new path of social and ecological regeneration.
The thesis of this presentation is that the crucial factor in determining the nature our future and the future of life on Earth is whether a certain kind of community can emerge. We might call it the Awakening Earth Community.Such a project will require large-scale social and ecological regeneration, but it can only succeed if it is rooted in small-scale communities of liberation and solidarity, awakening and care. It is such communities that are capable of fostering fundamental personal and group transformation. Such a transformation will need to address all the basic spheres of social determination, including the social imaginary, the social ideology, the social ethos, the social institutional structure, and social materiality. Change must take place simultaneously in all of these spheres, and must take place at all levels of organization, including the personal level, the level of primary groups, the level of larger groups, and the level of the entire society. Such a project will be rooted in human experience. It can look for inspiration and guidance from the lengthy and rich global history of non-dominating communal organization, going back to the beginnings of human society. We will look at some key points in that history, including the achievements of the Zapatista movement in Chiapas, the Democratic Autonomy Movement in Rojava, and the Sarvodaya Movement in India.

About the Presenter(s)

John P. Clark is a philosopher, activist, writer, and educator. He is Director of La Terre Institute for Community and Ecology and Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Loyola University, where he taught for 44 years, was a member and former chair of the Environment Program, and directed a summer study program in India. His most recent philosophical work is Between Earth and Empire: From the Necrocene to the Beloved Community. As his alter non-ego, Max Cafard, he recently published Anarchy in the Big Easy, a graphic history of radical New Orleans. He does educational and organizational work with La Terre Institute in New Orleans and at Bayou La Terre Woodland Center, an 88-acre site on Bayou La Terre in the coastal forest of the Gulf of Mexico. He hosts a weekly meditation and study group at the Cypress in the Garden Zendo in New Orleans. He recently finished a year homeschooling his grandson, Ethan.

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Process Explorations: Sandra Lubarsky and Marcus Ford
2025-05-13 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Via Zoom
Theme: Responding to a Fractured World: Re-think, Re-act, Re-create
Topic: Wider Education: Embracing Generalization
Presenter(s): Sandra Lubarsky and Marcus Ford

Whitehead understood education as a process from romance to precision to generalization. Most higher education today emphasizes precision and more precision, to the neglect of romance and generalization. Marcus will speak about the importance of rethinking General Education programs within higher education institutions and how they can be the platform for addressing the wider issues of our day. Sandra will speak about a public model of wider education and the need for “communiversities,” highlighting the work of Flagstaff Communiversity.

About the Presenter(s)

Marcus Ford was one of the first professors in the country to teach courses in sustainability and develop an Environmental Humanities program. Since early in his teaching career, Marcus has held that the most important thing we can learn is how to live sustainably and justly within the bounds of the natural world. He has taught sustainability studies at the undergraduate and graduate level and is an advocate for education that prepares people to actively participate in shaping their communities. He is the author of the groundbreaking book, Beyond the Modern University and many articles on higher education. Marcus is the co-founder of Flagstaff College/Communiversity.

Sandra Lubarsky is co-founder and president of Flagstaff College/Communiversity, offering education-for-community in Flagstaff, Arizona. She is retired from academic positions in sustainability at Appalachian State University in North Carolina and Northern Arizona University . She holds a Ph.D. in philosophy of religion from Claremont Graduate University and is author of Tolerance and Transformation: Jewish Approaches to Religious Pluralism; Jewish Theology and Process Thought (co-edited); and numerous articles on religious pluralism, Jewish theology, and the intersection of aesthetics and sustainability.

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Process Explorations: Catherine Keller
2025-05-20 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Via Zoom
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.

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Process Explorations: Thomas A. Moore
2025-05-27 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Via Zoom
Theme: Responding to a Fractured World: Re-think, Re-act, Re-create
Topic: The Exuberant Universe: Re-thinking Creation in a Scientific Age
Presenter(s): Thomas A. Moore

The first chapter of Genesis provides a theological understanding of creation consistent with the accepted cosmology of its place and time. What might a modern concept of creation look like? This talk will explore the modern cosmological riddle misleadingly called the Anthropic Principle (the observation that the laws of physics seem fine-tuned to enable a complex universe) and examine what it means, what it does not mean, and how it might connect to process thought and spirituality. We will come to see how some seemingly scientific discussions of cosmology actually are religious arguments in disguise.

About the Presenter(s)

Thomas A. Moore is the Reuben C. and Eleanor Winslow professor of mathematics and natural science at Pomona College. He received his undergraduate education at Carleton College (where he took courses offered by Ian Barbour and Joseph Sittler) and his Ph. D in theoretical physics in 1981 from Yale University (where he also studied Biblical Hebrew with Bonnie Kittel and Brevard Childs). His father was a professor of philosophy and religion in the University of Wisconsin system, and his mother and spouse are ordained pastors in the United Church of Christ. He has long been interested in questions on the boundary between philosophy and physics, and, in addition to teaching upper-level courses in general relativity and particle physics, he commonly offers an interdisciplinary course in “Science and Religion.”

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Process Explorations: Bonnie Tarwater
2025-06-03 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Via Zoom
Theme: Responding to a Fractured World: Re-think, Re-act, Re-create
Topic: Church for Our Common Home and the John Cobb Eco Farm and Retreat Center
Presenter(s): Bonnie Tarwater

This presentation will share about the ministry of Church for Our Common Home and the John Cobb Eco Farm and Retreat Center and offer photos in a PowerPoint. In 2015 Dr. John B. Cobb Jr. invited me to head the Anima Track at the Seizing an Alternative Conference. This contributed to my own consciousness raising experince about the severity of our earth crisis and the founding of Church for Our Common Home dedicated to Mother Earth, the divine feminine, loving community, and the arts. I did not grow up with any religion and moved eighteen times in my first eighteen years in five different countries. Perhaps this contributes to my planetary perspective that celebrates the wonder of our interfaith, interspecies and interconnected web of life. As a disciple of Jesus and Unitarian Universalist, Church for Our Common Home is untraditional and esoteric.
My husband Dr. Walt Rutherford is a transpersonal psychologist and together we offer traditional as well as pastoral counseling, spiritual direction, dream work, etc. (more info at Our Common Home Counseling Center) Our transdisciplinary ministry offers a wide array of offerings to serve beyond the walls of the traditional church. We literally moved out of our “House Church” into the barn to be with the animals, 4 pm Sundays, on Zoom and celebrating the goats, chickens, ducks, cats, and our huge, beautiful rabbit Gracie, the breeze, trees, grass………….and we give thanks!
Dr. Cobb attended Church for Our Common Home worship on Zoom almost every Sunday the last few years of his life. My background in the visual and performing arts inspires our “Arts Ministry” and the Our Lady of Guadalupe Barn Mural. We have created an Interfaith Secret Prayer Garden, and The Mary Magdalene Café and rose garden hosts our weekly Earth Crisis Support Group and Potluck Party (ECSG) after church. We invited other organizations to join us and for the last year we have offered the Interfaith Prayer and Song Vigil for Peace in Corvallis Oregon every Saturday in front of the Court House to support the Corvallis in Solidarity with Palestine Free Gaza Protest. Church for Our Common Home is at the Capital of Salem for Moral Monday’s and the Poor People’s Campaign.
The John Cobb Eco Farm and Retreat Center is a five-acre farm in Oregon where we grow beets as big as your head and sunflowers over 12 feet tall. We are doing biodynamic farming a kind of spiritual farming and we call our vegetable garden, “The Hilda Garden” named after the 12th century mystic Hildegard. The prayer station for 14th century Julian of Norwich and first women to publish a book in English about her visions and near-death experiences invites us into the Labyrinth. Our theology is simply written on the colorfully painted barn mural, “God Is Love.” May we love God with all our heart, soul, strength and mind and the natural world, who is also our neighbor—often left out—all as our neighbors who are an extension of ourselves. Our vision is to be a sanctuary church for “the least of these” both humans and nonhumans. Praying for peace on earth we give thanks for the Good News of the Gospel that love is stronger than any suffering and even death.

About the Presenter(s)

Rev. Bonnie Tarwater is a Christian Unitarian Universalist minister and founder of Church for Our Common Home in Oregon and offering worship and programs globally on Zoom. Rev. Bonnie is an artist, musician, social justice activist, dream worker and writer. She served as a traditional parish minister for many years and hospice chaplain. Currently, she serves on several nonprofit boards and works with her husband doing counseling at the Our Common Home Counseling Center. Together they have four grown children and four grandchildren. BA, Art UCSD; MFA Theater, American Conservatory Theater; MDiv Claremont School of Theology

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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.

Process Explorations: Chris Doran
2025-06-10 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Via Zoom
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