John Cobb & Friends Gathering - David Korten
2022-01-25 10:00 - 12:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Online Event
Topic: Ecological Civilization: How John Cobb Shaped My Life’s Work for Three Decades

Presenter: David Korten

David C. Korten is an American writer, lecturer, engaged citizen, student of psychology and behavioral systems, a prominent critic of corporate globalization, and an advocate of Ecological Civilization. His life work builds on lessons learned from the 21 years he and his wife, Fran, lived and worked in Africa, Asia, and Latin America on a quest to end global poverty. This informed the next phase of his life, writing and organizing to call attention to the way our current economic paradigms are devastating the planetary life systems on which our lives depend. He urges us to read his “white paper” that summarizes what he’s learned.

Here are some links to prepare for our conversations:

“Ecological Civilization: From Emergency to Emergence”—David Korten’s “white paper,” a Club of Rome publication. (A detailed list of his writings is on p. 21.)Check out a video affirmation of Korten’s white paper by physicist Fritjof Capra, author of The Systems View of Life“What an Ecological Civilization Looks Like”—Yes! magazine editor Zenobia Jeffries Warfield interviews David Korten for the 25th Anniversary edition (Spring, 2021), focused on “Ecological Civilization.”Find David on Facebook, Twitter, and his website, davidkorten.org.

Information about how to access each gathering is made available via email. To find out about a single meeting, send an email to events@cobb.institute. If you would like to receive regular meeting announcements and updates about the Institute, please join our list of Friends.

Can’t make it to the live session? Click here to access our archive of Cobb & Friends recordings.

Learning Circle: Process & Coffee
2022-01-26 08:00 - 09:00, 2022-02-02 08:00 - 09:00, 2022-02-09 08:00 - 09:00, 2022-02-16 08:00 - 09:00, 2022-02-23 08:00 - 09:00, 2022-03-02 08:00 - 09:00, 2022-03-09 08:00 - 09:00, 2022-03-16 08:00 - 09:00 and 2 more dates | Online Event
Process & Coffee is about spiritual integration and exploration. We meet weekly to dive into books by mystics and sages. The discussion that follows helps to deepen our own spiritual lives.

To learn more or join, send an email to learninglab@cobb.institute.

John Cobb & Friends Gathering - Process and China
2022-02-01 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Event
Topic: Process and China: How Lives Are Being Changed

Presenter(s): Jay McDaniel, Meijun Fan, Zhihe Wang, and others

Jay McDaniel, Professor Emeritus of World Religions, Hendrix College, will facilitate the sharing of stories from Zhihe Wang, CEO of the Institute for Postmodern Development of China, and Meijun Fan, Program Director for IPDC. They will explore the personal side of their work in China. They will relate their personal experiences as Chinese and Americans for whom their work through the Institute for Postmodern Development of China has been making a difference. Among the Americans who have also agreed to share stories from their interactions in China are Paul Bube, Kevin Clark, Angela Donnelly, and Pat Delaney.

Information about how to access each gathering is made available via email. To find out about a single meeting, send an email to events@cobb.institute. If you would like to receive regular meeting announcements and updates about the Institute, please join our list of Friends.

Can’t make it to the live session? Click here to access our archive of Cobb & Friends recordings.

Learning Circle: An Awakening Planet?
2022-02-08 08:30 - 09:30, 2022-02-22 08:30 - 09:30, 2022-03-08 08:30 - 09:30, 2022-03-22 08:30 - 09:30, 2022-04-05 08:30 - 09:30 | Online Event
A Discussion Group Contemplating the Vision of Teilhard de Chardin

Facilitated by Dr. Ernie Tamminga, this group meets every two weeks to carefully consider how and whether Teilhard de Chardin’s hope-filled perspective on the human evolutionary future can still inspire us in a time full of conflicts and division.

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John Cobb & Friends Gathering - Birthday Celebration
2022-02-08 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Event
Topic: Celebration of John Cobb’s 97th Birthday

Presenter(s): Rebecca Parker, Mary Elizabeth Moore, Andrew Schwartz, and Rita Nakashima Brock

Rebecca Parker will guide us in a celebration of John Cobb’s 97th birthday, and he has given to us and the world. Mary Elizabeth Moore, Andrew Schwartz, and Rita Nakashima Brock and some folks from China will share tributes. Rebecca Parker will interview John, “What Have You Learned by Getting Old?” Open mike time will give John’s Friends a chance to make one or two minute appreciations. (If you’d like to reserve a space in the queue, send a note to John.Fahey@Cobb.Institute with “Cobb Tribute” in the Subject Line.) There will also be time for spontaneous contributions during the morning. There will be music, and Christina Hutchins is preparing a poem for the occasion.

Information about how to access each gathering is made available via email. To find out about a single meeting, send an email to events@cobb.institute. If you would like to receive regular meeting announcements and updates about the Institute, please join our list of Friends.

Can’t make it to the live session? Click here to access our archive of Cobb & Friends recordings.

Tim Eastman Unties the Gordian Knot: Wrap Up
2022-02-12 08:00 - 10:00
In this series of conversations Tim Eastman will engage with other scholars about his new book, Untying the Gordian Knot: Process, Reality, and Context.

In Untying the Gordian Knot: Process, Reality, and Context, Timothy E. Eastman proposes a new creative synthesis, the Logoi framework-which is radically inclusive and incorporates both actuality and potentiality-to show how the fundamental notions of process, logic, and relations, woven with triads of input-output-context and quantum logical distinctions, can resolve a baker’s dozen of age-old philosophic problems.

Purchase from

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John Cobb & Friends Gathering - Matt Segall
2022-02-15 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Event
Topic: The Cosmological Context of the Origin of Life

Presenter(s): Matt Segall & Bruce Damer

What is life? How did it originate? Scientific study of the origins of life bumps up against the need for new paradigms of relating what we can learn from typical scientific method, to what we can learn from philosophical reflection in search of new paradigms. Process philosopher Matt Segall (chair of the Cobb Institute Science Advisory Team) and origin of life scientist Bruce Damer have co-written a paper that will be presented later this spring at a conference sponsored by the Center for Process Studies. Matt and Bruce will lead our exploration of their paper titled, “The Cosmological Context of the Origin of Life: Process Philosophy and the Hot Spring Hypothesis.” Did life emerge in a hot spring? Segall and Damer dynamically integrate the metaphysical and the empirical aspects of this research exploration.

Information about how to access each gathering is made available via email. To find out about a single meeting, send an email to events@cobb.institute. If you would like to receive regular meeting announcements and updates about the Institute, please join our list of Friends.

Can’t make it to the live session? Click here to access our archive of Cobb & Friends recordings.

John Cobb & Friends Gathering - Carol Frances Johnston
2022-02-22 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Event
Topic: Regenerative Agriculture: Far Superior to Industrial Ag

Presenter(s): Carol Frances Johnston

Carol Frances Johnston, Associate Professor Emerita of Theology and Culture, taught environmental theology and ethics at Christian Theological Seminary, Indianapolis, for 29 years. She has worked for eco-justice for over thirty years, including serving on the original Eco-justice Task Force of the Presbyterian Church (USA) and locally on the board of Growing Places Indy. She is also a Research Fellow of the Institute for Postmodern Development of China. Most recently she served as an advisor for the documentary, “Courage, Brains, and Muscle: Indiana’s Environmental Champions.”

Johnston will be augmenting a presentation she made in September, 2020 at the World Rural Revitalization Conference in Shanxi, China. She is the author of the booklet, “And the Leaves of the Tree are for the Healing of the Nations: Biblical and Theological Foundations for Ecojustice” (available here), and of The Wealth or Health of Nations: Transforming Capitalism From Within, which was recently published in Chinese. She has taught adult-education courses in a wide variety of churches and lectured as far afield as Singapore on issues of economics and environment, including Whitehead and economics, justice, the Bible and nature, and the public roles of churches.

Information about how to access each gathering is made available via email. To find out about a single meeting, send an email to events@cobb.institute. If you would like to receive regular meeting announcements and updates about the Institute, please join our list of Friends.

Can’t make it to the live session? Click here to access our archive of Cobb & Friends recordings.

Cobb Birthday Celebration & Living Earth Movement Launch
2022-02-25 16:00 - 17:30
Please join us for a Zoom celebration ofDr. John B. Cobb, Jr.’s 97th Birthdayand the launch of theLiving Earth Movement

Dr. Cobb will speak aboutthe mission of the Living Earth Movement . . .to inspire global cooperationfor the sake of all life on our planet,beginning with the United States and China.The second and equally important priority isto promote an ecological civilization.

Special guests includeKarenna Gore, David Korten,John Perkins, Mary Evelyn Tuckerand more from around the worldInterfaith Blessings, Toasts, and Music

To receive Zoom info register atlivingearthmovement.eco

John Cobb & Friends Gathering - John Perkins
2022-03-01 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Event
Topic: What the Economic Hit Man Has Learned from Indigenous People

Presenter(s): John Perkins

John Perkins, New York Times bestselling author of Confessions of an Economic Hitman, and co-founder of the Pachamama Alliance, will share what he’s learned in his world travels about the impact of our global economic dominance on indigenous peoples, and what we can learn from them about “a world that works for everyone.” You can subscribe to his newsletter at johnperkins.org.

Information about how to access each gathering is made available via email. To find out about a single meeting, send an email to events@cobb.institute. If you would like to receive regular meeting announcements and updates about the Institute, please join our list of Friends.

Can’t make it to the live session? Click here to access our archive of Cobb & Friends recordings.

Process Pop-up: Daoist Meditation as Practice and Philosophy
2022-03-04 15:30 - 16:30
Facilitated by Zhenbao Jin

Meditation is not simply a practice, but a philosophy-based practice, or a practice-based philosophy. With philosophy I mean our fundamental understanding of life and the cosmos, and especially, our understanding of life and death.

Each of us begins the practice of meditation with a certain philosophy. The point is, what is our purpose to do the practice of meditation? Are we trying to prove that philosophy is true?

It depends on the philosophy itself. A philosophy that holds death is an inevitable and natural result of life will have effect upon the practice of meditation very different from a philosophy that holds death is not the end and life, including body and soul, has a potential of perpetual development.

Taoism belongs to the latter category. I would like to introduce my practice and research on these issues and expect a lively discussion with other members of the community.

Zhenbao will talk about Daoist philosophy for about 20 minutes and then we will have a discussion. In the last 20 minutes he will introduce the practice of Daoist meditation and lead a 10-minute session. After that, the group will discuss the experience.

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John Cobb & Friends Gathering - Dhawn Martin
2022-03-08 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Event
Topic: Process, Interfaith Dialogue, and Fostering Compassionate Cities

Presenter(s): Dhawn Martin

Dhawn B. Martin, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Source of Light Center, an interfaith education center at University Presbyterian Church, San Antonio, TX. A graduate of Wellesley College (B.A.), Durham University, UK (M.A.), Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary (M.Div.), and Drew University (Ph.D.), her areas of academic interest include, public theology and civic engagement, process and political theologies, and multireligious dialogue. Courses taught include: “Power, Peace, and Love: Alternative Political Paradigms,” “Utopian Worlds,” Contemplation and Social Action,” and “Religion in a Global Context.” She is an ordained Teaching Elder in the Presbyterian Church (USA) and a co-editor of the volume Ecological Solidarities: Mobilizing Faith and Justice for an Entangled World.

Information about how to access each gathering is made available via email. To find out about a single meeting, send an email to events@cobb.institute. If you would like to receive regular meeting announcements and updates about the Institute, please join our list of Friends.

Can’t make it to the live session? Click here to access our archive of Cobb & Friends recordings.

John Cobb & Friends Gathering - Richard Falk
2022-03-15 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Event
Topic: Making Ecocide a Crime

Presenter(s): Richard Falk

In 1973 Professor Falk drafted an Ecocide Convention, explicitly recognizing at the outset “that man has consciously and unconsciously inflicted irreparable damage to the environment in times of war and peace.” In 2021 he served as a judge for the International Rights of Nature Tribunal, seeking accountability for damage to aquatic ecosystems in Europe. (Check out this June, 2021, legal definition of “ecocide.”)

Richard Falk is a professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University where he was a member of the faculty for 40 years. He currently is a Professor of Global Law, Queen Mary University London. Falk has been nominated annually for the Nobel Peace Prize since 2009. He is the Senior Vice President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and between 2008-2014 served as UN Special Rapporteur for Occupied Palestine.

Of the 20 books he has authored and another 20 he has edited, friends of John Cobb may remember Falk’s editing with David Ray Griffin of Postmodern Politics for a Planet in Crisis: Policy, Process, and Presidential Vision (SUNY, series in Constructive Postmodern Thought, 1993), and his more recent co-authorship with Griffin, John B. Cobb, and Catherine Keller of The American Empire and the Commonwealth of God: A Political, Economic, Religious Statement (Westminster/John Knox Press, 2006).

Information about how to access each gathering is made available via email. To find out about a single meeting, send an email to events@cobb.institute. If you would like to receive regular meeting announcements and updates about the Institute, please join our list of Friends.

Can’t make it to the live session? Click here to access our archive of Cobb & Friends recordings.

Process Pop-up: The Role of Spiritual Independents in the Interfaith Community
2022-03-17 17:00 - 18:00
Facilitated by Jared Morninstar

Join an engaging discussion on being spiritually independent, and how these spiritual voyagers outside the halls of institutional religion can be important partners in interfaith dialogue.

To help you prepare, additional resources pertaining to the topic are provided on the event RSVP page linked below.

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John Cobb & Friends Gathering - Ronan Hallowell
2022-03-22 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Event
Topic: Story of Wholeness: Community, Communion and Narrative Medicine

Presenter(s): Ronan Hallowell

Many of today’s catastrophes emerge from a profound problem of fragmentation that has infected modern thought and culture(s) – at least since the dawn of the Newtonian-Cartesian cosmology. The deep alienation characteristic of the modern world is rooted in a pathological story that yields a distorted view of the human relationship to the natural world. As Thomas Berry has argued, we need to retire these distorted, pathological stories and embrace the Great Story of the Universe. The Great Story is a multivalent story of wholeness and relationality.

This talk will discuss how stories of wholeness are emerging in contemporary allopathic medicine through the acknowledgement of the need for community and health justice, the healing potential of ‘communion’ experiences occasioned by psychedelic medicines and attention to the power of story that is emphasized in narrative medicine, a new field of study in medicine and the medical humanities.

Ronan Hallowell, EdD, MA, is assistant professor of medical education at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California where he serves as Director of the Health Justice and Systems of Care longitudinal MD course, Associate Director of the USC Center for Mindfulness Science, and faculty in the M.S. program in Narrative Medicine. He has been a student of integral philosophies, the world’s wisdom traditions and Lakota medicine ways for over 25 years.

Information about how to access each gathering is made available via email. To find out about a single meeting, send an email to events@cobb.institute. If you would like to receive regular meeting announcements and updates about the Institute, please join our list of Friends.

Can’t make it to the live session? Click here to access our archive of Cobb & Friends recordings.

John Cobb & Friends Gathering - Sabeeha Rehman and Walter Ruby
2022-03-29 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Event
Topic: We Refuse to Be Enemies!

Presenter(s): Sabeeha Rehman and Walter Ruby

We Refuse to Be Enemies: How Muslims and Jews Can Make Peace, One Friendship at a Time (Arcade, 2020) is a manifesto by two American citizens, a Muslim woman and Jewish man, concerned with the rise of intolerance and bigotry in our country along with resurgent white nationalism. Together, Rehman and Ruby have spent decades doing interfaith work and nurturing cooperation among communities. They have learned that, through face-to-face encounters, people of all backgrounds can come to know the Other as a fellow human being and turn her or him into a trusted friend. In this book they share their experience and guidance.

Growing up in Pakistan before she immigrated to the United States, Sabeeha never met a Jew, and her view was colored by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In his youth, Walter never met a Muslim, and his opinion was shaped by Leon Uris’s Exodus. Yet together they have formed a friendship and collaboration. Tapping their own life stories and entering into dialogue within the book, they explain how they have found commonalities between their respective faiths and discuss shared principles and lessons, how their perceptions of the Other have evolved, and the pushback they faced. They wrestle with the two elephants in the room: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and polarizing material in their holy texts and history. And they share their vision for reconciliation, offering concrete principles for building an alliance in support of religious freedom and human rights.

To explore further the experience out of which Sabeeha and Walter write, check out their author profile and a YouTube discussion for the Central Arkansas Library System; an event announcement for the Beacon Hebrew Alliance, and this article in the Jewish Standard. You can follow Sabeeha Rehman’s blog here, and Walter Ruby’s “Keeping Hope Alive” blog here.

Information about how to access each gathering is made available via email. To find out about a single meeting, send an email to events@cobb.institute. If you would like to receive regular meeting announcements and updates about the Institute, please join our list of Friends.

Can’t make it to the live session? Click here to access our archive of Cobb & Friends recordings.

John Cobb & Friends Gathering - Thomas Jay Oord
2022-04-05 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Event
Topic: Pluriform Love—A Theology of Well-Being

Presenter(s): Thomas Jay Oord

Friend of Cobb Institute, Tom Oord will discuss with us his latest book, further exploring his “open and relational” theology of love. He defines love this way: “To love is to act intentionally, in relational response to God and others, to promote overall well-being.” An award-winning author, he has written or edited more than twenty-five books. A gifted speaker, Oord lectures at universities, conferences, churches and institutions. He is known for his contributions to research on love, science and religion, open and relational theology, the problem of suffering, and the implications of freedom for transformational relationships. Learn more at his website for the Center for Open and Relational Theology, which he directs. He also is Director of an “open and relational” doctoral program at Northwind Theological Seminary. For access to his latest essays, blogs, and multiple short podcasts, see thomasjayoord.com.

Oord completed his Ph.D. in religion at Claremont Graduate School under supervision of David Ray Griffin. He is an ordained elder in the Church of the Nazarene.

Information about how to access each gathering is made available via email. To find out about a single meeting, send an email to events@cobb.institute. If you would like to receive regular meeting announcements and updates about the Institute, please join our list of Friends.

Can’t make it to the live session? Click here to access our archive of Cobb & Friends recordings.
