John Cobb & Friends Gathering - Isobel Zhang
2022-05-24 10:00 - 12:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Online Event
Topic: Process Philosophy and Me

Presenter(s): Isobel Zhang

Isobel Zhang, a Chinese educator and author, is China director of ACTAsia, an organization promoting nature education for children since 2006. She will share her personal journey, including how the poetry of her teacher Bai Ya introduced her to process philosophy. A book she’s been working on since 2020, Caring For Life: Education Based on Mental Model Improvement, will be published in October. In it Zhang explains what she thinks about the support from process philosophy. She’s been involved in creating the first module for training teachers to encourage children to Care for Life with compassion and respect. Children’s books they have published in English and Chinese stress empathy and responsibility along with critical thinking. Series titles include Be Caring, Be Kind, Be Respectful, Be Together. Browse the references to Isobel Zhang on the ACTAsia website, which includes some of her earlier work on animal welfare concerns. She comes to us highly recommended by Dr. Zhihe Wang, Director of the Institute for Postmodern China.

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
2022-05-25 08:00 - 09:00, 2022-06-01 08:00 - 09:00, 2022-06-08 08:00 - 09:00, 2022-06-15 08:00 - 09:00, 2022-06-22 08:00 - 09:00, 2022-06-29 08:00 - 09:00, 2022-07-06 08:00 - 09:00 | 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.

Class: Using Poetry to Unfold Whitehead's Modes of Becoming
2022-05-25 17:00 - 18:30, 2022-06-01 17:00 - 18:30, 2022-06-08 17:00 - 18:30
How can poetry vivify and deepen our understanding of Whitehead’s Process and Reality?

This is the third in series of three four-week courses taught by Christina Hutchins. The “vivid suggestiveness of the poets” can deepen our engagement with process concepts that have been well-developed yet also limited by conventional theological or philosophical thought. In this class, we will use poetry to animate felt understandings of several of Whitehead’s key ideas.

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Learning Circle: Readings on Faiths Around the World
2022-05-26 08:30 - 09:30, 2022-06-09 08:30 - 09:30, 2022-06-23 08:30 - 09:30 | Online Event
Readings on Faiths Around the World is a book group that meets twice a month to read and discuss texts that deal with the vast diversity of world faiths, those that have had a very large influence for many centuries as well as those that may be newer and less well-known. The only prerequisite for this group is a desire to learn about the wide variety of religion expressions.

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Learning Circle: An Awakening Planet?
2022-05-31 08:30 - 09:30, 2022-06-14 08:30 - 09:30, 2022-06-28 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 - Laura Burgis
2022-05-31 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Event
Topic: The Compassionate Cities Movement: A Next Step in Human Evolution

Presenter(s): Laura Burgis

Currently, Dr. Burgis serves on the Charter for Compassion International Board of Trustees as its vice-chair. She can share how the Compassionate Cities Movement helps cities thrive through intentional compassion programs. Laura has a passion for cultivating human(e) approaches to leadership development and community evolution. Her current research interests focus on how exponential technologies like AI, robotics and remote learning platforms can be applied to interpersonal landscape development and consciousness raising. She is also actively involved in the public banking movement and other socio-economic-ecological system wide collective impact initiatives, working with cross-sector leadership in cities/universities. She is encouraging the city of Claremont (CA) to become a Compassionate City (following the precedent of its neighbors in Pomona and Upland).

Dr. Laura Burgis is president & CEO of the Human Values Center and works with Baltazar & Rose Corporation, an LA based social enterprise supporting refugees and former gang affiliates with job training and love. She brings to us her 25-year career as an Associate Dean and professor at Arizona State University’s W. P. Carey School of Business, where her expertise in Ethics in Education and Public Policy received special recognition. She came to Claremont in 2012 to serve as the founding Executive Vice President of Claremont Lincoln University, a graduate institution focused on ethical leadership and social impact.

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.

Class: Christianity in Process
2022-06-05 16:05, 2022-06-07 14:00 - 15:30, 2022-06-14 14:00 - 15:30, 2022-06-21 14:00 - 15:30, 2022-06-28 14:00 - 15:30, 2022-07-05 14:00 - 15:30
A Six-Week Exploration of Christianity & Process Theology

In this six-week course, John Cobb will elucidate six of the themes in Christianity and process theology that he considers vital to his faith. Each session will include a mini-lecture by John, a conversation between John and Tripp, and responses to questions submitted by class participants.

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John Cobb & Friends Gathering: Dongwoo Lee
2022-06-07 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Event
Topic: Organic Panentheism: A Northeast Asian Lens on the Christian God

Presenter(s): Dongwoo Lee

Fresh from his successful Ph.D. dissertation defense at Claremont School of Theology, Dr. Lee will prompt a conversation based on his integration of panentheist perspectives from Buddhism, Confucianism, and shamanism from Northeast Asia and beyond. He is the Korea Project Director for the Center for Process Studies and the Institute for Ecological Civilization. He is also currently serving as pastor of Pasadena Presbyterian Church (PCUSA). He got his Master of Divinity degree at San Francisco Theological Seminary. Follow Dr. Lee’s bilingual 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: Michael Fricke and Lília Dias Marianno
2022-06-14 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Event
Topic: Jorge Pixley’s Liberating Process Theology – A Tribute

Presenter(s): Michael Fricke and Lília Dias Marianno

Dr. George Pixley is a Baptist missionary who taught biblical studies in seminaries in Nicaragua and Mexico City. (A brief biodata in Spanish can be found here.) He first encountered process theology through contact with Bernard Loomer at the University of Chicago. His retirement in Claremont, California brought him close to the work of the Center for Process Studies, which featured Pixley’s integration of biblical studies, liberation theology, and process theology for its Latin American Project. Pixley’s 2003 essay summarizes his thought.

Participating in the tribute to Dr. Pixley’s work will be Prof. Dr. Michael Fricke, who holds the chair for Protestant theology with a focus on religious education and didactics of religious education at the University of Regensburg. Fricke wrote his dissertation on Pixley’s Bible interpretation in Nicaragua. Another participant will be Dr. Lília Dias Marianno, Director of Eagle Gestão do Conhecim, and educator at Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. The event is organized by Ignacio Castuera, long associated with John Cobb and the Claremont School of Theology. Dr. Pixley’s son Kevin will also participate.

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: Kate Common
2022-06-21 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Event
Topic: Creating Community: Reimagining Sacred Origins and Utopic Destinations

Presenter(s): Kate Common

Dr. Kate Common is Visiting Assistant Professor of Practical Theology at the Methodist Theological School of Ohio, serving as a Louisville Institute Postdoctoral Scholar. She comes to us highly recommended by Mary Elizabeth Moore, former Dean of Boston University School of Theology, who is fascinated by Dr. Cannon’s rethinking the nature of utopias, based on archaeological discoveries related to Hebrew Bible stories in the time of the Judges. Dr. Common will be discussing her pending publication of Undoing Conquest: Hebrew Highland Settlements and the Theological Imagination. Her scholarly work is summarized in this curriculum vitae.

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: Franklin Obeng-Odoom
2022-06-28 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Event
Topic: The Commons in an Age of Uncertainty: Decolonizing Nature, Economy, and Society

Presenter(s): Franklin Obeng-Odoom

Dr. Obeng-Odoom, a native of Ghana, is Associate Professor of Global Development Studies at the Helsinki Institute of Sustainability Science, University of Helsinki in Finland. His topic is a book published in 2021 in which he applies the thought of Henry George to the economic concept of “the commons.” He will also share comments on his newest book, Global Migration Beyond Limits: Ecology, Economics, and Political Economy (Oxford U Press, 2022) and its relation to the book by John Cobb & Herman Daly, For the Common Good (Beacon Press, 1989, 1994).

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: Beginning Process and Reality
2022-07-03 16:00 - 17:00
Encountering Whitehead’s Magnum Opus for First-Timers

Designed for beginners, this learning circle will involve a close reading of Whitehead’s seminal work, discussing passages together in-depth as we work our way through the text.

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John Cobb & Friends Gathering: Gao He Ran
2022-07-05 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Event
Topic: Learning to Befriend Nature in a Beijing Eco-Village

Presenter(s): Gao He Ran

An effective presenter at the recent Claremont Eco-Forum for a large audience in China and the US, Gao He Ran will share her experience with the community of artists and educators who are part of the Beijing Eco-Village that is emerging around a school founded in the spirit of the Waldorf Schools movement. She is Founder and Coordinator of Earth Village Nature School, in Xin Village, Beijing. Among her many certifications, she is certified by a German organization in “Forest and Nature Pedagogy.’ She will share her experience of nature education there and also some poetry. She has co-organized a global forum on Natural Capital and Green Investment, and helped establish the DeTao Institute of Green Investment. In addition to her native Chinese, Gao He Ran can also work with English, Finnish, and elemental German. You may explore her attached biodata.

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.
