Cobb Institute

Learning Circle: Readings on Faiths Around the World
2023-01-19 08:30 - 09:30, 2023-01-26 08:30 - 09:30, 2023-02-02 08:30 - 09:30, 2023-02-09 08:30 - 09:30, 2023-02-16 08:30 - 09:30, 2023-02-23 08:30 - 09:30 (America/Los_Angeles)
Readings on Faiths Around the World is a book group that reads and discusses books covering the vast diversity of world faiths. Beginning Thursday, January 19th and ending February 23rd, we will read and discuss Bart D. Ehrman’s How Jesus Became God together. The group will meet weekly online via Zoom at 8:30 AM Pacific / 10:30 AM Central.

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This learning circle is made possible by a collaboration among friends:

Learning Circle: An Awakening Planet?
2023-01-24 08:30 - 09:30, 2023-02-07 08:30 - 09:30, 2023-02-21 08:30 - 09:30, 2023-03-07 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: Jeremy Fackenthal and Jim Fahey
2023-01-24 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Event
Topic: Common Good Film Festival Preview

Presenters: Jeremy Fackenthal and Jim Fahey

Jeremy Fackenthal and Jim Fahey will preview the 22nd annual festival with us. The films celebrate the wisdom of Alfred North Whitehead, and will be held February 17-20, 2022 at the Laemmle Theater in Claremont, California. See details at the festival website.

Jeremy Fackenthal is the director of the Common Good Film Festival (CGFF), the managing director of the Institute for Ecological Civilization, and is an independent documentary filmmaker and videographer. Jeremy completed a PhD in Philosophy of Religion and Theology at Claremont Graduate University, and began using his philosophical background beyond the academy to raise questions and craft narratives. In recent years, Jeremy’s work has included video content produced for clients and shorter independent projects. In 2017 Jeremy shot and edited Spitting Fire, a short documentary on spoken word poetry as a means of personal formation for adolescents. His current ongoing project is a feature-length documentary on the life and work of Walter Benjamin and the possibility of art as a site for radical political action.

Jim Fahey is an emerging film critic and curator who works as CGFF’s assistant director. He has spent the past year building his resumé at the University of Edinburgh, where he completed a Master’s program in Film, Exhibition & Curation. During that time he served as a film critic for The Student, the longest-running student newspaper in the UK, and also began Airplane Mode, a film-review blog currently available on Substack.

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
2023-01-26 08:00 - 09:00, 2023-02-02 08:00 - 09:00, 2023-02-09 08:00 - 09:00, 2023-02-16 08:00 - 09:00, 2023-02-23 08:00 - 09:00, 2023-03-02 08:00 - 09:00, 2023-03-09 08:00 - 09:00
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.

Click here to learn more or join.

John Cobb & Friends Gathering: Andrew Davis & Andrew Schwartz
2023-01-31 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Event
Topic: Center for Process Studies Celebrates 50 Years

Presenters: Andrew Davis & Andrew Schwartz

Andrew Schwartz is the executive director of the Center for Process Studies, and Andrew Davis is the Center’s program director. Check out the CPS website for details of a week that celebrates the 98th birthday of John Cobb, and pays tribute to David Ray Griffin, co-founders of the Center, a faculty program of the Claremont School of Theology. You may register for this in person event in Claremont to get in touch with current and emerging leaders who are extending the process legacy.

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
2023-02-07 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Event
Topic: Open & Relational Theology: A State of the Movement Address

Presenters: Thomas Jay Oord

Thomas Jay Oord is a theologian, philosopher, and scholar of multi-disciplinary studies. He is an award-winning author who has written or edited more than twenty-five books. Find out more about him at his website at thomasjayoord.com. Oord also directs a doctoral program at Northwind Theological Seminary and the Center for Open & Relational Theology. He won the Outstanding Faculty Award twelve times as a full-time professor and now speaks at institutions across the globe. Oord is known for his contributions to research on love, open and relational theology, science and religion, and freedom and relationships for transformation.

On February 10-11 the Center for Open and Relational Theology will host the International Online Open and Relational Theology Conference (ORTLine23), and on July 10-14 it will host the Open and Relational Theology Conference (ORTCON23). For an article on the growing influence of “open and relational” theologians, see https://ctr4process.org/open-and-relational-theologians-among-most-influential-in-recent-decades/.

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’s 98th Birthday Celebration
2023-02-13 16:00 - 18:00
Come celebrate Dr. Cobb’s 98th birthday with friends from the process community! Claremont United Church of Christ has graciously opened up their space for this celebration. We’ll be in the Roberts Room from 4pm – 6pm on Monday, February 13th. This celebration kicks off the full week of events in connection with the Center for Process Studies 50th Anniversary Conference.

Attendance is free, but in order to know how many people to expect RSVPs are required.

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John Cobb & Friends Gathering: What is My Vocation? A Conversation with John Cobb & Friends
2023-02-14 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Event
Topic: What is My Vocation? A Conversation with John Cobb & Friends

Presenters: See Below

From John Cobb’s Pilgrim Place campus in Claremont we’ll be ZOOM’ing a live conversation with some “process” friends. Cobb Institute chairperson Jay McDaniel will be guiding our “Conversation in Process.” As preparation he recommends that we read John Cobb’s reflections, “What Is My Vocation?”

Conversation partners will include John Cobb, Ignacio Castuera, Meijun Fan, Al Gephart, John Fahey, Marcus Ford, Jacki Gingrich, Ron Hines, Catherine Keller, Janice Lau, Richard Lau, Sandra Lubarsky, Bob Mesle, Mary Elizabeth Moore, and Zhihe Wang. Via our usual ZOOM link all of our Friends will be welcome to contribute to the conversation!

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.

50th Anniversary Conference of the Center for Process Studies
2023-02-15 09:00 - 2023-02-17 18:00
Co-sponsored by the Center for Process Studies, the Cobb Institute, the Institute for Ecological Civilization, and the Institute for the Postmodern Development of China, the “50th Anniversary Conference of the Center for Process Studies” celebrates the 50-year legacy of CPS and its creative transformation in the context of a new generation of process thinkers.

Three core layers of investigation, each with four respective sessions, are proposed in light of this purpose:

Reenchanting Religion: Process Theologies in the 21st Century | Feb 15th

Science and Philosophy: Nature and the Nature of Reality | Feb 16th

Process in Practice: Society, Sustainability and Ecological Civilization | Feb 17th

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John Cobb & Friends Gathering: Bonnie Rambob
2023-02-21 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Event
Topic: A Pastor/Teacher Reflects on Children’s Spirituality and “Screen” Culture

Presenters: Bonnie Rambob

Rev. Bonnie Rambob shifted her paid job during the pandemic from parish ministry to teaching kindergarten at her local public school. Bonnie enjoys working in, writing about, podcasting on, and exploring areas such as: multi-faith leadership, the spirituality of children and parenting, process theology, political activism, and progressive Christianity. She co-hosts the podcasts, Haystacks, a podcast for former and fringe Seventh-day Adventists, and Irenicast, a progressive Christian podcast. She is also co-editor of the book Partnering with God. Bonnie loves climbing trees, knitting, and hiking with her partner and two young adult sons. She is a presenter on Day 3 of the 50th Anniversary Conference of the Center for Process Studies on the topic “Proximity and Relational Learning Communities: A Process Perspective on Social Presence.”

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: Timothy Murphy
2023-02-28 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Event
Topic: Sharing Process Values in the Real World: A Minister/Activist’s Journey

Presenters: Timothy Murphy

Rev. Dr. Timothy Murphy has been Pastor and Teacher of Plymouth Church (UCC) in Fort Wayne, Indiana since 2018. Before that he had served as Transitional Pastor of All Peoples Christian Church in Los Angeles, CA. He earned his Ph.D. at Claremont Graduate University. He has served as Visiting Assistant Professor of Religion and Politics at Claremont School of Theology, where he taught courses in Religion, Ethics, and Politics. For three years he was Executive Director of Progressive Christians Uniting, a faith and social justice organization based in southern California, focusing on mass incarceration and climate change. From 2007-2010, he was the Minister for Youth and Social Justice at Pilgrim UCC in Carlsbad, CA. Holding standing in both the United Church of Christ and Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Timothy has served in various congregational and ministry settings in Kentucky, Missouri, Texas, and California. He is author of Counter-Imperial Churching for a Planetary Gospel: Radical Discipleship for Today and Sustaining Hope in an Unjust World: How to Keep Going When You Want to Give Up, and a children’s story book, Jesus Learns to Glow.

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.

Mathematics, Narratives, & Life: Reconciling Science and the Humanities
2023-03-04 13:00 - 14:30
The triumph of scientific materialism in the Seventeenth Century not only bifurcated nature into matter and mind, as Whitehead pointed out. It divided science and the humanities. The core of science is the effort to comprehend the cosmos through mathematics. The core of the humanities is the effort to comprehend history through narratives. The life sciences can be seen as the zone in which the conflict between these two very different ways of comprehending the world collide. Evolutionary theory developed out of natural history as defended by Schelling, but efforts have been made to formulate neo-Darwinism through mathematical models. However, it is impossible to eliminate stories from biology. As Stuart Kauffman pointed out, mathematical models attempt to pre-state all possibilities, but in evolution there can be adjacent possibles that can be embraced by organisms but cannot be pre-stated. To account for these it is necessary to tell stories.

Yellow chamomile head showing the Fibonacci numbers in spirals consisting of 21 (blue) and 13 (aqua). Such arrangements have been noticed since the Middle Ages and can be used to make mathematical models of a wide variety of plants. [source]

Mathematics provides analytic precision allowing long chains of deduction, but tends to deny temporal becoming and cannot do justice to the openness of the future, while narratives focus on processes and events, but lack exactitude that would allow precise deductions. In advancing mathematics adequate to life, Robert Rosen argued that living beings as anticipatory systems must have models of themselves, and strove to develop a form of mathematics able to model this. It has been convincingly argued that narratives are central to human self-creation and they are lived out before being explicitly told. There models of themselves are first and foremost, narratives. If this is the case, might not living beings as biological entities be characterized by proto-narratives in their models of themselves? Biosemiotics, largely inspired by C.S. Peirce, provides a bridge between mathematical and narrative comprehension, conceiving them as different forms of semiosis. The study of life through biosemiotics should reveal how mathematics and narratives should be understood in relation to each other. This could have implications for how we understand mathematics and narratives and their relation both to each other and to reality, and thereby how we should understand science and the humanities and their relationship.

In this presentation and conversation, Dr. Arran Gare and Dr. Matthew Segall will examine work in theoretical biology that might advance these efforts.

Arran Gare is an Australian philosopher and Reader (Associate Professor) in Philosophy and Cultural Inquiry at Swinburne University. His main areas of research are environmental philosophy, history and philosophy of science, mathematics and metaphysics, the history and philosophy of culture, and Chinese philosophy. He is aligned with the tradition of process metaphysics, and has published widely on these topics and am the author of a number of books, including Postmodernism and the Environmental Crisis (London: Routledge, 1995), Nihilism Inc.: Environmental Destruction and the Metaphysics of Sustainability (Sydney: Eco-Logical Press, 1996). and The Philosophical Foundations of Ecological Civilization: A manifesto for the future (London: Routledge, 2017). He also founded the Joseph Needham Center of Complex Processes Research and the online journal Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy. His current work is devoted to providing the philosophical foundations for a global ecological civilization.

Arran Gare

Matt Segall is Assistant Professor in the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness program at California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco where he teaches graduate level courses on process philosophy and German Idealism. His recent book, Physics of the World-Soul: Alfred North Whitehead’s Adventure in Cosmology, put Whitehead’s process cosmology into conversation with various contemporary scientific theories, such as general relativity and quantum theory. This book is exemplary of much of Matt’s recent work, which puts ideas from process philosophy into conversation with the natural sciences.

Matt Segall

To reserve your seat and receive the Zoom information, click the Going button and enter your name and email.

This event is sponsored by the Science Advisory Committee of the Cobb Institute.

Learning Circle: Readings on Faiths Around the World
2023-03-06 08:30 - 09:30, 2023-03-13 08:30 - 09:30
Readings on Faiths Around the World is a book group that reads and discusses books covering the vast diversity of world faiths. Beginning Thursday, March 6th and ending March 27th, we will read and discuss Karen Armstrong’s book Buddha together. The group will meet weekly online via Zoom at 8:30 AM Pacific / 10:30 AM Central.

FIND OUT MORE & JOIN

This learning circle is made possible by a collaboration among friends:

John Cobb & Friends Gathering: Bethany Sollereder
2023-03-07 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Event
Topic: Creating Your Own Theology in Light of Suffering

Presenters: Bethany Sollereder

Bethany Sollereder is a lecturer in science and religion at the University of Edinburgh. She specializes in theology concerning evolution and the problem of suffering and is currently working on the theological aspects of restoration ecology. Bethany received her PhD in Theology from the University of Exeter and an MCS in interdisciplinary studies from Regent College, Vancouver, B.C. She is author of God, Evolution, and Animal Suffering: Theodicy without a Fall and Why Is There Suffering? Pick Your Own Theological Expedition. This latter book, published by Zondervan (2021), is the first “pick your own ending” theology book! Dr. Sollereder was a presenter at the 50th Anniversary CPS Conference on the topic, “Pentecostal Meets Process: A Pluralist Model of Divine Action.” She was also a panelist at this year’s ORTline23 Open and Relational Theology online conference.

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: Tim Burnette
2023-03-14 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Event
Topic: Politics and Beauty: A Process Mysticism

Presenters: Tim Burnette

Rev. Dr. Tim Burnette is a Minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), and is the Core Curator of Way Collective in Santa Barbara, California—a contemplative community for love and liberation. (You can find reflections on process theology and the Way Collective at Open Horizons.) He earned his D.Min. in Spiritual Renewal, Contemplative Practice, & Strategic Leadership from Claremont School of Theology, and is passionate about bringing sustaining spiritual practices to the work of justice. Tim has served as host for a Theopoetics Podcast for ARC (Arts, Religion, Culture), and has been a guest presenter for John Cobb & Friends. He was a presenter at the 50th Anniversary CPS Conference on the topic, “Nonduality as Resistance: Mystical Internals, Political Externals, and Process Spirituality in Contemplative Community.” You can find out more about him at his website and follow him on Twitter.

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.
