Learning Circle: Beginning Process and Reality
2022-10-30 16:00 - 17:00, 2022-11-06 16:00 - 17:00, 2022-11-13 16:00 - 17:00, 2022-11-20 16:00 - 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles)
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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Learning Circle: An Awakening Planet?
2022-11-01 08:30 - 09:30, 2022-11-15 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: Rosemary Radford Ruether Tribute
2022-11-01 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Event
Topic: Tribute to Rosemary Radford Ruether

Scholars and friends who worked closely with this eminent ecofeminist theologian will pay tribute to the ways her thought found expression in her actions. Among those who have agreed to share their experience of Rosemary Radford Ruether are Renny Golden, Antoinette Wire, Barbara Troxell, Joann Carlson Brown, Elaine Padilla, and Kathy Bergen. We’ll also experience Dr. Ruether’s Harvard lecture about her first engagement with America’s civil rights struggle.

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
2022-11-02 08:00 - 09:00, 2022-11-09 08:00 - 09:00, 2022-11-16 08:00 - 09:00, 2022-11-23 08:00 - 09:00, 2022-11-30 08:00 - 09:00, 2022-12-07 08:00 - 09:00, 2022-12-14 08:00 - 09:00, 2022-12-21 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.

John Cobb & Friends Gathering: Barbara Muraca
2022-11-08 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Event
Topic: Decolonizing Ecology: Process Ontology and Societal Relationships with Nature

Presenter: Barbara Muraca

Dr. Barbara Muraca, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Environmental Studies at the University of Oregon, articulates a radical critique of the structural coloniality of the Western concept of nature, on which both conservationism and the overexploitation of resources are rooted. By drawing on Whitehead’s relational process ontology, on Gernot Böhme’s phenomenological approach to ecology, as well as on postcolonial theories, indigenous philosophies, and STS Studies she will outline possible trajectories for a decolonization of societal relationships with nature and show their relevance for current environmental justice struggles.

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: Readings on Faiths Around the World
2022-11-10 08:30 - 09:30, 2022-11-24 08:30 - 09:30, 2022-12-08 08:30 - 09:30, 2022-12-22 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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John Cobb & Friends Gathering: Tim Eastman & Matt Segall
2022-11-15 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Event
Topic: Big Bang? Multiple Universes? How Do Scientists Know?

Presenters: Tim Eastman & Matt Segall

We look forward to an informed conversation led by space physicist Tim Eastman and Cobb Institute science advisory committee chair, Matt Segall. John Cobb thinks scientists are overly confident they know all about a ‘Big Bang’ and ‘multiple universes.’ How are we to understand the ways of scientific exploration and how our universe works?

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: John Buchanan
2022-11-22 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Event
Topic: Processing Reality: Finding Meaning in Death, Psychedelics, and Sobriety

Presenters: John Buchanan

Dr. John H. Buchanan is a long-time explorer of process thought and transpersonal psychology. He will discuss his latest book, Processing Reality: Finding Meaning in Death, Psychedelics, and Sobriety, published last month by Wipf & Stock in their Perspectives in Process Studies Series. “In this book, John Buchanan takes us on a journey through the early death of a parent, the ups and downs of addiction, the extraordinary revelations of psychedelic experiences, and the rewards of a sober and meaningful life.” At the publisher’s website, you’ll find high praise from John Cobb, Catherine Keller, and Philip Clayton. Keller invites us to “a bit of a trip!. . .This irresistibly readable narrative of psychedelic exploration, of a long path ultimately sober and all the more visionary, opens a stunning new portal into our shared reality. We discover not just a remarkably lucid introduction to Whiteheadian theo-cosmology, but—aimed right at our self-destructive civilization—the chance of a spiritual awakening.”

Buchanan’s extended interview with “Mind Matters” explores the intersection of Whitehead and Transpersonal Psychology. He was a contributing editor of Rethinking Consciousness: Extraordinary Challenges for Contemporary Science, published by Process Century Press. And Jay McDaniel expresses appreciation for John Buchanan’s role in planning a Claremont conference on Open Horizons: “Can Exceptional Experience Help Save the 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: Jeremy Fackenthal & Lina Mira
2022-11-29 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Event
Topic: Well-Being in Pomona: A Community in Progress

Presenters: Jeremy Fackenthal & Lina Mira

This is a progress report on a project reported to Cobb & Friends in April, 2021. Dr. Fackenthal, as Managing Director of the Institute for Ecological Civilization, will report on its work in Pomona, California, with the Wellbeing Economy Alliance (WEAll) and the Wellbeing Economy Alliance California hub. Pomona’s Latino-Latina Roundtable is also involved, and its Executive Director Lina Mira will share in this report about how they are approaching a wellbeing economy in Pomona by developing a community-led vision and a community wealth building strategy in the form of worker-owned cooperatives.

Jeremy invites you check out this excellent video that celebrates these developments in Pomona.

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.

Interweavings: A Season of Darkness and Light
2022-11-30 17:00 - 18:00
In this event, Dr. Sheri Kling, director of P&F, will introduce some of the major holidays that occur in this season of darkness and light, noting their significance in each tradition. We’ll look at Diwali, Advent, Hanukkah, St. Lucia Day, Winter Solstice, Christmas, Epiphany, Kwanzaa, New Year’s Eve, and Lunar New Year. Come prepared to share a brief memory of a favorite winter holiday food or tradition from your own background!

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Co-sponsored by the following:

Sharing From the Heart
2022-12-02 18:00 - 19:00 | Online Event
Throughout the world a younger generation is planting seeds of hope for a new and different kind of world: an ecological civilization. Sharing From the Heart is a new initiative from the Living Earth Movement, Institute for Postmodern Development of China, and Cobb Institute in which young people from China and the United States share the seeds they are planting in their local settings.

Once a month, beginning December 2, 2022 at 6:00 PM Pacific, young people ages 18-35 from China or the United States will briefly share seeds of hope they are planting and get feedback from friends near and far. They will talk about food, poetry, gardening, solutions for the climate crisis, or life itself. Along the way they will enter into conversations with John B. Cobb, Jr., age 97, a pioneer in seed planting for an ecological civilization.

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John Cobb & Friends Gathering: Zhenbao Jin
2022-12-06 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Event
Topic: Healing in a Chinese Process Way

Presenters: Zhenbao Jin

Chinese lawyer Zhenbao Jin earned a Ph.D. in the philosophy of law, but when he was diagnosed with lymphoma and a variety of other ailments, he was prompted by Scott Peck’s The Road Less Traveled to heal himself in a natural way. He found healing in a “process” way that enhances the flow of Qi. His healing story includes a 3000 km bike ride and disciplined meditation grounded in Taoist thought and practice. He translated The Road Less Traveled into Chinese. As an independent researcher, he has been exploring the practice and research of meditation as well as relevant areas including Taoism, Buddhism, Confucianism, anthroposophy, traditional Chinese medicine, philosophy (including Whitehead).

In the past ten years, he has published more than 500 articles in Chinese on meditation, Taoism, Confucianism, philosophy as well as reports of patients in Chinese on his wechat blog. Dr. Jin now lives in Shenzhen, China, focusing on the research of meditation and relating issues and giving workshops, speeches and individual tutoring on natural healing through meditation. Read his brief bio on the Process & Faith website. Last March he led a P&F sponsored “Process Pop-up” session on Daoist meditation. See his video introducing the basics of meditation based on Taoism: Healing Meditation for Prevention and Healing from CoronaVirus Infection.

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: Tink Tinker
2022-12-13 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Event
Topic: The Moth and the Alligator: Relationship in a Whole Other Key

Presenters: Tink Tinker

A Cobb Institute board member suggested that we adopt the practice of “land acknowledgment” to name native tribes dispossessed of their land in our various regions. To assist our reflection, we turned to Tink Tinker, a citizen of the Osage Nation (wazhazhe) and Professor Emeritus at Iliff School of Theology. For nearly three decades he volunteered both administratively and as a traditional spiritual leader at Four Winds American Indian Council in Denver, and has worked closely with the American Indian Movement of Colorado. His topic invites exploration of the clashing worldviews that euro-christians and America’s native peoples bring to the conversation. To get acquainted with Tink Tinker see this lecture at Yale, this critical conversation about American Indian worldview, or this panel conversation at Phillips Seminary honoring the 50th Anniversary of Vine Deloria’s God Is Red. In 2020, The Colonial Compromise was published, with responses to his 2008 book, American Indian Liberation Theology.

Before coming to the faculty at Iliff in 1985, Tinker had earned a B.A. at New Mexico Highlands University, an M.Div. at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary, and a Ph.D. at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, which named him its Alum of the Year in 2004. He had been teaching for several years in the Bay area before joining the Iliff faculty in 1985. At this speaker’s bureau website you can find further biographical information, a list of his books, and a 4-minute video excerpt of his message to the United Methodist 2012 General 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.

Process Pop-Up: The Tao Flows on Like a River Forever
2022-12-13 17:00 - 18:00
Dating back in the Chinese oral tradition to the 11th Century BCE and now read by Westerners since the mid-1800s when Western-language translations were first available, the Tao in the Tao Te Ching is described as an endless source of novelty, ever flowing forward, yet always favoring the good. These depictions of the Tao resemble many of Alfred North Whitehead’s dynamic concepts, such as concrescence, process, living immediacy, and the inter-relatedness of contrasts. In this Pop-Up event, Dr. Rosemarie Anderson will provide examples of verses from her own translation of the Tao Te Ching, suggestive of the intimacy between the Tao Te Ching and Whitehead’s philosophy of organism and why modern Chinese are now attracted to process philosophy.

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Co-sponsored by the following:

Process Prep: Exploring Christian Process Theology in Small Groups
2022-12-19 17:00 - 18:00
Would you like to introduce friends to Christian Process Theology in a local setting? Not in a dogmatic way but in a friendly, conversational way so that people can explore its ideas for themselves? That’s the process spirit. The Cobb Institute offers a slideshow for this purpose, based on Marjorie Suchocki’s understanding of process theology. In this one-hour workshop, Dr. Jay McDaniel will walk participants through the slideshow and offer tips for how to use it in a Sunday School class or discussion group without the need for experts. The slideshow does the teaching and you, the teacher, facilitate the discussion.

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John Cobb & Friends Gathering: Mary Elizabeth Moore, Jay McDaniel, and You
2022-12-20 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Event
Topic: Incarnational Adventures

Presenters: Mary Elizabeth Moore, Jay McDaniel, and You

This will be an interactive experience appropriate to the Christmas season when Christian communities celebrate the Incarnation, or “God with us.” Retired from her former responsibility as dean of Boston University School of Theology, Mary Elizabeth Moore is now able to serve on the board of the Cobb Institute, and she’s finding more time to pursue her love of writing poetry. Currently chair of the Cobb Institute board, Jay McDaniel, Emeritus Professor of world religions at Hendrix College, continues to find ways to extend his teaching vocation, often by singing–with his dog. Search for “Incarnation” reflections on his Open Horizons website.

Jay and Mary Elizabeth are both long-time students and colleagues of John Cobb. Imagine your own experiences of Incarnation and come prepared to share the adventure.

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.
