Learning Circle: Process & Coffee
2023-03-16 08:00 - 09:00, 2023-03-23 08:00 - 09:00, 2023-03-30 08:00 - 09:00, 2023-04-06 08:00 - 09:00, 2023-04-13 08:00 - 09:00, 2023-04-20 08:00 - 09:00, 2023-04-27 08:00 - 09:00 (America/Los_Angeles)
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.

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Starting With Whitehead: Session 1
2023-03-18 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Event
This five-part conversation series offers an analysis of learning events at each of the three stages of the rhythm of education, described in Whitehead’s classic The Aims of Education. Each conversation will focus on the recently published book Starting with Whitehead, by Lynn De Jonghe, which bridges the gap between the theory and practice of educational reform, and points the way for adults to help children thrive in a world of change.

“There is only one subject matter for education, and that is Life in all its manifestations.”—Alfred North Whitehead

As we search for guidance on how to thrive in changing times, we are led to the work of Alfred North Whitehead, who brilliantly perceived that the process of change itself is fundamental to existence. Whitehead grasped the profound role of change in determining how we how we learn, how we experience ourselves and others and how we interact with the world around us. In his classic work, The Aims of Education, he elaborated a three-stage process of learning, involving romance, precision and generalization. He called for an education that explored real life experiences and events rather than packing of scraps of information into passive students.

Starting with Whitehead: Raising Children to Thrive in Treacherous Times offers examples of learning events at each stage that point the way for adults to help children thrive in a world of change. These events are presented in the richness of their contexts and unfolding, rather than as dry results of controlled data gathering procedures. The events recorded here are based on the author’s extensive experience working directly with children as a parent, teacher, principal and policy maker. Drawing on the best of psychological and educational research, Dr. De Jonghe sets these exemplary events in a vigorous theoretical foundation and proposes specific strategies for success. Her recommendations have relevance not only for parents but also for teachers, principals, and educational policy makers.

Conversation Series Outline

Takes place on Saturdays at 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM Pacific, from March 18th thru April 22nd

Session 1: March 18: Introduction: Using events in context to inform theory; Whitehead’s Aims of Education in relation to his philosophy of process

Session 2: March 25: The Rhythm of Education: Romance

Session 3: April 1: The Rhythm of Education: Precision

Session 4: April 15: The Rhythm of Education: Generalization

Session 5: April 22: Conclusion: Using Process Philosophy to Help Meet the Challenges of Our Times

Each session will begin with a talk and slide presentation by Dr. De Jonghe, then follow with two or three respondents for comment, critique, and elaboration, after which we will open for exploratory discussion by all attendees.

“Change is constant, endemic and necessary.”—Drew Gilpin Faust

About the Author

Lynn De Jonghe’s career in progressive education has spanned more than forty years. She served as the founding Head of East Bay Sierra School, which later merged with another school to form Prospect Sierra School, to become one of the preeminent schools in the San Francisco Bay Area. Prior to her work in independent schools, Lynn spent fifteen years in public education administering federal funds to innovative programs, advocating for project learning as an alternative to textbooks, and pushing for integration in Massachusetts schools. She received her BA degree in History from Harvard University and a MS in Library Science from Simmons College before completing her PhD in Education at Cornell University. Her doctoral work on children’s problem solving led her to push for challenging educational programs that encourage all students to pursue learning in depth and to use problem solving skills, collaborative learning, and exploration of values in an integrated curriculum. Her work in philosophy centers on the social methodology of scientific research programs and the process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead. She is a member of the Philosophy of Education Society and serves on the advisory committee of the Cobb Institute.

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Learning Circle: Readings on Faiths Around the World
2023-03-20 08:30 - 09:30, 2023-03-27 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.

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

Learning Circle: An Awakening Planet?
2023-03-21 08:30 - 09:30, 2023-04-04 08:30 - 09:30, 2023-04-18 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: Ron Nahser
2023-03-21 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Event
Topic: Medieval Monastic and University Spirituality: Management Practices for Ecological Civilization?

Presenters: Ron Nahser

In a world sharply divided by differing views of economic, environmental, and political realities, Dr. Ron Nahser has been living out his own “calling,” influenced by early encounter with Whitehead’s pragmatic philosophy, and continued influence from Benedict’s monastic spirituality, and Boethius’s liberal arts as practiced in Medieval Universities. He frequently finds time to join John Cobb & friends as we aim to live into our calling toward an ecological civilization.

Ron Nahser is the founding Provost – now Emeritus – of Presidio Graduate School, the first to offer an accredited MBA in sustainable management. He’s living out his “calling” in various vocations—as advertising executive, teacher and educational executive, and scholar/practitioner of American Pragmatism He has a China connection as Professor of Ecological Economics and Pragmatic Inquiry at the Center for Confucian Entrepreneurship and East Asian Culture, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China.

A recent issue of Amplify (vol. 35, no. 4, 2022) carries an article he co-authored, “Reclaiming Values and Vision in Management Education to Create Systems Change.” The issue’s summary of Nahser’s career documents the range of his professional activities. He is Executive Director for Corporantes, an outgrowth of The Nahser Agency/Advertising. He is Senior Fellow/Director of Urban Sustainable Management Programs, Institute for Nature and Culture at DePaul University’s Department of Environmental Science and Studies. He lectures and consults with business and academic audiences in the US and internationally on business values, vision, marketing strategy, branding, social responsibility, and integrative sustainable management.

Dr. Nahser is the author of Learning to Read the Signs: Reclaiming Pragmatism in Business (available here at a very reasonable price – also includes the 32 page PathFinder Field Notebook) and Journeys to Oxford: Nine Pragmatic Inquiries into the Practice of Values in Business and Education. He has developed a values and vision-driven strategy method known as PathFinder Pragmatic Inquiry®. Dr. Nahser is also a Fellow of the World Business Academy, Curator of the Willis Harman Archive, founding Partner of the Oxford Leadership Academy in the US, and Strategic Advisor to the UN Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) Secretariat.

He earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Notre Dame, an MBA from Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management, a master’s degree in religious studies from Loyola/Mundelein College, and a PhD in American business philosophy from DePaul University.

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.

Interfaith Explorations Spring 2023: Cultivating Spirituality in Daily Life
2023-03-22 10:00 - 11:00, 2023-03-29 10:00 - 11:00, 2023-04-05 10:00 - 11:00, 2023-04-12 10:00 - 11:00, 2023-04-19 10:00 - 11:00, 2023-04-26 10:00 - 11:00
In this offering, qualities of heart and mind to help us in our daily life at home, in family, in the workplace, and other situations in the journey of life, such as births, deaths, joys, traumas will be explored through the framework of Spiritual Alphabet, developed by Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat. Our sessions will be facilitated by Dr. Jay McDaniel and Sophia Said, who will bring two “letters” from the spiritual alphabet to each session (“A” is for attention, “B” is for beauty, “C” is for connection, etc.), sharing quotations, poems, and stories from personal experiences that illuminate them; and then, with help from prompting questions, invite others to do the same.

Interfaith Explorations is a program of the Interfaith Center of Arkansas, and is co-sponsored by the Cobb Institute, Spirituality & Practice, and Process & Faith.

This event is free and open to the public.

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Starting With Whitehead: Session 2
2023-03-25 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Event

John Cobb & Friends Gathering: Mark Anielski
2023-03-28 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Event
Topic: Economic Strategies We Can Learn from First Nations Peoples

Presenters: Mark Anielski

After a presentation on Native peoples by Professor Tink Tinker, the Cobb Institute reached out to Mark Anielski to help us further explore what we can learn from First Nations. He was the guest of John Cobb & Friends on September 29, 2020. John Cobb calls Mark his “favorite economist” because “he thinks the economy should serve the wellbeing of the people.” Economist Anielski asks about feelings and experiences. He’ll report hopeful things happening among Canada’s First Nations peoples and wherever there are opportunities to develop local economies of resilience and trust in local systems of trade and production.

Mark Anielski, a resident of Alberta, has worked to apply Herman Daly’s economic theories in practical ways. His work of measuring well-being extends from First Nations in Canada, Nunavut (Canada), Alberta, Singapore, China, South Korea, The Netherlands, Austria, and French Polynesia (Tahiti). New Zealand, Iceland, Ireland, and Scotland are advancing well-being budgeting and governance, common-sense-economics for building a better and happier world. He’s also consulted with folks in Santa Monica and Pomona. Anielski has authored two books: An Economy of Well-being: Common Sense Tools for Building Genuine Wealth and Happiness (2018) and the award-winning book The Economics of Happiness (2007). See him on a wide-ranging Green Interview about an “Economy of Love.”

Mark suggests that you explore his Economics of Well-being Podcast conversations with several First Nations people including Chief Christian Sinclair of the Opaskwayak Cree Nation in Manitoba whose Nation he worked with in 2020/21 in conducting a well-being assessment in the process of establishing a working economy of well-being. Here is another with former Chief Larry Sault from Ontario. This one with Lewis Cardinal is about the story of Canada from a First Nations perspective.

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.

Starting With Whitehead: Session 3
2023-04-01 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Event

John Cobb & Friends Gathering: Ellyn Polsky, Sophia Said, and Jay McDaniel
2023-04-04 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Event
Topic: Passover, Ramadan, and Holy Week: An Interfaith Conversation

Presenters: Ellyn Polsky, Sophia Said, and Jay McDaniel

This conversation, co-sponsored with the Interfaith Center of Arkansas, will honor holy seasons of Jews, Muslims, and Christians.

Ellyn Polsky will guide our understanding of Passover. She has been teaching in secular and Jewish schools and camps for over 50 years, most recently as Director of Lifelong Learning at Reform Jewish congregations in St. Louis and then in Little Rock. You can see her in the following 10-minute video about a program for elementary school children. She worked tirelessly to help Sophia Said establish, teach and have fun in—Interfaith Friendship Camp of Arkansas. An educator at The Interfaith Center, she has been curriculum director of the camp for the last 6 years.

Sophia Said, Executive Director of The Interfaith Center of Arkansas, will discuss Ramadan. She has received multiple awards recognizing her contributions to civil society. Perhaps you remember her previous conversation with John Cobb & Friends “On Being Muslim in America.” A native of Pakistan who came to America when her husband came to study, she responded to the 9-11 tragedy by founding the Interfaith Center. Explore Open Horizons website for her story, her affirmation of “The America I believe in,” and Jay McDaniel’s “process appreciation” of her vision. Also, Sophia and Jay reflect on interfaith relations in light of the results of the 2016 US Presidential election. Explore her personal story, plus course materials she developed with Jay McDaniel for a class they taught at Hendrix College on “Leadership in a Multi-Faith World.”

Jay McDaniel will discuss Holy Week. He is Professor Emeritus of World Religions at Hendrix College, board chair for Cobb Institute, active supporter of the Institute for Postmodern Development of China and of the Becomings Collective for Emerging Artists (becomingscollective.org). He is curator of OpenHorizons.org. He has collaborated often with Sophia Said, contributing to the programs of the Interfaith Center of Arkansas. See the page with his biodata on the website of Spirituality & Practice.

For basic information about Jewish, Muslim, and Christian holy seasons, you may explore these resources available from the Harvard Pluralism Project:

Passover

Ramadan

Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday

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: Herman Greene
2023-04-11 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Event
Topic: Process & Law: The New Ecological Social Contract

Presenters: Herman Greene

Herman Greene will begin with a discussion of the past work done of process thinkers on legal theory. He will then move to his own work in the emerging field of Earth law and the new ecological social contract. (See his attached Earth Law chapter, “Ecocentric Governance: The New Ecological Social Contract.”) Bruno Latour argued in his 2013 Gifford lectures that we humans have entered a new state of nature, a Hobbesian condition of a war of all against all, with the protagonists now including tuna, and sea levels, and carbon emissions, as well as the various human factions. This time though it is not a condition before people entered into a social contract, it is a present condition, and calls for a new social contract that includes nature—a task that will take “two hundred” years. It is the primary task of humans in the Anthropocene.

Herman Greene, JD, MA, MDiv, DMin is founder and president of the Center for Ecozoic Studies in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, a research and education center for an ecological-cultural age. He is Thomas Berry Scholar-in-Residence of the Earth Law Center and is co-author and co-editor of Earth Law: Emerging Ecocentric Law—A Guide for Practitioners. He serves on the Board of the International Process Network, and on the Advisory Boards of the Center for Process Studies and the Institute for the Post-Modern Development of China. He is a retired business lawyer and holds graduate degrees in law (University of North Carolina-JD), theology (University of Chicago-MTh & MDiv, and United Theological Seminary-DMin), and political science (Stanford University-MA).

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.

Starting With Whitehead: Session 4
2023-04-15 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Event

John Cobb & Friends Gathering: Monica Coleman
2023-04-18 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Event
Topic: Processing Grief: An Afro-futurist Perspective

Presenters: Monica Coleman

Dr. Monica A. Coleman is John and Patricia Cochran Scholar for Inclusive Excellence and Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Delaware. She spent nearly fifteen years in graduate theological education at Claremont School of Theology, the Center for Process Studies and Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. Coleman has earned degrees from Harvard University, Vanderbilt University and Claremont Graduate University. She has received funding from leading foundations in the United States, including the Ford Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Institute for Citizens and Scholars (formerly the Woodrow Wilson Fellowship Foundation), among others. Answering her call to ministry at 19 years of age, Coleman is an ordained minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church and an initiate in traditional Yoruba religion.

Explore her website where she introduces herself, her six books, and recent podcasts, including co-hosting, along with writer Tananarive Due, the popular webinar series Octavia (Butler) Tried to Tell Us: Parable for Today’s Pandemic, addressing today’s most pressing issues with insights from Afrofuturist literature, process theology and community values.

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: Process Mysticism
2023-04-18 17:00 - 18:00
Drawing from his latest book, Process Mysticism, Dan Dombrowski will offer a process philosophical approach to mysticism or religious experience. “Mysticism” can refer to either direct experience of God or the claim that such experience is ineffable and both senses of the term will be analyzed. In this Pop-Up, Dan will use the process philosophies of Charles Hartshorne, Alfred North Whitehead, and Henri Bergson to explore this subject. His aim is not so much to demonstrate that such experiences are true or veridical as it is to understand, in a William Jamesian fashion, how they could be possible and not contradict the concept of God held by philosophers and theologians.

Dan’s presentation will touch on divine world-inclusiveness, ideal power and tragedy, the ontological argument, asceticism and the via negativa, divine visions and voices, and the aesthetics and ethics of mysticism. With an ecumenical approach, Dan will attempt to illuminate mystical experiences as they occur around the world in different religious traditions, while claiming familiarity only with the Abrahamic religions.

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Co-sponsored by the following:

Starting With Whitehead: Session 5
2023-04-22 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Event

John Cobb & Friends Gathering: Mary Elizabeth Moore
2023-04-25 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Event
Topic: Responding to a Weeping Planet: Practical Theology as a Discipline Called by Crisis

Presenters: Mary Elizabeth Moore

Mary Elizabeth Moore is Dean Emerita and Professor of Theology and Education, Boston University School of Theology. Now retired, she is the vice chair of the Cobb Institute Board, and is currently guiding our strategic planning process. She currently studies the relationship of spirituality and tikkun olam, or repair of the world, focusing on ecological and social justice and the potential of theology to enhance or obstruct the planet’s thriving. She will discuss her 2022 Religions journal article, “Responding to a Weeping Planet: Practical Theology as a Discipline Called by Crisis.”

Mary Elizabeth is an M.A. and Ph.D. graduate, outstanding alumna, and former teacher at Claremont School of Theology. She was active as a co-director of the Center for Process Studies from 1990 to 1999. From 1993-1999 she also served as the Allen J. Moore Multicultural Resource and Research Center’s co-founder and co-chair. An ordained deacon in the United Methodist Church, she has been active in local, regional, and national church leadership. See this detailed biographical essay by her former student, Claire Bischoff.

John Cobb affirmed her ground-breaking book, Teaching from the Heart (Trinity Press International, 1998), which bridges religious education and process theology, as “a major advance both in relating Whitehead to education and in modeling a truly Whiteheadian way for testing his thought.” At the 2015 Claremont ecological civilization conference on “Seizing an Alternative,” she presided over a section of conversations about “Reinventing and Reimagining The World’s Wisdom Traditions–World Loyalty.”

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.
