Cobb Institute

Course: Processing Religion & Wisdom Traditions
2025-04-22 17:00 - 19:00, 2025-04-29 17:00 - 19:00, 2025-05-06 17:00 - 19:00, 2025-05-13 17:00 - 19:00, 2025-05-20 17:00 - 19:00, 2025-05-27 17:00 - 19:00, 2025-06-03 17:00 - 19:00 (America/Los_Angeles)
Diving Deeper Into Whitehead’s Philosophy of Organism

We live in a world marked by great diversity, and if humans are to live peaceably together, we must seek to understand each other. In this course, participants will explore various world religions, as well as indigenous/traditional ways of thinking and living, through a lens of process and relational thought. Over the course of seven sessions, we will discuss Indigenous/Traditional Ways, Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity.

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Process Explorations: Mark Davies
2025-04-29 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Via Zoom
Theme: Responding to a Fractured World: Re-think, Re-act, Re-create
Topic: Re-thinking and Re-creating Higher Education in a Time of American Fascism
Presenter(s): Mark Davies

Our colleges and universities must not lose their souls by appeasing American fascism.
It is an evil and intolerable situation for international students at our colleges and universities to be abducted, detained, and deported for using their right to think freely, speak freely, and act freely in ways that are doing no harm to others; but this is the situation we currently face as American fascism attempts to assert its control over our colleges and universities, the students who attend them, and the faculty who teach and do research at them.
It is also intolerable that American fascism is attempting to force colleges and universities to accept federal government oversight and control or risk losing federal funding for research or even their non-profit status. How can institutions of higher education work together in solidarity to resist the current efforts to destroy academic freedom, freedom of speech, religious freedom, and freedom of assembly on our campuses? How can we re-think and re-create higher education to effectively resist efforts of American fascism to co-opt it?

About the Presenter(s)

Rev. Dr. Mark Y. A. Davies is the Wimberly Professor of Social and Ecological Ethics, Director of the World House Institute for Social and Ecological Responsibility, and Executive Director of the Leadership. Education, and Development (LEaD) Hub North United States for the General Board of Higher Education and Ministry (GBHEM) at Oklahoma City University where he has worked in both teaching and administration for 28 years. He is an ordained elder in the Oklahoma Conference of the United Methodist Church where he has served as Chair of the Board of Church and Society from 2015 to 2018 and 2023 to the present.

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Process Explorations: John P. Clark
2025-05-06 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Via Zoom
Theme: Responding to a Fractured World: Re-think, Re-act, Re-create
Topic: The Transfigurative Community
Presenter(s): John P. Clark

It is important that we situate ourselves clearly within the present moment of Earth history, with an acute awareness of all its momentous problems, and all its inspiring possibilities. We are now leaving the Cenezoic, an era of new life on Earth, and entering the Necrocene, an era of mass extinction and death on Earth. We are seeing the final results of a long history of various forms of Empire and domination, and of certain dominant forms of egoic identity. We are faced with the choice of either continuing on the path of social and ecological disintegration, or of initiating a new path of social and ecological regeneration.
The thesis of this presentation is that the crucial factor in determining the nature our future and the future of life on Earth is whether a certain kind of community can emerge. We might call it the Awakening Earth Community.Such a project will require large-scale social and ecological regeneration, but it can only succeed if it is rooted in small-scale communities of liberation and solidarity, awakening and care. It is such communities that are capable of fostering fundamental personal and group transformation. Such a transformation will need to address all the basic spheres of social determination, including the social imaginary, the social ideology, the social ethos, the social institutional structure, and social materiality. Change must take place simultaneously in all of these spheres, and must take place at all levels of organization, including the personal level, the level of primary groups, the level of larger groups, and the level of the entire society. Such a project will be rooted in human experience. It can look for inspiration and guidance from the lengthy and rich global history of non-dominating communal organization, going back to the beginnings of human society. We will look at some key points in that history, including the achievements of the Zapatista movement in Chiapas, the Democratic Autonomy Movement in Rojava, and the Sarvodaya Movement in India.

About the Presenter(s)

John P. Clark is a philosopher, activist, writer, and educator. He is Director of La Terre Institute for Community and Ecology and Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Loyola University, where he taught for 44 years, was a member and former chair of the Environment Program, and directed a summer study program in India. His most recent philosophical work is Between Earth and Empire: From the Necrocene to the Beloved Community. As his alter non-ego, Max Cafard, he recently published Anarchy in the Big Easy, a graphic history of radical New Orleans. He does educational and organizational work with La Terre Institute in New Orleans and at Bayou La Terre Woodland Center, an 88-acre site on Bayou La Terre in the coastal forest of the Gulf of Mexico. He hosts a weekly meditation and study group at the Cypress in the Garden Zendo in New Orleans. He recently finished a year homeschooling his grandson, Ethan.

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Process Explorations: Sandra Lubarsky and Marcus Ford
2025-05-13 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Via Zoom
Theme: Responding to a Fractured World: Re-think, Re-act, Re-create
Topic: Wider Education: Embracing Generalization
Presenter(s): Sandra Lubarsky and Marcus Ford

Whitehead understood education as a process from romance to precision to generalization. Most higher education today emphasizes precision and more precision, to the neglect of romance and generalization. Marcus will speak about the importance of rethinking General Education programs within higher education institutions and how they can be the platform for addressing the wider issues of our day. Sandra will speak about a public model of wider education and the need for “communiversities,” highlighting the work of Flagstaff Communiversity.

About the Presenter(s)

Marcus Ford was one of the first professors in the country to teach courses in sustainability and develop an Environmental Humanities program. Since early in his teaching career, Marcus has held that the most important thing we can learn is how to live sustainably and justly within the bounds of the natural world. He has taught sustainability studies at the undergraduate and graduate level and is an advocate for education that prepares people to actively participate in shaping their communities. He is the author of the groundbreaking book, Beyond the Modern University and many articles on higher education. Marcus is the co-founder of Flagstaff College/Communiversity.

Sandra Lubarsky is co-founder and president of Flagstaff College/Communiversity, offering education-for-community in Flagstaff, Arizona. She is retired from academic positions in sustainability at Appalachian State University in North Carolina and Northern Arizona University . She holds a Ph.D. in philosophy of religion from Claremont Graduate University and is author of Tolerance and Transformation: Jewish Approaches to Religious Pluralism; Jewish Theology and Process Thought (co-edited); and numerous articles on religious pluralism, Jewish theology, and the intersection of aesthetics and sustainability.

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Process Explorations: Catherine Keller
2025-05-20 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Via Zoom
Theme: Responding to a Fractured World: Re-think, Re-act, Re-create
Topic: Trees Touching: Whitehead, Teilhard and the Matter of EcoCiv
Presenter(s): Catherine Keller

Trees are just one beautiful example of the liveliness of the nonhuman universe. Recent research shows that they communicate with one another in startlingly specific and supportive ways. And of course the service forests provide our species—the perpetrators of global warming—with their drawing down and storing of excess CO2 from the atmosphere lends current US policy an apocalyptic edge. But the point of this Process Exploration will not be to doom us to eco political gloom but to meditate on the matter—the materiality—of hope. Teilhard and Whitehead both offer persuasive, spiritually radical visions of human participation in planetary evolution. But the former is more optimistic, envisioning our movements towards an Omega point; the latter is more pluralist and open ended. Can our work toward EcoCiv root and branch in both visions? What kind of hope can feel honest enough to motivate the materialization of a livable and well forested future?

About the Presenter(s)

Catherine Keller is Professor of Constructive Theology at The Theological School of Drew University. She teaches and writes in the intersections of process, ecological, feminist, political, and pluralist theologies. She has authored many books, the most recent being No Matter What: Crisis and the Spirit of Planetary Possibility; and Facing Apocalypse: Climate, Democracy and Other Last Chances. Also she has led, and co-edited several volumes of, the Drew Transdisciplinary Theological Colloquium, most recently Assembling Futures: Economy, Ecology, Democracy and Religion.

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Process Explorations: Thomas A. Moore
2025-05-27 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Via Zoom
Theme: Responding to a Fractured World: Re-think, Re-act, Re-create
Topic: The Exuberant Universe: Re-thinking Creation in a Scientific Age
Presenter(s): Thomas A. Moore

The first chapter of Genesis provides a theological understanding of creation consistent with the accepted cosmology of its place and time. What might a modern concept of creation look like? This talk will explore the modern cosmological riddle misleadingly called the Anthropic Principle (the observation that the laws of physics seem fine-tuned to enable a complex universe) and examine what it means, what it does not mean, and how it might connect to process thought and spirituality. We will come to see how some seemingly scientific discussions of cosmology actually are religious arguments in disguise.

About the Presenter(s)

Thomas A. Moore is the Reuben C. and Eleanor Winslow professor of mathematics and natural science at Pomona College. He received his undergraduate education at Carleton College (where he took courses offered by Ian Barbour and Joseph Sittler) and his Ph. D in theoretical physics in 1981 from Yale University (where he also studied Biblical Hebrew with Bonnie Kittel and Brevard Childs). His father was a professor of philosophy and religion in the University of Wisconsin system, and his mother and spouse are ordained pastors in the United Church of Christ. He has long been interested in questions on the boundary between philosophy and physics, and, in addition to teaching upper-level courses in general relativity and particle physics, he commonly offers an interdisciplinary course in “Science and Religion.”

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Process Explorations: Bonnie Tarwater
2025-06-03 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Via Zoom
Theme: Responding to a Fractured World: Re-think, Re-act, Re-create
Topic: Church for Our Common Home and the John Cobb Eco Farm and Retreat Center
Presenter(s): Bonnie Tarwater

This presentation will share about the ministry of Church for Our Common Home and the John Cobb Eco Farm and Retreat Center and offer photos in a PowerPoint. In 2015 Dr. John B. Cobb Jr. invited me to head the Anima Track at the Seizing an Alternative Conference. This contributed to my own consciousness raising experince about the severity of our earth crisis and the founding of Church for Our Common Home dedicated to Mother Earth, the divine feminine, loving community, and the arts. I did not grow up with any religion and moved eighteen times in my first eighteen years in five different countries. Perhaps this contributes to my planetary perspective that celebrates the wonder of our interfaith, interspecies and interconnected web of life. As a disciple of Jesus and Unitarian Universalist, Church for Our Common Home is untraditional and esoteric.
My husband Dr. Walt Rutherford is a transpersonal psychologist and together we offer traditional as well as pastoral counseling, spiritual direction, dream work, etc. (more info at Our Common Home Counseling Center) Our transdisciplinary ministry offers a wide array of offerings to serve beyond the walls of the traditional church. We literally moved out of our “House Church” into the barn to be with the animals, 4 pm Sundays, on Zoom and celebrating the goats, chickens, ducks, cats, and our huge, beautiful rabbit Gracie, the breeze, trees, grass………….and we give thanks!
Dr. Cobb attended Church for Our Common Home worship on Zoom almost every Sunday the last few years of his life. My background in the visual and performing arts inspires our “Arts Ministry” and the Our Lady of Guadalupe Barn Mural. We have created an Interfaith Secret Prayer Garden, and The Mary Magdalene Café and rose garden hosts our weekly Earth Crisis Support Group and Potluck Party (ECSG) after church. We invited other organizations to join us and for the last year we have offered the Interfaith Prayer and Song Vigil for Peace in Corvallis Oregon every Saturday in front of the Court House to support the Corvallis in Solidarity with Palestine Free Gaza Protest. Church for Our Common Home is at the Capital of Salem for Moral Monday’s and the Poor People’s Campaign.
The John Cobb Eco Farm and Retreat Center is a five-acre farm in Oregon where we grow beets as big as your head and sunflowers over 12 feet tall. We are doing biodynamic farming a kind of spiritual farming and we call our vegetable garden, “The Hilda Garden” named after the 12th century mystic Hildegard. The prayer station for 14th century Julian of Norwich and first women to publish a book in English about her visions and near-death experiences invites us into the Labyrinth. Our theology is simply written on the colorfully painted barn mural, “God Is Love.” May we love God with all our heart, soul, strength and mind and the natural world, who is also our neighbor—often left out—all as our neighbors who are an extension of ourselves. Our vision is to be a sanctuary church for “the least of these” both humans and nonhumans. Praying for peace on earth we give thanks for the Good News of the Gospel that love is stronger than any suffering and even death.

About the Presenter(s)

Rev. Bonnie Tarwater is a Christian Unitarian Universalist minister and founder of Church for Our Common Home in Oregon and offering worship and programs globally on Zoom. Rev. Bonnie is an artist, musician, social justice activist, dream worker and writer. She served as a traditional parish minister for many years and hospice chaplain. Currently, she serves on several nonprofit boards and works with her husband doing counseling at the Our Common Home Counseling Center. Together they have four grown children and four grandchildren. BA, Art UCSD; MFA Theater, American Conservatory Theater; MDiv Claremont School of Theology

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If you experience any difficulty with the RSVP, please send an email to events@cobb.institute. If you would like to receive regular announcements and updates about activities and events at the Cobb Institute, please join our list of Friends. Can’t make it to the live session? Click here to access our recordings archive.

Process Explorations: Chris Doran
2025-06-10 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Via Zoom
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Process Explorations: Christina Hutchins
2025-06-17 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Via Zoom

Process Explorations: Monalisa Tuitahi
2025-06-24 10:00 - 12:00
No meeting selected.

Course: Ecological Civilization: Crises & Possibilities 2025
2025-06-25 17:00 - 19:00, 2025-07-02 17:00 - 19:00, 2025-07-09 17:00 - 19:00, 2025-07-16 17:00 - 19:00, 2025-07-23 17:00 - 19:00, 2025-07-30 17:00 - 19:00
Exploring Crises and Possibilities for Ecological Justice and Wellbeing

This course explores visions of ecological civilization, drawing upon process-relational understandings of the cosmos, ecological movements, and central ideas and practices in diverse human communities and fields of thought. The purpose is to gather and build upon practical wisdom, seeking to dive deeply into crises and possibilities. Practical wisdom has power to transform the downward spiral of ecological destruction and to foster movements for protecting, healing, and regenerating our broken planet.

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Process Explorations: Gary Dorrien
2025-07-01 10:00 - 12:00

Process Explorations: Walter Fluker
2025-07-08 10:00 - 12:00

Process Explorations: Rabbi Or Rose
2025-07-15 10:00 - 12:00

Process Explorations: Bruce Epperly
2025-07-22 10:00 - 12:00

Process Explorations: Summer Finale in Music
2025-07-29 10:00 - 12:00

Creative Becoming: Process Philosophy & the Arts 2025
2025-08-13 17:00 - 18:30, 2025-08-20 17:00 - 18:30, 2025-08-27 17:00 - 18:30
Exploring Process Philosophy and Theology Through the Arts

This course explores the dynamic intersection of Whitehead’s process philosophy and the arts. Each session focuses on a particular art form and its resonances with key Whiteheadian themes—creativity, relationality, feeling, and becoming. Through guided reflection, discussion, and creative engagement, participants will explore how the arts can serve as both expression and embodiment of process thought.

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