Cobb Institute

Whitehead & Jung Course
2021-11-30 16:30 - 18:00, 2021-12-07 16:30 - 18:00 (America/Los_Angeles)
In this six-session course, Dr. Sheri D. Kling will guide students through the deep resonances between the philosophy of organism of Alfred North Whitehead and analytical psychology of Carl Gustav Jung to show what these two great thinkers have in common and why we need them now more than ever.

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Teilhard de Chardin Learning Circle
2021-12-01 15:00 - 16:00, 2021-12-14 08:30 - 09:30
Facilitated by Dr. Ernie Tamminga, this discussion group will evaluate 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. We begin with a facilitated study of his masterwork, The Human Phenomenon. (Its title was originally translated into English as The Phenomenon of Man, back when it was common to refer to humanity as “Man.” That has been corrected in more recent editions of the book.)

What is a learning circle?

Learning circles are small groups that share a common interest in a topic, text, or activity. In a mode that is informal and conversational, they are typically made up of five to fifteen people who gather together to learn from one another. A learning circle might be a book study group that only explores a single text, or an affinity group that meets for an indefinite period of time.

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John Cobb & Friends Gathering - Celebrating the Gifts of John Gingrich
2021-12-07 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Event
Topic: Celebrating the Gifts of John Gingrich

On December 8, 2020 we were shocked to learn of the untimely death of Dr. John Gingrich, who served as Chairman of the Board in the Cobb Institute’s first year. We were blessed to have his leadership in formative stages of the Institute. This former student of John Cobb served the University of La Verne for 37 years—as Campus Minister, then Department Chair and Division Chair, Professor of Religion and Philosophy, and from 1987 through 2004 as Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. To access a brief video tribute scroll to the bottom of the webpage about Our Team. An obituary can be found here. With his wife Jacki Gingrich and others who knew him well, we will celebrate John’s gifts of spirituality, the arts, and education, all informed by process theology.

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.

Tim Eastman Unties the Gordian Knot: Chapter 7
2021-12-11 08:00 - 10:00
In this series of conversations Tim Eastman will engage with other scholars about his new book, Untying the Gordian Knot: Process, Reality, and Context.

In Untying the Gordian Knot: Process, Reality, and Context, Timothy E. Eastman proposes a new creative synthesis, the Logoi framework-which is radically inclusive and incorporates both actuality and potentiality-to show how the fundamental notions of process, logic, and relations, woven with triads of input-output-context and quantum logical distinctions, can resolve a baker’s dozen of age-old philosophic problems.

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John Cobb & Friends Gathering - Callid Keefe-Perry
2021-12-14 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Event
Topic: Engaging the Optative: Misplaced Concreteness, Changing the Future, and the Power of Imagination

Presenter: Callid Keefe-Perry

Dr. Callid (rhymes with “salad”) Keefe-Perry is Assistant Professor of Contextual Education and Public Theology at Boston College’s School for Theology and Ministry. His teaching and research orbit around explorations of imagination, spirituality, and education as sites of individual and social formation. Before Keefe-Perry’s career in the academy, he was a public school teacher and worked in leadership for several arts-based non-profits. He was the primary architect of the 2017 merger that became ARC: Arts | Religion | Culture. His first book, Way to Water: A Theopoetics Primer, details the academic history of the field of theopoetics, arguing for its utility in contemporary Christian congregational life. Currently he serves as the assistant director of the Religion and Education Collaborative and is the Senior Editor for the Journal of the Arts in Religious and Theological Studies (ARTS). Confessionally, Keefe-Perry’s outlook is greatly shaped by The Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), especially streams of that tradition emphasizing Christocentric mysticism. He is a Member of Fresh Pond Meeting; a host of the worship experiment, Three Rivers; and an endorsed public Traveling Minister within and beyond his denomination.

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 - Christina Hutchins
2021-12-21 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Event
Topic: Varieties of Divine Enfleshment

Presenter: Christina Hutchins

Dr. Hutchins was with us during Holy Week, and she’s returning as we approach Christmas to share poetry on an incarnation theme.

Find more about Christina Hutchins—prize-winning poet, process philosopher/theologian, teacher/workshop leader, speaker/retreat facilitator—at her website. Here is an excerpt:

“Christina lives in Albany, California, where she served as the first poet laureate, teaches private workshops, and offers individual craft consultations. She has worked as a biochemist, a Congregational (UCC) minister, and has taught process theology, philosophies of beauty and critique, and courses on poetry and theological imagination at Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley. She holds a B.S. in Biochemistry from University of California at Davis, an M.Div. from Harvard Divinity School, and an Interdisciplinary Ph.D. from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. While at Harvard, she twice won the Billings Preaching Prize, was named the top graduate as the Thayer Scholar of Divinity, and was elected by her peers to deliver the graduation address.”

Explore a treasure trove of her poems here. You might also check out Jay McDaniel’s podcast interview with this insightful poet/pastor/theologian.

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 - Cliff Cobb
2022-01-04 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Event
Topic: Restore Historical Consciousness

Presenter: Cliff Cobb

John Cobb’s son, Clifford W. Cobb, is editor-in-chief of American Journal of Economics and Sociology. [He is also the son whose questioning in the summer of 1969 set John Cobb on the path summarized in his classic, Is It Too Late? A Theology of Ecology (Fortress Press, 2021 edition of editions published in 1972 and 1995)]. At the turn of the secular year, Cliff will share John’s thoughts on the importance of “historical consciousness.” The concept has been important in many of John Cobb’s writings, including in Living Options in Protestant Theology (Westminster, 1962), A Christian Natural Theology (Westminster, 1965; Westminster John Knox, 2007); Christ in a Pluralistic Age (Westminster, 1975); and most recently in a chapter bemoaning “The Fading of Historical Consciousness” in Salvation: Jesus’s Mission and Ours (Process Century Press, 2020). An article is being developed to explain what John Cobb means by the “Origins and Characteristics” of Historical Consciousness, in which it is compared and contrasted to Scientific Rationalism.

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
2022-01-05 08:00 - 09:00, 2022-01-12 08:00 - 09:00, 2022-01-19 08:00 - 09:00, 2022-01-26 08:00 - 09:00, 2022-02-02 08:00 - 09:00, 2022-02-09 08:00 - 09:00, 2022-02-16 08:00 - 09:00, 2022-02-23 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.

Tim Eastman Unties the Gordian Knot: Chapter 8
2022-01-08 08:00 - 10:00

John Cobb & Friends Gathering - James Lawson
2022-01-11 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Event
Topic: Revolutionary Nonviolence: Organizing for Freedom

Presenter: James Lawson

Rev. Dr. James Lawson will discuss Revolutionary Nonviolence: Organizing for Freedom, the title of his book whose publication by University of California Press is dated February, 2022. The book chronicles Lawson’s work as a trainer of students for lunch counter sit-ins and Freedom Rides during Civil Rights struggles of the 1960s, as well as his work while pastor of Holman United Methodist Church in Los Angeles supporting worker and immigrant rights movements in Los Angeles.

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 - Lynn De Jonghe
2022-01-18 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Event
Topic: Raise Thriving Children in Turbulent Times: Start with Whitehead

Presenter: Lynn De Jonghe

Dr. Lynn De Jonghe’s 40-years of experience with progressive education and a long-time fascination with Whitehead and process thought have come together in a book to be published this spring by Rowan and Littlefield, Starting with Whitehead: Raising Children to Thrive in Turbulent Times. This book offers examples of learning events at each stage of Whitehead’s rhythm of education—from romance to precision to generalization—that point the way for adults to help children thrive in a world of turbulent change. These events are presented in the richness of their unfolding context, rather than as dry results of manipulating controlled variables. 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.

Lynn 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. She served as the founding Head of East Bay Sierra School, a predecessor of Prospect Sierra School, El Cerrito, one of the preeminent schools in the San Francisco Bay Area. She also served as Middle School Head of the Athenian School in Danville and Head of Windrush School in El Cerrito, CA. 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.

Lynn is a frequent participant in John Cobb & Friends discussions. A few members of our educational development team have previewed her presentation and heartily recommend that it be shared with the rest of us! Download a brief intro to Lynn and her presentation 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.

Learning Circle: An Awakening Planet?
2022-01-25 08:30 - 09:30, 2022-02-08 08:30 - 09:30, 2022-02-22 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 - David Korten
2022-01-25 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Event
Topic: Ecological Civilization: How John Cobb Shaped My Life’s Work for Three Decades

Presenter: David Korten

David C. Korten is an American writer, lecturer, engaged citizen, student of psychology and behavioral systems, a prominent critic of corporate globalization, and an advocate of Ecological Civilization. His life work builds on lessons learned from the 21 years he and his wife, Fran, lived and worked in Africa, Asia, and Latin America on a quest to end global poverty. This informed the next phase of his life, writing and organizing to call attention to the way our current economic paradigms are devastating the planetary life systems on which our lives depend. He urges us to read his “white paper” that summarizes what he’s learned.

Here are some links to prepare for our conversations:

“Ecological Civilization: From Emergency to Emergence”—David Korten’s “white paper,” a Club of Rome publication. (A detailed list of his writings is on p. 21.)Check out a video affirmation of Korten’s white paper by physicist Fritjof Capra, author of The Systems View of Life“What an Ecological Civilization Looks Like”—Yes! magazine editor Zenobia Jeffries Warfield interviews David Korten for the 25th Anniversary edition (Spring, 2021), focused on “Ecological Civilization.”Find David on Facebook, Twitter, and his website, davidkorten.org.

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 - Process and China
2022-02-01 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Event
Topic: Process and China: How Lives Are Being Changed

Presenter(s): Jay McDaniel, Meijun Fan, Zhihe Wang, and others

Jay McDaniel, Professor Emeritus of World Religions, Hendrix College, will facilitate the sharing of stories from Zhihe Wang, CEO of the Institute for Postmodern Development of China, and Meijun Fan, Program Director for IPDC. They will explore the personal side of their work in China. They will relate their personal experiences as Chinese and Americans for whom their work through the Institute for Postmodern Development of China has been making a difference. Among the Americans who have also agreed to share stories from their interactions in China are Paul Bube, Kevin Clark, Angela Donnelly, and Pat Delaney.

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 - Birthday Celebration
2022-02-08 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Event
Topic: Celebration of John Cobb’s 97th Birthday

Presenter(s): Rebecca Parker, Mary Elizabeth Moore, Andrew Schwartz, and Rita Nakashima Brock

Rebecca Parker will guide us in a celebration of John Cobb’s 97th birthday, and he has given to us and the world. Mary Elizabeth Moore, Andrew Schwartz, and Rita Nakashima Brock and some folks from China will share tributes. Rebecca Parker will interview John, “What Have You Learned by Getting Old?” Open mike time will give John’s Friends a chance to make one or two minute appreciations. (If you’d like to reserve a space in the queue, send a note to John.Fahey@Cobb.Institute with “Cobb Tribute” in the Subject Line.) There will also be time for spontaneous contributions during the morning. There will be music, and Christina Hutchins is preparing a poem for the occasion.

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.

Tim Eastman Unties the Gordian Knot: Wrap Up
2022-02-12 08:00 - 10:00

John Cobb & Friends Gathering - Matt Segall
2022-02-15 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Event
Topic: The Cosmological Context of the Origin of Life

Presenter(s): Matt Segall & Bruce Damer

What is life? How did it originate? Scientific study of the origins of life bumps up against the need for new paradigms of relating what we can learn from typical scientific method, to what we can learn from philosophical reflection in search of new paradigms. Process philosopher Matt Segall (chair of the Cobb Institute Science Advisory Team) and origin of life scientist Bruce Damer have co-written a paper that will be presented later this spring at a conference sponsored by the Center for Process Studies. Matt and Bruce will lead our exploration of their paper titled, “The Cosmological Context of the Origin of Life: Process Philosophy and the Hot Spring Hypothesis.” Did life emerge in a hot spring? Segall and Damer dynamically integrate the metaphysical and the empirical aspects of this research exploration.

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 - Carol Frances Johnston
2022-02-22 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Event
Topic: Regenerative Agriculture: Far Superior to Industrial Ag

Presenter(s): Carol Frances Johnston

Carol Frances Johnston, Associate Professor Emerita of Theology and Culture, taught environmental theology and ethics at Christian Theological Seminary, Indianapolis, for 29 years. She has worked for eco-justice for over thirty years, including serving on the original Eco-justice Task Force of the Presbyterian Church (USA) and locally on the board of Growing Places Indy. She is also a Research Fellow of the Institute for Postmodern Development of China. Most recently she served as an advisor for the documentary, “Courage, Brains, and Muscle: Indiana’s Environmental Champions.”

Johnston will be augmenting a presentation she made in September, 2020 at the World Rural Revitalization Conference in Shanxi, China. She is the author of the booklet, “And the Leaves of the Tree are for the Healing of the Nations: Biblical and Theological Foundations for Ecojustice” (available here), and of The Wealth or Health of Nations: Transforming Capitalism From Within, which was recently published in Chinese. She has taught adult-education courses in a wide variety of churches and lectured as far afield as Singapore on issues of economics and environment, including Whitehead and economics, justice, the Bible and nature, and the public roles of churches.

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.

Cobb Birthday Celebration & Living Earth Movement Launch
2022-02-25 16:00 - 17:30
Please join us for a Zoom celebration ofDr. John B. Cobb, Jr.’s 97th Birthdayand the launch of theLiving Earth Movement

Dr. Cobb will speak aboutthe mission of the Living Earth Movement . . .to inspire global cooperationfor the sake of all life on our planet,beginning with the United States and China.The second and equally important priority isto promote an ecological civilization.

Special guests includeKarenna Gore, David Korten,John Perkins, Mary Evelyn Tuckerand more from around the worldInterfaith Blessings, Toasts, and Music

To receive Zoom info register atlivingearthmovement.eco
