Whitehead & Jung Course
2021-11-02 16:30 - 18:00, 2021-11-09 16:30 - 18:00, 2021-11-16 16:30 - 18:00, 2021-11-23 16:30 - 18:00, 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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John Cobb & Friends Gathering - Damian Geddry
2021-11-09 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Event
Topic: Google My Soul: Reaching A New Generation of Spiritual Seekers

Presenter: Damian Geddry

Damian Geddry is a marketing professional who “stumbled into Claremont School of Theology and became fascinated by the disconnect between mainstream protestant churches and their communities.” He created a series of classes, workshops and seminars that address the church disconnect by using research and marketing techniques.

Damian Geddry cut his marketing teeth at Gray Advertising in New York, one of the largest ad agencies in the world. He currently works in a Toyota digital ecosystem the intersection of advertising, social media, website, CRM, and search engine optimization. He explains why “nonprofit organizations—from mainline protestant churches to environmental groups—have a visibility challenge. They are often invisible to Google…and social media.” How can we listen before we speak? Research before we reach out? So, can you Google your soul? Let’s talk about it!

In our conversation Paul Capetz, pastor of Christ Church by the Sea, a United Methodist church in Newport Beach, will also share how he’s been applying what he’s learning from Damian.

Information about how to access the gathering are made available via email. To find out about a single meeting, send an email to events@cobb.institute. If you would like to be added to our email list to receive regular meeting announcements and updates about the Institute, please click here.

Tim Eastman Unties the Gordian Knot - Chapter 6
2021-11-13 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 - Thomas Jay Oord
2021-11-16 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Event
Topic: Should Christians Be Compassionate if Their God Is Not?

Presenter: Thomas Jay Oord

This is the topic of Dr. Oord’s presentation at last month’s virtual Parliament of World Religions. Although major Christian theologians say God has no emotions, some admit that an emotionless God cannot be compassionate. But if Christians are to follow the biblical command to imitate God in love, should they not be compassionate? Explore Christian views of divine compassion in light of the Christian tradition and open and relational theology. How can the Christian God be rightly thought of as compassionate? Can Christians imitate God by fighting climate change and acting with compassion for victims?

Oord explores this in light of open and relational theology, a subject of his recent book. Learn more at his website for the Center for Open and Relational Theology. For access to his latest essays, blogs, and multiple short podcasts, see thomasjayoord.com. Oord completed his Ph.D. in religion at Claremont Graduate School under supervision of David Ray Griffin. He is an ordained elder in the Church of the Nazarene.

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.

Teilhard de Chardin Learning Circle
2021-11-17 15:00 - 16:00, 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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International Forum on Process Poetry
2021-11-19 17:00 - 20:00, 2021-11-20 17:00 - 20:00
What Are Poets For in the Age of Ecological CivilizationThe Contributions of Process Poetry

The purpose of the Forum is to bring together creative process poets and process thinkers from US, China, Russia, Europe, and other countries to share their poems as well as their understanding of process poetry. These poems invite us into a process of being aware and mindful, open and caring, self-confident and free. They invite us to imagine communities of love and wonder, kindness and creativity. Through poetry we explore the possibilities for building what we call compassionate communities and an ecological civilization. We are capable of changing our world, but first we must imagine together.

Distinguished Speakers

Dr. John B. Cobb, Jr.Dr. Jay McDanielBai YaProf. Xiaohua WangDr. Andrew Schwartz

Master of Ceremonies: Kathleen Reeves

Kathleen Reeves has been writing poetry all her life and she weaves her deepest feelings into poems. For her, it is healing and creative at the same time. You can find her poetry published in The Huffington Post, Poetry Quarterly, Rivers Poets Journal, Lullwater Review, C.G. Jung Journal: Psychological Perspectives, and the Altadena Poetry review Anthology 2017.

To receive the Zoom meeting information, click on the “Going” button, enter your name and email, and click “Finish.”

This event is co-sponsored by the Institute for Postmodern Development of China, Cobb Institute, Center for Process Studies, and China Society for Process Poetry.

John Cobb & Friends Gathering - Sam Mickey
2021-11-23 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Event
Topic: Integrating Ecology and Justice in a Changing Climate

Presenter: Sam Mickey

Dr. Mickey is adjunct professor of Religion and Philosophy at the University of San Francisco. He’s been studying ecological wisdom at the intersection of religion, ecology, and philosophy. He also has taught at Dominican University of California, Pacifica Graduate Institute, and the California Institute of Integral Studies. As a Research Associate for the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology, he has worked with the Journey of the Universe project, and he has done much editorial work. In 2020 he co-edited with Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim Living Earth Community: Multiple Ways of Being and Knowing (Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers; Download a PDF version here) He also edited Integrating Ecology and Justice in a Changing Climate (San Francisco: University of San Francisco Press, 2020). You can listen to a recording of an October launch event for this book here. His book, On the Verge of a Planetary Civilization: A Philosophy of Integral Ecology (Rowman & Littlefield International, 2014), engages the process thinking of Whitehead, Gilles Deleuze, Catherine Keller, and others.

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 - Elizabeth McAnally
2021-11-30 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Event
Topic: Loving Water Across Religions

Presenter: Elizabeth McAnally

Elizabeth McAnally, PhD is the author of Loving Water across Religions: Contributions to an Integral Water Ethic (Orbis Press, Ecology and Justice series, 2019). She lives in Berkeley, CA, and works as the newsletter editor and website manager for the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology. She also manages the websites for Thomas Berry and the Great Work, Journey of the Universe, the American Teilhard Association, and the Institute for Religion and Science. Elizabeth earned her doctorate at the California Institute of Integral Studies, and has taught classes on philosophy, religion, and environmental ethics at Pacifica Graduate Institute, the University of North Texas, the University of San Francisco, and Diablo Valley College. She practices yoga and Chinese internal arts (taiji, qigong, bagua, xingyi, and yiquan) and teaches Integral Taiji & Qigong classes in Berkeley and online. Elizabeth is also an avid musician and enjoys singing and playing the flute.

In addition to the link to her book on this week’s topic, she suggests you explore the following links:

“Loving Water Across Religions.” Spotlights interview with Sam Mickey. January 18, 2021. “Integral Water Ethic.” Deep Water Initiative Podcast with Charlie Forbes. March 10, 2019.Integral Taiji & Qigong classes and videos.

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 - 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

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 | 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 | 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.
