Events
Process Pop-Up: A Process-Relational Approach to Teaching Science
In this process pop-up, Christie Byers will explore what it might mean to teach science as if the world were alive. Drawing on Alfred North Whitehead’s process philosophy, she shares an approach to elementary science education that shifts away from viewing nature as inert and mechanical, and toward experiencing it as relational and participatory, a community of diverse subjects infused with value. Rather than teaching Whitehead’s ideas explicitly, Byers designs her course as an embodied enactment of them, using an "as if" approach, "as if" we are indeed living in a Whiteheadian cosmos, inviting preservice teachers to encounter science through wonder, aesthetic experience, and direct engagement with the more-than-human world.
Free
Process Pop-Up: Made by Love, For Love: Reimagining God, Power, and Faith
In his new book, Made by Love, for Love, author Michael M. Rose invites readers to reimagine Christianity—not as a drama of sin and obligatory appeasing sacrifice, but as a cosmic love story still unfolding. Far from cracking under the weight of an expanding universe, the gospel becomes more radiant, more necessary, and more astonishing than ever. In this Process Pop-Up, Rose will introduce his project and invite conversation.
Taking up Whitehead’s Invitation to Explore Our Immediate Experience | Bill Gayner
Bill Gayner will lead a guided contemplation using as a starting point an excerpt from Whitehead’s chapter on philosophic method in Adventures of Ideas. We will then reflect on and discuss the experience including perhaps how these kinds of micropractices can scale up to support professional sensibilities and reflective learning, providing a platform for ongoing adaptation and innovation, and the light this may shed on Whitehead’s own practice.
Free
Digging for Wisdom and Finding the Words with Leslie King
These days, there are so many vehicles to speak quickly. We can find ourselves speaking before we have our necessary information. We can find ourselves speaking to symptoms rather than the roots of the problem. With so much provocation in the public sector, how can orators in our various vocations find the "tap root" on subjects that are vital for civility and the greater good? With so much temptation to declare opinion and bias on social media outlets, how can the relationship filter recover its integrity?
Free
ORTCON26: An Open & Relational Conference
Held at the beautiful Grand Targhee Resort in the Grand Teton mountains of Wyoming, ORTCON26 is an in-person conference exploring topics in Open and Relational Theology. ORTCON26 brings together scholars, leaders, pastors, and activists. The conference provides workshops, lectures, and social activities to deepen relationships and present new ways of imagining God and the universe.
Transformation in Practice: The Process of Youth Empowerment in Soweto with Natasha Yen
Young people are leading the way in addressing critical global issues and transformative actions. One such issue is: How does empowerment emerge? Drawing on her experience facilitating youth and community development programs in Kliptown, Soweto, South Africa, Natasha Yen explores how empowerment and transformation unfold in practice. Rather than treating empowerment as a predefined outcome, the presentation explores how it unfolds over time, and how community change becomes possible when people are equipped not only with skills, but also with the belief and capacity to shape their own futures.
Free
Earth on Fire: Brewing Plagues and Climate Chaos in Our Backyards with Evaggelos Vallianatos
In Earth on Fire: Brewing Plagues and Climate Chaos in Our Backyards, scholar and author Evaggelos Vallianatos makes the case that industrial animal agriculture lies at the heart of two of the most urgent crises of our time: pandemic disease and climate chaos. In this session of Process Explorations, Evaggelos will present the ideas from his latest work, drawing on the agricultural traditions of ancient Greece and China's ecological civilization debates to trace a through-line from humanity's earliest relationships with land and animals to the conditions that gave rise to COVID-19 and the broader era of global industrial farming dependent on pesticides, petroleum, and heavy machinery.
Free
Process Pop-Up: Prayers for Mother Earth: Gratitude, Compassion, Repentance, and Guidance
In this Process Pop-Up, Mary Jane Miller will introduce us to her book Prayers for Mother Earth and reveal how it is designed as a resource and guide to focus the mind and heart on one another and Mother Earth as she speaks back to us.
The Path of Light: The Universal Message of the Karkariyya Sufi Order with Zaineb Baddouri
In this presentation, Zaineb Baddouri will engage in an exploratory discussion of the Karkariyya Order and the central message of its living teacher, Shaykh Al-Karkari. The Shaykh emphasizes the processual, direct witnessing of the Divine Presence as Light as mode and method of the student's journey toward self-knowledge, ethical formation, and transcendence of consciousness. Through daily meditative practice, sincere action, and 7 foundational techniques, students of the Karkariya embark on an inner and outer journey of transformation and purification.
Free
14th International Whitehead Conference
This global gathering of scholars, educators, and practitioners marks a pivotal moment to engage Alfred North Whitehead’s philosophy in dialogue with the pressing challenges and transformative opportunities of the 21st century. The theme of the 2026 International Whitehead Conference is: “Process Philosophy in a Time of Polycrisis: Science, Meaning, and Civilization.” The conference will explore how process thought can illuminate the great transitions of our time—toward a more sustainable, creative, and compassionate world.
Fines, Fees, and Futures: The Shadow System of Court Debt with Alejandra Davila
In this presentation, Alejandra Davila will explore court debt as a living system that perpetuates itself through interconnected cycles of punishment and profit. The presentation will be structured in three parts: Context, Cycles, and Campaigns. Alejandra will briefly trace the history of fines and fees, unpack how court debt sustains and deepens itself across communities, and explore the organizations campaigning to end fees and right-size fines. The session will close with a conversation on the shifts—cultural, political, and relational—that could make a justice system genuinely just.
Free
Process Explorations Summer Finale: Wisdom for Building Alternative Futures
This session marks the finale of a six-month series in Process Explorations – “Building Alternative Futures.” The theme echoes the 2015 conference sponsored by John B. Cobb, Jr., "Seizing an Alternative: Toward an Ecological Civilization." It also underscores the urgency of the present moment in global history, seeking to analyze the present, imagine the potential futures before us, and build toward those futures. As we conclude the series, we celebrate the finale with wisdom from our process mentors and friends, poetry, music, art, and conversation.
RSVP Now Free