In this session, Rabbi Or Rose will explore a well-known Hasidic tale about mentorship and Torah study. In so doing, we will analyze the ways in which the storyteller calls us to heightened consciousness about the presence of divinity throughout the created world. Rabbi Rose will also examine how this story serves as a model of the power of storytelling as a sacred practice.
In this SPARKS Exchange Melissa Cowper-Smith will be sharing about her Artists Garden, where she gathers materials she transforms through her creative process. Her art is expressed through beekeeping, papermaking, fiber arts of weaving and spinning, and encaustic painting. This session’s creative response will be generative scribing, where we gather words throughout the session that evoke the materiality of Melissa’s process. To wrap-up the session, participants will weave these words into poetry.
The philosopher George Allan—in three well-written books in philosophy of education—applies the Homo Ludens hypothesis to education, especially to higher education. College education at its best is a type of dynamic play. Allan’s contribution to the Homo Ludens hypothesis has been underappreciated. Allan often relies on the process thought found in Alfred North Whitehead’s classic Aims of Education. The goal of the present presentation is to explore the important contribution Allan can make toward the understanding of the contemporary crumbling of the walls of the cathedral of learning, to use his dramatic metaphor.
In this session, Lopon Dorje Khandro and Rev. Dr. Dhammabodhi will briefly explore critical intersections between Buddhism, New Paradigm Sciences, and the Practicalities of Dementia Caregiving in the United States. They will focus on how to maintain a radical compassionate caregiving presence, insure the provision of essential and non-exploitative care, and recognize the “luminous mind” while serving humans and animals whose physical capacities, cognitive functions, and identities are fading. The presenters will also share their main Buddhist and caregiving practices such as Tonglen (sending and taking), Chod (cutting practice), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), and some new and old visual, sound, touch and olfactory therapies.
In his presentation, Doug Lippoldt will illustrate manifestations of systemic challenges using a sectoral case study approach focused on a set of middle-income developing countries striving to engage more deeply in the AI economy. The sample will include countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
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.
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.
Eugene Gendlin’s work—which Whitehead had a seminal impact on—help us move past the fallacy of misplaced concreteness. Heeding felt understanding gives us a disciplined resource for creative, adaptive thought and action. Bill Gayner will explore this experientially in 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.
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.
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.