The Big Picture
Question: What effect did John Cobb's teachings and presence have on you and others?
Response: Something went wide in us. Our minds stretched, our hearts opened, and our imaginations dared to envision a world more just, compassionate, and beautiful.
Question: Are you still widening?
Response: Yes, we are influenced by what Catherine Keller and others call Cobbjective Immortality. We want to help others widen, too. We seek to become, like John, agents of expansion, harbors of hope, and catalysts for wonder.
The Widening Effect
John Cobb’s Legacy of Imagination, Compassion, and Hope
A friend asks what effect John Cobb had on others through his writings, teaching, and personal example. Let me list some, to which you might add still more:
- Inspiration for Broad Intellectual Curiosity: Encouraged students to explore multiple disciplines and integrate ideas across fields.
- Deep Appreciation for Process Philosophy: Fostered an understanding of Alfred North Whitehead’s ideas and their relevance to theology, ecology, and social justice.
- Commitment to Social and Environmental Justice: Inspired activism and ethical responsibility to address global challenges.
- Encouragement of Creativity and Innovation: Promoted original thinking and openness to new possibilities.
- Interfaith and Interdisciplinary Dialogue: Advocated for collaborative engagement with diverse religious and cultural traditions.
- Mentorship and Personal Support: Provided individualized guidance and nurtured students’ intellectual and spiritual growth.
- Development of Practical Applications: Taught students to connect philosophical insights with real-world practices and social transformation.
- Sense of Community and Collaboration: Cultivated a network of scholars and activists dedicated to cooperative learning and shared purpose.
- Focus on Ecological Civilization: Inspired a vision for sustainable and harmonious living with the Earth.
- Integration of Theory and Practice: Modeled how to live out philosophical principles in daily life and activism.
- A Credible and Meaningful Vision of God as Love: Helped many Christians, most of them liberal Protestants, grow into what, for them, was a credible and meaningful way of understanding God as love.
- Appreciation for Relations Between Religion and Science: Encouraged students to explore the harmony between science and religion, emphasizing their complementarity rather than conflict.
- Awakening to Global Interconnectedness: Opened minds to the relational nature of existence, helping students see themselves as part of a vast web of life and responsibility.
- Rediscovery of Wonder and Mystery: Nurtured a reverence for life’s beauty, complexity, and ongoing creativity, inviting students to live with awe and humility.
- Permission to Think Differently: Gave students the courage to question inherited beliefs and imagine new possibilities for faith, thought, and action.
But added to these, plus any you might add, is a more general effect. With help from John, something went wide in us. Our minds stretched, our hearts opened, and our imaginations dared to envision a world more just, compassionate, and alive.
A Gap in the Cedar
I borrow the image of "something going wide in us" from a poem called A Gap in the Cedar by Roy Scheele. The poem begins with the image of a man standing in a room, looking out a window on a winter's day. The man seems solemn and sad, as if someone he loves has died. He is gazing at the trees and snow, when something very subtle strikes his eye. It is the trembling of a branch from a cedar tree:
I saw this much from the window
The branch spring lightened into place
with a lithe shudder of snow.
He surmises that the branch sprang back into place because a bird had been on it and had just flown away. But he doesn't know, or even need to know, what kind of bird it was.
Whatever bird had been there
Chickadee or sparrow
had so vanished into air
resilient, beyond recall.
It had to be taken on faith
To be taken at all.
What he does know, however, is that as he sees the branch spring back into place, something goes wide in his heart. He sees something and knows something that momentarily dispels the sadness of the moment.
In the moment it took that tree
To recover that trembling
Something went wide in me -
There was a rush of wings
The air beaten dim with snow,
And then I saw through the swirling.
What did the man see? He doesn't tell us, but the title of the poem, A Gap in the Cedar, gives a hint. He saw a wideness, an open space, a gap, a clearing—and it was freeing. It was a widening that allowed him to see past the sadness, to feel a connection to something larger than himself, something that could not be contained or captured, only glimpsed and trusted. It was the kind of widening that shifts one's perspective and lets in light where there had only been shadows.
The Widening Effect
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John Cobb had this effect on his students, including me: we grew more curious, more imaginative, more sensitive, more thoughtful, and more open to fresh possibilities of heart and mind. For each of us, the widening took a different tone. Some of us became scholars, others devoted ourselves to serving local communities. Some dreamed new dreams, became artists, worked in churches, or sought to be the best Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, or Hindu we could be. For all of us, it meant giving our lives to something beyond appearance, affluence, and marketable achievement. It meant becoming healers, each in our own way.
John’s effect on us also had a spiritual dimension. It called us to live with faith in possibilities unseen but deeply felt—to trust that the gaps and clearings in our lives might yet reveal paths toward beauty, compassion, and justice. Like the trembling branch in Scheele’s poem, our lives were set into motion by moments of release, of letting go, and of trusting the wideness that followed. This trust in the availability, this faith, is also part of the Widening Effect.
Becoming Vessels of the Wideness
We are sad about John's passing, yes, but we are also grateful. One of John's students, Catherine Keller, puts it this way:
'Grief in this case I find barely distinguishable from gratitude. Gratitude for the grace that so humbly, quietly, empoweringly radiated from him. From a “him” which includes his teaching, his writing, his networking and which therefore will not in an imaginable planetary future cease to flow from “him.” (Cobbjective immortality?)
What is Cobbjective Immortality? I think it is the spread of the widening effect. It takes the form of various projects we in the process community are involved with, but also in our desire to spread the widening effect itself—to encourage ourselves and others to live with curiosity, creativity, compassion, and hope. To see beauty even in the gaps, and to trust in the wideness of life. To be vessels of the Widening.
To be a vessel of the Widening is be centered at a personal level: to be inwardly grounded, a kind person, a good friend: a companionable presence at home, in the workplace. It is to live with mindful presence, as best you can. And it is also to be a steward of possibility, an agent of expansion, a harbor of hope.
One of those possibilities, so important to John Cobb in his work over the past decades is that of developing new kinds of communities: ecological civilizations. The ideal of an Ecological Civilization invites us to reimagine our cultural, economic, and political systems in ways that honor interdependence, sustainability, and justice. It envisions communities that prioritize well-being over profit, cooperation over competition, and ecological harmony over exploitation.
For John, this vision was not abstract; it was profoundly practical. He believed that Ecological Civilization begins in local communities, where people come together to create spaces of care and creativity. It is about redesigning economies to serve the common good, rethinking agriculture to restore ecosystems, and reimagining education to cultivate ecological wisdom. It means honoring indigenous knowledge, celebrating cultural diversity, and fostering deep connections between people and the land.
John knew that this transformation would require courage and persistence. It is not about quick fixes but about long-term commitments to relational, cooperative, and sustainable ways of living. For John, ecological civilization was ultimately about love—love for the Earth, for humanity, and for all forms of life. It was about embodying this love through concrete actions that make a difference in people's lives and the planet.