As this year’s event comes to a close, John Cobb’s hope is that other universities will now realize that their reluctance to help save humanity from self-destruction must be transformed into enthusiasm for actualizing their vast potential contributions.

In this far-ranging and inspirational speech for a meeting of women religious in Monrovia, CA, John Cobb discusses major influences that have shaped our current situation and the alternative vision of Pope Francis in Laudato Si’. He concludes with ways that Pando at Maryknoll might incarnate integral ecology.

In this biographical reflection John Cobb responds the following: “At what point in your life did you decide ‘enough is enough’ and put it all on the line? What was it that caused or inspired you to make the change? How did you respond?”

Pando Populus recently accepted and strengthened the idea of using the upcoming Los Angeles Olympics as an occasion to set high but not impossible goals for LA. With sincere backing from institutions and individuals I believe these goals could move LA a long way in the direction of becoming a model for an ecological civilization.

Marcus Eriksen and his friends understand the damage that can be done by plastics far better than the rest of us. But they also know that simply informing us will do little to change our behavior. If we are to be redirected away from our suicidal behavior, we must be grasped by images.

The “eternal rest” of which some speak would, I suspect, be hard for Vern to take.

I am a theist, and with many, I feel God’s presence most strongly in the midst of natural, and especially living, things.  Pando is an extraordinarily interesting living thing, and I expect it to induce a deep sense of sacred presence.

My guess is that if you were not keeping on, at least to some degree, you would not be reading this piece. Perhaps we are all fools, but let’s think about it.

To understand that we live in a world in which relationships are more fundamental than tiny, individual bits of matter is revolutionary in its implications.

John Cobb, Jr. prepared these comments for the inaugural docent training program of the Amigos de los Rios Emerald Necklace initiative, a “necklace” of parks and green spaces populating the great watersheds of the Los Angeles region about which docents will be trained. The docent training program is developed in collaboration with Pando Hubs.

I proposed that we view Western history, after the fall of Rome, in terms of three periods distinguished by the deepest level of loyalties and the ways people understood themselves: Christianism, nationalism, and economism. Perhaps economism might now give way to “Earthism.” Let’s work for that.

We can know God as liberator rather than controller.