Coming Online and Onsite Events
Become a subscriber in the Community of Lifelong Learners for $40 per month for unlimited attendance at on-site and online events, or $25 per month for only ONLINE events. Subscribers are responsible for ordering their own books. One-day ONSITE seminar tuition is $125 per person for non-subscribers. Special events have differing tuition. Scholarships are available for teachers and students. Please inquire via email here.
Online Weekly Intensives
Online Seminar Series - NOW MEETING
Drinking from The Fount:
Divine Union in the Carmelite Tradition
Wednesday Evenings - July 9 - August 27, 2025
What does it mean to seek the face of God, to live in His presence in silent meditation and contemplation? Each Carmelite mystic experienced God in their own unique way, lighting the way for contemporary seekers of all traditions in their search for divine union. Like Dante, these explorers attempted to describe their own journeys up Mount Carmel to the peak of divine union.
Carmelite spirituality is one of many in the Christian tradition. Over 800 years ago, hermits gathered to live in solitary cells on Mount Carmel near the prophet Elijah’s spring, meditating day and night on scripture, and establishing a rule of life. Following in their footsteps, subsequent Carmelites have sought to also stand in silence, waiting for God to pass by.
Taking time to read and discuss together their experiences of the divine, we will together enter into their journeys for a while, meditating on their words, perhaps drinking from the same fount that slaked Elijah’s thirst.
Online seminars in this series will take place on Wednesday evening, 5:30-7:00PM Pacific Time. Attendees will be sent the anthology of readings, The Carmelite Tradition by Steven Payne on Amazon, ISBN: 978-0-8146-1912-4. Sessions will be facilitated by Clare McGrath-Merkle. Groups will be limited to 16 participants and no prior knowledge is required. Teachers will be offered 2 CEU credits for participating. This eight-week series is $425. Community of Lifelong Learner subscribers receive a discount of $50 through a refund. Payment options are available.
Online Seminar Series - NOW ENROLLING
Anton Chekhov: The Major Plays
Tuesday Evenings - August 5 - September 2, 2025
“What Chekhov saw in our failure to communicate,” English writer V.S. Pritchett claimed of the Russian short story writer and dramatist, “was something positive and precious: the private silence in which we live, and which enables us to endure our own solitude.”
Seven years after working in the short story genre, Chekhov turned to the stage as the natural evolution of his aesthetic, one radically opposed to the conventional melodramas of his era. After mixed success with his first projects (Ivanov and The Wood Demon) Chekhov found a sympathetic director in Constantin Stanislavsky; their collaboration would not only revolutionize Russian theater but Western theater more broadly.
We will read five major plays in chronological order from the early Ivanov (1889) and The Seagull (1895) to the later works penned for Stanislavsky’s Moscow Art Theatre, Uncle Vanya (1896) and The Three Sisters (1900) and conclude with the 1903 masterpiece The Cherry Orchard. Discussion will focus not just on Chekhov’s themes in each play but also his evolving refinement of dramatic technique in characterization, symbolism, and plot development.
“What happens on stage,” Chekhov wrote in a letter to his publisher, “should be just as complicated and yet just as simple as things are in life. People are having dinner, that's all--but at the same time their happiness is being decided, or their lives are being destroyed.”
Online seminars in this series will take place on Tuesday evenings, 5:30-7:00PM Pacific Time. Attendees will be sent the anthology of readings, The Plays of Anton Chekhov by Paul Schmidt, ISBN: 978-0060928759. Sessions will be facilitated by Jordan Hoffman. Groups will be limited to 16 participants and no prior knowledge is required. Teachers will be offered1 CEU credit for participating. This five-week series is $325. Community of Lifelong Learner subscribers receive a discount of $25 through a refund.
Online Seminar Series - NOW ENROLLING
Jane Austen - All Six
Friday Evenings - Beginning August 15, 2025
Has anyone observed character and manners in language more crisp than Jane Austen has? Has anyone made prose fiction more precise? Part of her great artistry must surely be in making her characters not less, but more, lively and real for their ability to converse in accents as bright as those in which she writes. Somehow her characters can sound like Jane Austen and still be themselves. Can anyone ever have spoken like this? Can anyone reading her care, so long as they get to hear more of it? Like some reading Desdemona, we “devour up (her) discourse.” In her treatment of the real work of human happiness as taking place on the ground where the sexes meet, she must be almost unmatched in coupling charming drollery of speech with the moral drama of composing soul-bursting passion into ardor’s fulfilled articulation.
Won’t you come and converse with Jane? She's good company -- on a Friday night, or any night. Come for one, two, several, or all. Pick the ones you like, but don’t count out the ones you don’t know. Richness and beauty fill them all.
Online seminars in this series will take place on Friday evenings, 5:30-7:00PM Pacific Time. Attendees purchase their own books. Sessions will be facilitated by Eric Stull. Groups will be limited to 16 participants and no prior knowledge is required. Teachers will be offered CEU credits for participating. Each book in the online series is offered as stand-alone or can be grouped into a set for a discount.
Online Seminar Series - NOW ENROLLING
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Thursday Evenings - September 4 - December 18, 2025
Anna Karenina was first published in book form in 1878. Tolstoy called it his first true novel. It was initially released in serial installments from 1875 to 1877, all but the last part appearing in the periodical The Russian Messenger. The novel explore the themes of hypocrisy, jealousy, faith, fidelity, family, marriage, society, progress, and passion, as well as the Russian Spirit and the rural connection to land in contrast to the cosmopolitan lifestyles of the major cities. The events in the novel take place against the backdrop of rapid transformations as a result of the liberal reforms initiated by Emperor Alexander II, principal among these were the emancipation reform of 1861, the introduction of elected local governments, the fast development of railroads, banks, industry, the telegraph, increasing rights for woman, the military conflict with the Ottoman Empire, and much more. Acknowledged as one of the greatest novels of all time, the work has been adapted into various media including theatre, opera, film, television, ballet, figure skating, and radio dramas.
“Vengeance is mine; I will repay.”
Online seminars in this series will take place on Thursday evenings, 5:30-7:00PM Pacific Time. Attendees will be mailed the text. Sessions will be facilitated by Roxana Zirakzadeh and Andy Gilman. Groups will be limited to 16 participants and no prior knowledge is required. Teachers will be offered 3 CEU credits for participating. This fifteen-week series is $675. Community of Lifelong Learner subscribers receive a discount of $50 through a refund. Payment options are available.
Free Community Series
Free Onsite Community Seminar Series
The Poetry of Rumi
The Fourth Tuesday of each month
Next Session is July 22, 2025
Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī or simply Rumi was a 13th-century poet and Sufi mystic born during the Khwarazmian Empire. Like others in Persian literature, Rumi's poetry speaks of love which infuses the world. His teachings also express the tenets summarized in the Quranic verse which Shams-e Tabrizi cited as the essence of prophetic guidance: "Know that ‘There is no god but He,’ and ask forgiveness for your sin" (Q. 47:19): - To seek knowledge of tawhid (oneness of God), while negate one's own existence. We invite you to join us once per month to explore his poetry together.
The July 22 reading is:
Because I Cannot Sleep
Schedule:
12:00 - 1:00PM PDT
Location:
111 East Ojai Avenue
Ojai, California 93023
Free Onsite Community Seminar Series
Eastern Classics
The First and Third Tuesdays of each month
Next Session is August 5, 2025
Like the west, the east has its own tradition of influential texts that address the perennial questions of human kind. Centering around the bodies of work from China, Japan, and India, this series will focus on the texts of Taoism, Confucius, Buddhism, and Hinduism. We invite you to join us and attendees can feel free to join intermittently.
The August 5 reading is:
The Tao Te Ching - Chapter 37
Click icon to download, or click here
for all chapters.
Schedule:
12:00 - 1:00PM PDT
Location:
111 East Ojai Avenue
Ojai, California 93023
Free Onsite Community Seminar Series
The Poetry of Mary Oliver
The Second Tuesday of each month
Next Session is August 12, 2025
Mary Oliver's poetry is widely recognized for its deep connection to the natural world, often focusing on detailed observations of plants, animals, and landscapes, with a central theme of finding beauty and meaning in everyday moments, while exploring human experiences like mortality, loss, and the interconnectedness of all living things, all presented through vivid imagery and a conversational tone. We invite you to join us once per month to explore her poetry together.
The August 12 poem is:
Schedule:
12:00 - 1:00PM PDT
Location:
111 East Ojai Avenue
Ojai, California 93023
Online Free Community Seminar Series
Lincoln’s Words, America’s Principles
Saturday, August 16, 2025
The Agora Foundation invites you to an enriching six-part seminar series exploring the enduring wisdom of Abraham Lincoln’s greatest speeches. Through a careful study of the Lyceum Address, Temperance Address, House Divided Speech, Cooper Union Address, First Inaugural, Gettysburg Address, and Second Inaugural, we will examine how Lincoln’s words continue to illuminate the challenges of political leadership in a nation “of the people, by the people, for the people.”
Each seminar will engage participants in a thoughtful discussion on how Lincoln grappled with the moral and constitutional crises of his time, offering profound insights into the responsibilities of leaders and citizens alike. From his warnings about the dangers of lawlessness and ambition to his appeals for national unity and reconciliation, Lincoln’s speeches serve as a timeless guide for navigating political and social divisions with wisdom, integrity, and a deep respect for America’s founding principles.
This series is designed for those who seek a deeper understanding of how great leadership is shaped by a regard for principle, prudence, and a commitment to the common good. Whether you are a student of history, a civic leader, or simply an engaged citizen, these discussions will provide valuable perspectives on the challenges of leadership in our own time.
Join us as we rediscover Lincoln’s vision for America and explore how his words continue to inspire and challenge us today.
Series Dates:
Saturday, April 26
Saturday, May 17
Saturday, June 21
Saturday, August 16
Saturday, September 20
Saturday, October 18
August 16 Reading:
First Inaugural
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PDT
Tutor:
Karl Haigler
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Upcoming Regular Events
Online Seminar Series
American Rhetoric: the Lincoln-Douglas Debates
Saturday, July 26, 2025
There has never been anything like them, before or since. It is not the least part of the Lincoln-Douglas debates’ uniqueness that the texts of the debates were formed from what was a new phenomenon at the time, namely newspaper transcripts of entire speeches. In brackets within the texts of the two men’s speeches appear notes of crowd response or quotes of crowd members’ comments. There were no moderators, no restrictions on what was to be discussed, no buzzers, no mute buttons. Although there were no constraints on the subjects to be taken up, and although many matters arose in the course of the debates, the only subject really under consideration was slavery, which as Lincoln said, was the only problem which ever threatened the very existence of the United States.
In one of the greatest examples of the exercise of free speech in all our history, the burning issue at stake was freedom itself, and whether it could prevail against its hideous opposite, its negation. The initial speaker spoke for an hour; the other replied for an hour and a half; the first spoke again, in rejoinder, for half an hour. The first debate was held in the heat of late summer, the last in the chill of autumn, a few weeks before the election. Some of the debates were rather sparsely attended; others drew thousands. We invite you to join us as we read and discuss all eight debates, roughly one month apart.
July 26 Reading:
Charleston Debate (September 18, 1858) - pages 127-171 and Dred Scott and Supporting Documents
The Lincoln-Douglas Debates: The Lincoln Studies Center Edition
University of Illinois Press; First Edition (July 2014)
ISBN-13 : 978-0252079924
or click here for an online version.
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PDT
Tutor:
Eric Stull
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
Monday Night Poetry Group
Next Session - Monday, July 28, 2025
Join us as we explore, through close reading, what makes a poem. Each online session will focus on a single poem or two shorter ones. We'll examine how language becomes art, taking note of everything from forms and sound patterns to imagery and word order, discovering how poets transform ordinary language into “machines made out of words” that resonate on emotional, sensory and imaginative levels.
No preparation is required— we’ll read aloud and discover the poems together. Each of the seminars is self-contained, so join for any or all that interest you. Whether you're new to poetry or a seasoned reader, these gatherings will deepen your ability to see how poems work their particular magic, revealing the craft behind moments of beauty, surprise and insight.
Visit the Monday Night Poetry Group page for more information and to access upcoming poems.
July 28 Reading:
During Wind and Rain by Thomas Hardy
Schedule:
5:00-6:00PM PDT
Tutor:
Carol Seferi
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Free Onsite Ojai Chautauqua Panel Series
The Future of Ojai - What is Special About Ojai? - What should be nurtured, protected, or expanded?
Thursday, July 31, 2025
The Agora Foundation's Ojai Chautauqua project is embarking on a series of onsite panel discussions that will take place in 2025 and 2026, entitled The Future of Ojai. The goal of the project is to bring together knowledgeable and varied points of view in the spirit of learning, shared inquiry, and civil discourse. Panels will take place about two months apart with each focusing on a different topic such as housing, our economy, sustaining our environment, the state of education, the arts, and more. Events will have different moderators and panelists, representing our diverse community. As with all of our prior events, we hope to bring thoughtful conversation to complicated areas that affect us all, both today and in the future.
All panels will be free and open to the community. This is the first event in the series, intended to set the stage for future offerings.
Panel Moderator:
Kimberly Rivers - Journalist and Editor
Panelists:
Emily Ayala – Co-Owner of Friend’s Ranch
Andra Belknap - Journalist and Commentator
Atticus Ford-Reyes - Board President of Ojai Unified School District
Andy Gilman - Mayor of Ojai and Agora Foundation Director
Saw Naing - Co-Owner of The Dutchess and Joplin’s
Fabiola Sosa - Mother and Ojai Community Farmers Market team
Schedule:
5:30-7:30PM PDT
Location:
122 East Ojai Avenue in Ojai
The event is at capacity:
While the event is free, seating is limited. If desired, please add your name to the waiting list below. The panel will be recorded and posted.
Online Contemporary Issues Seminar Series
Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
Saturday, August 2, 2025
“Nature has introduced great variety into the landscape, but man has displayed a passion for simplifying it. Thus he undoes the built-in checks and balances by which nature holds the species within bounds.”
Published in 1962 and named one of the 25 greatest science books of all time by the editors of Discover magazine, Silent Spring is an environmental science book by Rachel Carson. The book documents the environmental harm caused by the indiscriminate use of DDT. Carson accuses the chemical industry of spreading disinformation, and public officials of accepting the industry's marketing claims unquestioningly. The book was met with fierce opposition by chemical companies, but it swayed public opinion and led to a reversal in U.S. pesticide policy, a nationwide ban on DDT for agricultural uses, and an environmental movement that led to the creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Join us as we read and discuss this foundational book, several chapters at a time, over monthly online seminars.
August 2 Reading:
Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
13. Through a Narrow Window, 14. one in Every Four, 15. Nature Fights Back, 16. The Rumblings of an Avalanche, 17. The Other Road (pages 199-297)
Mariner Books Classics; Anniversary edition (February 2022)
ISBN 978-0618249060
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PDT
Tutor:
Andy Gilman
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
Finnegans Wake by James Joyce
Wednesday, August 6, 2025
Let us leave theories there and return to here's hear.
Having done the longest day in literature with Ulysses (1922), Joyce set himself an even greater challenge for his next book - the night. "A nocturnal state... That is what I want to convey: what goes on in a dream, during a dream." Published in 1939, the book would take Joyce two decades to complete.
A story with no real beginning or end, the work has come to assume a preeminent place in English literature. Anthony Burgess has lauded Finnegans Wake as "a great comic vision, one of the few books of the world that can make us laugh aloud on nearly every page". Harold Bloom has called it Joyce's masterpiece, and, in The Western Canon (1994), wrote that "if aesthetic merit were ever again to center the canon, Finnegans Wake would be as close as our chaos could come to the heights of Shakespeare and Dante".
Join us as we read this text a few pages at a time, every other Wednesday afternoon. Click here to visit the Finnegans Wake Online Seminar page, with links to media and the Discussion Forum.
August 6 Reading:
Book Two - Chapter Four of Finnegans Wake by Joyce (page 383, Line 26), Penguin Classics; Reissue edition (December 1999). ISBN 9780141181264. Also, Chapter Twelve of A Reader's Guide to Finnegans Wake by William Tindall. Syracuse University Press; Reprint edition (May 1996), ISBN 0815603851
Schedule:
12:30-2:00PM PDT
Tutor:
Barry Rabe
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
Blaise Pascal - Pensées
Thursday, August 7, 2025
What can we say we know with certainty? What does it mean to say that we know something? How does knowledge differ from belief? Can an exploration of basic philosophical questions, such as How do we know what we know? and What are the limits of our understanding? inform our thinking not just on intellectual issues, but on broader cultural challenges as well?
Blaise Pascal (June 1623 – August 1662) was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, philosopher, and Catholic writer. He is known for his contributions to mathematics, physics, and philosophy, particularly his work on geometry, probability theory, and his philosophical argument The Wager. He also invented one of the first mechanical calculators, and made significant contributions to fluid mechanics and barometric pressure. Over six Thursday afternoon online seminars the series will cover:
June 12: “The Memorial” (pp. 285-86), Sections 1-48, 68-118
June 26: Sections 119-188
July 10: Sections 189-202, 397-435
July 24: Sections 504-634
August 7: Sections 635-791
August 21: Sections 792-829, 879-905, 975-988
Join us as we discuss this foundational work from Pascal. This series continues a broader series on epistemology. All are welcome. Please join us even if this will be your first seminar in the series.
Click here to visit the Epistemology Page.
August 7 Reading:
Sections 635-791
Pensées by Blaise Pascal
Penguin Classics
ISBN 978-0140446456
Schedule:
Thursdays, 12:30-2:00PM PDT
Tutor:
Carol Seferi
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
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Online Seminar Series
Shakespeare in Britain and Greece: Comic, Tragic, Both
Saturday, August 9, 2025
In the geography of his poetic imagination, Shakespeare seems to find world enough in time -- a stage in every age -- from the worlds of mythical Greece and the mother of epic, the Trojan War (The Two Noble Kinsmen and Troilus and Cressida) to Britain before Merlin (King Lear) to the “pale fire” of Roman Greece (Timon of Athens) to the warped world of pagan Roman Britain (Cymbeline) to the zany (and not-so-) world of Mediterranean sea change (The Comedy of Errors and Pericles) to the “fog and filthy air” of medieval Scotland (Macbeth) to a world of Elizabethan goodwives that somehow includes Falstaff (The Merry Wives of Windsor). In these plays, the poet’s constant themes are love, betrayal, identity, disguise, given in about as many combinations and permutations as one could wish, romantic, comic, tragic, and blends thereof.
August 9 Reading:
Cymbeline by William Shakespeare
Pelican, Arden, or any standard edition with act, scene, and line numbers will work well
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PDT
Tutors:
Eric Stull and Jordan Hoffman
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Contemporary Issues Seminar Series
The Emperor of All Maladies - A Biography of Cancer
by Siddhartha Mukherjee
Saturday, August 23, 2025
From the author - "In a sense, this is a military history—one in which the adversary is formless, timeless, and pervasive. Here, too, there are victories and losses, campaigns upon campaigns, heroes and hubris, survival and resilience—and inevitably, the wounded, the condemned, the forgotten, the dead. In the end, cancer truly emerges, as a nineteenth-century surgeon once wrote in a book's frontispiece, as "the emperor of all maladies, the king of terrors."
The Emperor of All Maladies won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction: the jury called it "an elegant inquiry, at once clinical and personal". The Guardian wrote that "Mukherjee manages to convey not only a forensically precise picture of what he sees, but a shiver too, of what he feels." Literary Review commended Mukherjee's narrative: "It is so well written, and the science is so clearly explained, that it reads almost like a detective story—which, of course, it is." We invite you to this monthly offering, reading several chapters each time.
August 23 Reading:
Prologue, Part One - Vanishing Humors, Remote Sympathy, A Radical Idea, The Hard Tube and the Weak Light, Dyeing and Dying, Poisoning the Atmosphere, The Goodness of Show Business, The House that Jimmy Built
(pages 51-104)
Scribner; Reprint edition (August 2011)
ISBN 978-1439170915
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PDT
Tutor:
Andy Gilman
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
The Laws by Plato
Saturday, August 30, 2025
“...there is simple ignorance, which is the source of lighter offenses, and double ignorance, which is accompanied by a conceit of wisdom; and he who is under the influence of the latter fancies that he knows all about matters of which he knows nothing.”
The Laws (Greek: Νόμοι, Nómoi; Latin: De Legibus) is Plato's last and longest dialogue. The conversation depicted in the work's twelve books begins with the question of who is given the credit for establishing a civilization's laws. Its musings on the ethics of government and law have established it as a classic of political philosophy alongside Plato's more widely read Republic. Scholars agree that Plato wrote this dialogue as an older person, having failed in his effort to guide the rule of the tyrant Dionysius I of Syracuse, instead having been thrown in prison. These events are alluded to in the Seventh Letter. The text is noteworthy as Plato's only undisputed dialogue not to feature Socrates. We invite you to join us as we read this often overlooked text, one section at a time, in monthly online events.
August 30 Reading:
The Laws by Plato
Book 11: Section 22 - Law of Property, Section 23 - Commercial Law, Section 24 - Family Law
(pages 407-437, 913a - 932d)
Penguin Classics (June 2005)
ASIN B01FIXK9JK
ISBN 9780140449846
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PDT
Tutor:
David Appleby
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
Mind and Matter by Erwin Schrödinger
Saturday, September 6, 2025
"The world is given to me only once, not one existing and one perceived. Subject and object are only one."
Mind and Matter, a work following What Is Life? The Physical Aspect of the Living Cell is a 1956 book written for the lay science reader by physicist Erwin Schrödinger. The book is based on a course of lectures delivered by Schrödinger in Trinity College, which focused on one important question: "What kind of material process is directly associated with consciousness?" We invite you to join this monthly online series as we read this short but difficult book, one chapter at a time.
September 6 Reading:
Mind and Matter by Schrödinger - Chapter Three - The Principles of Objectivation
Entire book: Cambridge University Press;
(March 26, 2012)
ISBN 978-1107604667
Schedule:
12:00-1:30PM PDT
Tutor:
Andy Gilman
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.