Watch the Fetzer Institute’s Prize for Love & Forgiveness being awarded to His Holiness, the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu at the Vancouver Peace Summit live on Sunday, September 27, 2009 at 9:30 a.m. PT / 12:30 p.m. ET.

Also, stay tuned to this blog for impressions and updates from the Vancouver Peace Summit.

The Summit is hosted by the Dalai Lama Center for Peace and Education in collaboration with the Fetzer Institute.

The Fetzer Institute’s new web site, filled to the brim with information and resources on love, forgiveness, and compassion, is now live! Find out about their current work, the research they support, what religious leaders from a variety of faith traditions say about love and forgiveness through a series of videos, search their database for specific information, check out their latest events and activities, and lots more.

In a letter to Kalamazoo, Michigan’s Season of Forgiveness participants, executive director, Thom Andrews today shared the following:

In recent news, organizations in both Jamaica and the Bahamas have called for a focus on forgiveness.

In the Bahamas, the Carry Your Candle, Light The Bahamas Organization  announced plans for a month-long focus on forgiveness. Community leaders also joined in the call.

In Jamaica, the National Transformation Programme (NTP) appealed to Jamaicans to observe a period of peace and forgiveness for the next five months.

Also, Thom thanked James Herm for his “Viewpoint” published in the Kalamazoo Gazette on September 9th, 2009, focusing on forgiveness.

Today is the day in Australia called, National Day of Healing. But most people just call it Sorry Day.

The first Sorry Day was in 1998 after the “Bringing Them Home” report on the injustices done to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. For years the Australian government sanctioned the removal of aboriginal children from their families to assimilate them into white Australian culture. The children who were removed came to be known as the “Stolen Generation.”

As a part of this, Sorry Books, in which people could record their personal feelings, were presented to representatives of the Indigenous communities. “Around 1,000 official Sorry Books were circulated around Australia by Australians for Native Title, assisted also by Australians for native Title and Reconciliation and a vast network of volunteers. They were displayed in a variety of places including local councils, libraries, museums, churches, bookshops, art galleries and schools.”

Speaking of the process of apologizing, the late Sir Ronald Wilson, president of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission said, “In chairing the National Inquiry into the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, I had to relate to hundreds of stories of personal devastation, pain, and loss. It was a life-changing experience. An apology begins the healing process. Apology means understanding, a willingness to enter into the suffering. It implies a commitment to do more.”

People throughout the world are being invited to celebrate and spread love during the Love Foundation’s sixth annual Global Love Day on Friday, May 1st. This event, with the theme “Love Begins With Me”, will include a variety of celebrations held around the world.

The Love Foundation invites people to “consciously focus on love and what it means to you throughout this day. We hope that by practicing love in all areas of your life, you will find it easy to love unconditionally all year long.”

Resources, ideas, and information on the celebration can be found on the Global Love Day web site.

Earth Day 2009, April 22, will mark the beginning of The Green Generation Campaign^TM which will also be the focus of the 40th Anniversary of Earth Day in 2010. Earth Day Network’s “Green Generation^TM” campaign is a two-year initiative that will launch in 2009 and culminate on the 40th Anniversary of Earth Day in 2010. Similar to “The Greatest Generation” that confronted the challenge of World War II, who inspired the major societal changes that followed, the Green Generation includes ordinary people who are engaged in individual and collective activities to improve their health, to improve their schools, to participate in building a solution to urgent national and global issues, such as climate change or the world’s water crises.

“My work has continually brought me back to the notion of compassion. Whichever religious tradition I study, I find at the heart of it is the idea of feeling with the other, experiencing with the other, compassion,” said author Karen Armstrong on the March 13th edition of Bill Moyers Journal. ” And every single one of the major world religions has developed its own version of the Golden Rule. Don’t do to others what you would not like them to do to you.” Using the Golden Rule as the foundation, Armstrong is leading an effort to build an interfaith Charter for Compassion. Watch the interview and read more about Armstrong’s work on the Bill Moyers Journal Web site.

Most, if not all of us, indulge in procrastination now and then. But who would have thought that forgiving yourself for procrastinating might actually decrease this behavior? Timothy A. Pychyl, Ph.D., associate professor at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada who specializes in the study of procrastination, recently authored a Psychology Today blog article in which he states that recent research indeed confirms that self forgiveness decreases procrastination. If procrastination is an issue for you, take a look at this article. Don’t put it off…

A breath of fresh air blows through an article on social entrepreneurship in the March issue of Ode Magazine. “‘In a world where change is escalating exponentially, the only way we’ll make it is if everyone has the mindset of a social entrepreneur,’” says Bill Drayton, a pioneer in the field and founder of Ashoka, which sponsors international leaders in philanthropic business. ‘The current upheaval is a great opportunity to flip the switch. We need to make everyone a change-maker.’”

If you’re interested in being a change-maker or helping one, check out the article.

According to psychologist, Fred Bader, as quoted in a ConnPost.com (Connecticut Post) article “Society, has taught us about love backwards. ‘We’re waiting to feel it first,’ he said, ‘but before we feel it, it’s there. [Love] exists whether we feel it or not.”

“He doesn’t suggest dispensing with traditional psychotherapy, which relies on personality and behavioral changes…but said love therapy relies on a Love Triad he developed, using a term or two straight out of the 1960s:

• Raise your consciousness to love by thinking love: I want to be loving.
• Give love to yourself and others.
• Then, once you do the first two things, you are rewarded with the feeling of love.”

Read more about Bader’s beliefs and approach to spreading the love in this article.