Peacebuilding Conference @ Notre Dame This Spring

The Peace and Collaborative Development Network, which specializes in "building bridges, networks and expertise across sectors," has forwarded a call for papers for a student peace conference at Notre Dame.

This Notre Dame Peace Conference is being called "Investing in Peace: Uncovering the Practicality of Peacebuilding" and will be held March 26-28, 2010. The deadline for paper submissions/proposals is February 12.

Though I probably won't have any time to prepare a proposal for presentation at the conference, I will be supporting these efforts through encouraging others invovled in peace movements to participate as much as possible in this much-needed collaboration among thinkers, writers, artists, and practitioners of peacebuilding from a variety of sectors.

For more info on the conference this spring visit the call for papers site at Peace and Collaborative Development Network.

Unity Leader Mindy Audlin and Voices of Peace

Mindy Audlin, host of the Unity.FM program The Leading Edge, recently brought together 21 world-renowned spiritual leaders who share a passion for peace-building. The transcripts of these interviews are now available as an e-book with proceeds benefiting organizations such as The Global Peace Project.

Learn more about the Voices of Peace project.

Read a brief essay written by Mindy concerning these efforts at Unity.FM.

Dalai Lama and Archbishop Tutu Receive Awards

His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu were awarded the Fetzer Institute's Prize for Love and Forgiveness this past Sunday at the 2009 Peace Summit in Vancouver. Each will receive a $100,000 monetary prize to support their work and a handcrafted, inscribed journal.

The Fetzer Institute is a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting services that advance the values of love and forgiveness in the world. Their purpose: "The Institute engages with people and programs working to bring the power of love and forgiveness to the center of individual, organizational and community life. We create and support projects that serve as healing forces in a divided world, and that spread knowledge about how individuals everywhere can be more loving and forgiving in daily life."(Fetzer Institute website)

To learn more about the Prize for Love and Forgiveness and to watch a video of the summit go to the Fetzer Institute's website.

Odyssey Networks Launches "A Million Prayers for Peace" Online Campaign

"Partners with United Nations to Support International Day of Peace -- Odyssey Networks, the nation's largest coalition of Christian, Jewish and Muslim faith groups dedicated to building bridges of understanding through media, has launched a multimedia campaign to secure one million pledges to pray for peace on September 21-- the United Nations International Day of Peace."

Read more at Odyssey Networks website.

World Peace Pilgrimage: An Interfaith Walk

For those who are in the Los Angeles area and are interested, there will be an interfaith walk August 9, 2009 at Mt. Baldy in the San Gabriel mountains.

Hiking will start at 9:30am from the top of the ski lifts to the sacred site. At noon there will be a time of contemplation and ritual where prayers and sacred practices from different faiths will be recited and done. There will also be special music being played to help tune walkers in to the spiritual energy of the mountain.

This is an official Pre-Parliament of the World's Religions event bringing people together in concert to help bring about peacefulness on the planet through prayer and sacred ritual.

Bring your own food and water for potluck lunch.

For more info please visit the event's website.

Here's a map of Mt. Baldy.

Shedding 'Pro-Choice' and 'Pro-Life' Labels

Julie Polter of Sojourner's, God's Politics has written a piece about how the labels of "pro-choice" and "pro-life" are oftentimes ideological barriers that prevent people from coming together for social action on issues like teen pregnancy and other similar issues.

It's true -- the stereotypes we give each other and ourselves most often get in the way of understanding who the other really is and where s/he is coming from. I agree with Polter that labels like "pro-life" and "pro-choice" not only pigeon-hole us into black-or-white, cookie-cutter viewpoints, but it also frustrates the possibility of finding real common ground and communicating respectfully and intelligently about the issues.

This is just another example of how labels can block real dialogue between seeming enemies.

Read Polter's article at Faith in Public Life.

Love Your Neighbor -- Commentary by Jim Wallis

Jim Wallis has recently written a concise but informative and provoking article on Jesus' word's "Love your neighbor as yourself" and the current ecological crisis. He essentially talks about how this exhortation to love neighbor can and should be extended to all humanity and the entire planet. This injunction serves as an important Christian grounds for practically addressing the problems we are currently facing concerning the environment and the Earth. One nice feature of his article is that it offers a good amount of statistics about future projections of humanitarian and environmental issues as well as Christian denominational sentiments about climate change.

Read the entire write-up of "Love Your Neighbor, Love the Earth" at Faith in Public Life.

CMEP 2009 Advocacy Conference

The Churches for Middle East Peace (CMEP) will be holding a conference called "Israeli-Palestinian Peace: Hope for Things Unseen" in Washington, D.C. on June 7-9, 2009 at the Kellogg Conference Center at Gallaudet University.

Register or donate at CMEP's website.