"I'm what the world considers to be a phenomenally successful man. And I've failed much more than I've succeeded.
And each time I fail, I get my people together, and I say, "Where are we going?" And it starts to get better." - Calvin Trager

With Ya, my Ga tutor in Mallam
The Rev. Mike Kinman
Executive Director
Episcopalians for Global Reconciliation
Age: 38



Check out Forsyth School ...
where Robin teaches and
the boys attend.

Since you're already blowing time surfing,
why not do some cool stuff

  • Watch the Make Poverty History videos
  • Watch Sara McLachlan's "World on Fire" video
  • Take a seat at Oxfam America's Hunger Banquet
  • Look at the "Eight Ways to Change The World" photo exhibition
  • See how rich you are on the Global Rich List
  • Make a promise to do something cool -- and get people to do it with you
  • Use your computer to fight HIV/AIDS and other diseases

    While you're at it, do these things
  • Join the ONE Campaign to Make Poverty History
  • Join the Episcopal Public Policy Network
  • Join Amnesty International
  • Subscribe to Sojourners Online newsletter about faith, politics and culture
  • Sign the Micah Call and join other Christians in the fight against poverty
  • Subscribe to a great new magazine about women and children transforming our world

    People who show us What One Person Can Do
  • Liza Koerner (Teaching soccer and doing mission work in Costa Rica)
  • Erica Trapps (Raising money so Tanzanian children can go to school -- check out her photo gallery)

    What's happening in Sudan might
    surprise (and shock) you

  • Episcopal Diocese of Lui
  • South Sudanese Friends International
  • The Sudan Tribune
  • SudanReeves -- research, analysis and advocacy
  • Save Darfur
  • Darfur: a genocide we can stop

    For your daily fix on the irreverent...
  • Jesus of the Week
  • The Onion

    Interesting People Who Are Great To Read
  • Beth Maynard's excellent U2 sermons blog
  • Global Voices Online
  • Neha Viswanathan - poetry, commentary, humor, reflections

    Some interesting organizations and programs
  • Borgen Project - poverty reduction through political accountability
  • CARE
  • Center of Concern
  • DATA: Debt, AIDS and Trade in Africa (Bono's site)
  • El Circulo de Mujeres/Circle of Women
  • Engineering Ministries International
  • Episcopal Peace Fellowship
  • Episcopal Relief and Development
  • FreshMinistries
  • Global Campaign Against Poverty
  • Global Ministries
  • Global Work Ethic Fund -- Promoting philanthropy and fundraising in developing and transition countries.
  • Karen Emergency Relief Fund
  • Magdalene House
  • The M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence
  • Natural Capitalism
  • NetMarkAid - Humanitarian Entrepreneurs
  • North American Association for the Diaconate
  • Peace Child International
  • People Building Peace
  • Project Honduras
  • Results - Creating political will to end hunger
  • St. Paul's Institute
  • Stop Global AIDS
  • TakingITGlobal -- connecting youth for action in local and global communities
  • Tanzania Educational AIDS Mission
  • TEAR (Transformation, Empowerment, Advocacy, Relief) - An Australian Christian anti-poverty movement
  • Working For Change
  • Xigi.net -- an open-source tool to aid discovery in the capital markets that fund good.

    Some Episcopal churches and dioceses doing cool things
  • Companions of Swaziland - Diocese of Iowa's Companion Relationship
  • International Development Missions -- St. Paul's Church, Sparks, NV
  • The Malaria Villages Project - St. Paul's Church, West Whiteland, PA

    Must-read books and websites about them
  • What Can One Person Do: faith to heal a broken world -- Sabina Alkire & Edmund Newell
  • The End of Poverty -- Jeffrey Sachs

    Learn more about things you really should know more about
  • UN Millenium Development Goals
  • The Millennium Campaign
  • AIDS Matters - a resource for global AIDS professionals
  • Christian Aid's in-depth report: "Millennium Lottery: Who lives and who dies in an age of third world debt?"
  • Foreign Policy In Focus
  • Poverty Mapping
  • Solutions for a water-short world
  • Transparency International: The global coalition against corruption
  • UNICEF's State of The World's Children report 2005

    General cool and/or goofy stuff
  • Alicebot chat robot
  • Bono Quotes -- but what's really wild is that it's from a page on Boycottliberalism.com!
  • Buffy Slanguage
  • Big Bunny

    Useful web tools
  • Gcast - make your own podcast
  • Podzinger - podcast search engine
  • Orb - streaming digital media


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    Listed on Blogwise
  • Saturday, April 10, 2004
    GOOD FRIDAY/HOLY SATURDAY

    I went to the Cathedral last night for the Good Friday liturgy. It feels weird and incongruous to say it is one of my "favorite" liturgies, but it is certainly one of the most important liturgies to me.

    John Kilgore preached a brief sermon ... about how you can't fully appreciate Easter without Good Friday and also that you need to go through Good Friday with the knowledge of Easter coming.

    I'm not sure about that.

    The first part, I agree with. The brightest, most joyous Easters have come after I have had a real experience of Good Friday -- whether that be in the liturgical calendar or in my life. But the second part ... there I'm not so sure.

    Because it seems to me that Good Friday is about meeting the emptiness and desolation head on. Somehow doing it continually reminding ourselves that "it's OK, Easter's just around the corner" is kind of like saying "don't worry, it's not real." The truth is that both are real -- VERY real. The resurrection of Easter is real but so is the bleakness, the death of Good Friday. And at least for me, to experience it as fully as I can, I have to let myself be in that place and not mentally leap forward over Saturday to Easter.

    I live a secure life. That I am almost completely free from suffering and death is emphasized by how the times of suffering and death in my life stand out. In Tanzania, where one of three people is HIV positive and funerals of loved ones are a weekly, if not daily, occurrence. On the streets of our city where children live in utter hopelessness. In families where cancer or Alzheimer's or any number of other diseases have taken people through agonizing, isolating deaths. In countless places around the world and down the block, death and suffering are a way of life. The moments do not stand out. They are a continuum.

    Good Friday is not just remembering a crucifixion of years ago. It is remembering the daily torture and death of God's children, of Christ's body every day. It is, even for one day, allowing ourselves to stare that bleakness, that desolation full in the face and claim it as our own ... claim our own role in causing it AND claim our own part in suffering it.

    Easter will come. We know it will. And thank God. But for one day, especially for those of us for whom suffering is NOT and everyday occurence, let's give it its due.

    For one day, let's sit at the foot of the cross and just be still as we walk through the valley of the shadow of death.

    Let that stillness creep through until today ... even as we go about our tasks of the day ... doing homework, cleaning the house, taking Schroedter to T-Ball practice. Let Good Friday. Let that desolation. Let it rest on our hearts. Let us spend some time in a place that we absolutely cannot control, that we absolutely cannot make better by ourselves. That absolutely leaves us powerless.

    Let us spend time in that place where we KNOW that we need God because we are utterly helpless and hopeless without God. Cultivate that desparate need. Feel the doubt of Holy Saturday. The doubt of the tomb before it became empty.

    And tonight, as we light the first flame of Easter and hear the salvation history and celebrate with bells and Alleluias the first Eucharist of the resurrection, let us rejoice.

    But not yet. Not now.

    For the tomb is not empty yet. The suffering and death have not been vanquished.

    Easter will come ... no doubt about it. But for now, let us wait without it.
    |
    Mike at 4/10/2004 11:54:00 AM

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    Episcopalians for
    Global Reconciliation

    EGR is an organization resourcing a grassroots movement of spiritual transformation in the Episcopal Church to end extreme poverty on this planet.

    The structure for this movement is the Millennium Development Goals -- 8 goals committed to by all member nations of the UN and a unique partnership of governments and civil society to:

    *End extreme poverty
    *Achieve universal
    primary education

    *Promote gender equalty
    *Improve maternal health
    *Reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS
    *Promote environmental sustainability
    *Build a global partnership for development

    EGR resources and connects the church to embrace what one person, one congregation, one diocese and one church can do to make this mission of global reconciliation happen.

    Want to find out more ... check our our website at www.e4gr.org.

    "Christ's example is being demeaned by the church if they ignore the new leprosy, which is AIDS. The church is the sleeping giant here. If it wakes up to what's really going on in the rest of the world, it has a real role to play. If it doesn't, it will be irrelevant."
    - Bono








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    What I'm Reading
    Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln
    by Doris Kearns Goodwin