"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


    Archives
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    Listed on Blogwise
  • Monday, July 31, 2006

    Unbelieveably Creepy

    What do you get when you combine a U2 song, lots of clips of Bush speaking and way too much time on your hands?

    Voila!
    |
    Mike at 7/31/2006 04:14:00 PM

    Sunday, July 30, 2006

    The Lazarus Effect

    I don't imagine anyone is reading this ... and that's really OK. I imagine any audience I ever had has been sufficiently discouraged by my lack of posting that it's now kind of a ghost town bypassed by the information superhighway.

    And that's really OK. Because while most of the reason I haven't been posting is because I've been insanely busy ... part of it is wondering what I have to write about. I've become more and more disenchanted with the name of this blog. Even though the intent wasn't to be self-important about my own thoughts ... and instead to say that the whole process of following Christ (of which I was trying to write) had to be something that was of infinite importance and not an accessory.

    I still believe that. I think Christianity, for everything it is and purports to be, is something that if you're going to take it on it pretty much has to be central and not something dabbled in "a little."

    But as a blog title, it's just not working for me. Mostly because no matter how you parse it, it feels like I (and not Christ or C.S. Lewis) am the one who is saying precisely what is "infinitely important" and what is not. But there's a couple other things.

    First of all, it's a lot of pressure. And even though I've posted on some pretty mundane things, when you title a blog like this, it kinda feels like silly, cool stuff like my brother's "Monday Cat Blogging" doesn't really belong. Like everything needs really to be of "infinite importance."

    Secondly, and probably more to the point -- more and more it sounds way too sure of itself for me. And, ironically, it seems to run counter with one of the things that very well may be of infinite importance -- humility.

    I called this post "The Lazarus Effect" -- which is what they call when people who are near death with HIV/AIDS come back from the brink and are restored to relative health by antiretroviral drugs. That, of couse, refers to Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead -- the final and greatest sign of Jesus' power in John's Gospel. But my favorite part of the story is when Jesus tells the people to roll the stone away from Lazarus' tomb, Martha warns him because it's been four days and the funk o' Lazarus is probably pretty bad by now (I think the King James Version uses the wonderful phrase "he stinketh!") And raised or no, I imagine he probably did (Palestine not being the most temperate of climates!).

    So we'll see if this post really is me coming back to life again. And I suppose we'll see if "it stinketh" of not. And I suppose we'll see if I come up with a better title for this and get a burr in my saddle and change things up a little bit.

    And so if you have been reading this ... maybe it will get you sufficiently curious to check back. And maybe -- wonder of wonders -- I won't disappoint?
    |
    Mike at 7/30/2006 07:18:00 PM

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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