"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 07, 2007

    Eleventh Station: Jesus is Nailed to the Cross

    This Lent, Christ Church Cathedral gathered a community of artists (and a few of us non-artists)to construct a stations of the cross. We drew stations randomly at the beginning of Lent and got to work. You could use any medium you wanted, and there were a couple opportunities for the artists to gather and share their process during the season.

    I drew station 8 -- Jesus Meets the Women of Jerusalem -- and at some point I'll probably put that one up and my reflection on it. But as we end the Triduum today, I wanted to share one of the most powerful stations I'd ever seen: Phoebe Dent Weil's expression of the 11th station -- Jesus nailed to the cross. You see the image above.

    There is much I could write about this piece and what it brings up in me. But I think it best just to leave you with it, the photo that inspired it and Phoebe's words:

    "My image of this station was inspired by a startling photograph on the front page of The New York Times (Tuesday, January 23, 2007) attached to an article. "88 Killed as Car Bombs Devastate Busy Baghdad Market" (by Marc Santora, Photo credit:" Wissam al-Okaili/Agence France-Presse-Getty Images). (MK note: here is a more complete and less sanitized story and analysis of the bombings)

    "The photograph was taken in the immediate chaotic aftermath of an event of stunning horror inflicted by human beings against other human beings. A kneeling and weeping man tenderly covers the bodies of the dead lying on the ground. There are two guards attempting to keep order: one at the center wearing and Arab keffiyeh who motions towards a grief-stricken boy to keep at a distance; the other, off-camera on the left, whose white glove hinders the approach of the photographer. Between the two guards stands a young man whose impassioned grief can hardly be imagined; the cry of anguish, the outstretched arms, the half-kneeling stance -- all a total-bodily response to the deepest experience of pain and loss with its accompanying despair and anger and questions shouted to God, to the Universe, to all of us, "Look at this! Behold the horror! Why?" Behind him stands a weeping young boyh who reaches out to support him with one hand and comfort him with the other.

    "It is a daring move to connect the act of nailing Christ to the Cross with the continuing acts of violence in Iraq that confront us daily in the news media, but the connection for me was immediate. In my interpretive rerarrangement of the photograph I have placed an image of the Crucifixion by the late 16th century sculptor, Giambologna, behind the main protagonist.

    "We tend to resort to a kind of psychic numbing to protect ourselves from experiencing the depths of anguish that such horror demands. So, also, with the event of the nailing of Christ to the Cross: a moment of torture of one human being by another, the physical pain, the anguished cry of the victim confronted by the dark forces of the torturer who drives in the nails. The outstretched arms of the victim become the embracing arms of compassion in the face of those dark parts of humanity where compassion is absent. I have transformed the weeping boy who reaches out to comfort the grief-stricken man into an angel."

    |
    Mike at 4/07/2007 09:15:00 AM

    Monday, April 02, 2007
    Update on Mohammed

    If you've been following this blog, you will remember an online conversation I had in February with "Mohammed Ibn Laith" (not his real name for security reasons), that began with me quoting some of his blog in a sermon and posting it and with him responding to my sermon and me responding to him.

    Since then, I've been in conversation with the person who has set him (and others) up with their blog from Baghdad. Both Mohammed and I are interested in continuing to "meet" online in some sort of environment that would maintain his security but would allow us to continue to talk. While waiting for that to be set up, I got this word from the go-between. I actually got it at the beginning of my trip to South Africa ... and then a few weeks later got permission to post the words I am posting below.

    Mohammed's father (Laith Abu Mohammed) was killed in the Arbaeen massacres of March 6th. Mohammed's mother (Zeynab Um Mohammed) died of her wounds incurred in the same attack on March 7th.

    Hussayn Ibn Laith died a few days before his parents as he ran with his team to the scene of a bombing to rescue survivors - it was a cascaded bombing attack. In other words, more than one bomb ... the second one being timed to kill the rescuers and or people fleeing the scene. Hussayn was the brother who Mohammed mentions in "what will we talk about." He was 17.

    Ali Ibn Laith (younger brother) was wounded together with his father and mother in the March 6th attack. He is physically recovering well. Mohammed and he completed the pilgrimage on foot to complete what their parents were doing. Ali is 8.


    Mohammed is now in a 40 day mourning period. I am hopeful after that is over that we will be able to talk. But I also realize he very well may have no desire to be in touch with me. This was his last post, dated March 10:
    Let us understand one another, you and I

    O God! Pardon our living and our dead, the present and the absent, the young and the old, the males and the females.

    I am a Muslim I am Iraki.

    Do not come to me talking of your feelings. Do not come to me asking for forgiveness. Who do you think you are?

    I will not ever forgive or forget what your country has done to us. I will not ever forget or forgive what your country has done my family, my city, my country, my people.

    Never.

    My grandchildren’s, grandchildren, will teach their grandchildren to hate America for what she has done to us. Never ever ever will I, or they, forget or forgive what your barbaric country has done to us.

    Never.

    Mohammed Ibn Laith


    This week, we walk with Christ to the cross and beyond. An image that always comes to me this week is from Dorothy Sayers' "The Man Born To Be King," in which she talks about the dream Pontius Pilate's wife had (MT 27:19). In her mind, the dream was Pilate's wife hearing the words "suffered under Pontius Pilate" said ... not just by one person, but by generation after generation after generation of people for centuries in overlapping chorus.

    We are judged by our actions not just in the moment, but throughout time. Pilate stepped back in cowardice in the face of the crowd at his defining moment and because he did, those voices of castigation have echoed throughout history.

    The actions of our nation ... and the inaction of those of us who have not done enough to stop it ... are preparing their own echoes. They are the voices of people like Mohammed, whose pain and anger have voice that will carry long after the 40 days of mourning have passed.
    |
    Mike at 4/02/2007 09:40:00 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