Wednesday, February 22, 2012
  • Participants listen during an award presentation at the Faith Advocacy Day 2012 held in the History Colorado building in downtown Denver. (Marrton Dormish)

    Thoughts on advocacy and faith

    Tuesday, February 21, 2012

    Yesterday, a friend and I joined about 150 local clergy and community leaders at the Faith Advocacy Day organized by Lutheran Advocacy Ministry-Colorado. Co-sponsors of the gathering included the Jubilee Ministry of the Episcopal Diocese of Colorado, the Colorado Council of Churches and Colorado Interfaith Voices for Justice. The half-day event focused on how people of [...]

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  • At a spring 2009 seminar, young Israelis and Palestinians gathered for dialogue and team building challenges led by the organization Seeds of Peace. (Seeds of Peace via Wikimedia Commons)

    “Us” versus “Them”

    Monday, February 13, 2012

    My alma mater is part of a heated rivalry that extends back to the days of the Civil War (or as my friend from Mississippi recently called it, “the War of Northern Aggression”). It is so heated, in fact, that it was recently recognized by ESPN as the college basketball rivalry that best incarnates “hatred.” Browse nearly any [...]

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  • The unassuming Church of Sant'Egidio in Rome, Italy, namesake of the worldwide Community of Sant'Egidio. (Wikimedia Commons)

    The Gospel and Freedom

    Saturday, January 28, 2012

    Some stories worth sharing involve more than one individual or one family. Sometimes they involve a community, and a untraditional one at that. I first heard about the Community of Sant’Egidio from the audio version of Thomas Cahill’s Desire of the Everlasting Hills: The World Before and After Jesus, published in 1999. Its cassettes–yes, cassettes, not [...]

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Profiles

An Amahoro gathering in Zimbabwe.
Feb
3

‘Amahoro’ Means More Than Peace

On Claude Nikondeha’s eighth birthday, his Tutsi family of eight moved to the slums of Bujumbura, Burundi, where his father, a Free Methodist pastor, was charged with planting a church. “It was like a new day for me because up to that point we had lived in villages and the countryside,” says Claude. “And I [...]

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Feb
1

Bleeding Places Below

In the shadow of corporate-owned skyscrapers, a stone’s throw from the bustling 16th Street Mall and the thriving riverfront residential district of “Lodo” adjacent to downtown Denver, Colo., live young street people who go by names like “Crazy Ice” and “Rabbit.” Some of them ran away from home to escape from an abusive family member. Others lived a transient [...]

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Commentary

Handiwork from Iganga, Uganda. (Musana Children's Home)
Dec
30

Sunshine update

We featured Leah Pauline and the Musana Children’s Home in Iganga, Uganda, in June 2010. Leah has since graduated from the University of Colorado at Boulder and devoted herself to the Musana cause. While her sister Andrea functions as executive director, and her friend Sally as volunteer coordinator, Leah serves Musana as sponsorship coordinator. All the [...]

A classroom in Bubanza, Burundi. (Communities of Hope)
Dec
19

School desks for Christmas

I wrote a profile about my friend Claude Nikondeha last February. Now, Claude and his Amahoro Africa team have found a special way for people to make a difference in the lives of kids in Burundi. Here are some slightly edited excerpts from an email I got from Claude this week: “We went to Bubanza, Burundi, in [...]

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