From Hormuz to Asia’s Cradles – Tom McDermott The world’s primary monitors of food security are now on “red alert.” Within the last 48 hours, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP) have labeled the conflict a “crisis multiplier.” The FAO warns that the loss of urea and ammonia shipments from the Gulf is a direct threat to future yields, while the Global Network Against Food Crises (GNAFC) projects that […]
Yesterday, in our meeting of the House of Bishops here in Alaska, we were treated to two conversations with elders of the Athabaskan people. One, a 96 year old woman who told us of her life in the seasonal Fish Camps and sang to us songs she had composed to mark important moments in her life. The other was an Episcopal priest and tribal chief who had served a community for years and now in […]
The Fall 2017 House of Bishops meeting is being held in Fairbanks Alaska this year. Held in Fairbanks is sort of a misnomer. We’re spending part of our time in Fairbanks, and the main meeting site is in Fairbanks, but Alaska being Alaska, we’ll be spending time away from the city – far away – too. Some of the bishops are going to be loaded on to mail planes I’m told, to fly out to […]
We had a power presentation made to the bishops of the Episcopal Church earlier this week during our annual Spring meeting. The travel ban and the associated complications in the refugee resettlement process are affecting all of the nine organizations in the US that manage the resettlement process. Of the nine agencies that work in refugee resettlement, five are faith based. I’m hoping to have more to say about this all soon – especially here […]
Our neighbors and our communities need the hope that we have as children of God by virtue of our baptism. The greatest Christmas gift you can give would be to share the hope that is within us with someone who has none.
Today, my first full day in Taiwan as part of the House of Bishop’s meeting, was spent taking a tour of St. John’s University. The university was originally planted in Shanghai by the then bishop of Shanghai – The Rt. Rev. Samuel Isaac Joseph Schereschewsky, one of my favorite heroes on our Episcopal Church’s calendar of saints. I found this plaque in English describing the work of Bishop Schereschewsky and his role in founding the […]
Tomorrow we will begin this year’s Fall House of Bishops meeting for the Episcopal Church. We’re meeting this year in Taipei, in the Diocese of Taiwan, a diocese of the Episcopal Church. As I mentioned this to people in Rhode Island, there was some surprise that Taiwan was part of our Church – but over the years, as our mission work in the Episcopal Church in the US took us further and further afield, we […]
Do you have an iPhone? An iPad? Do you support the One Campaign? I spent time in Swaziland. Many of my friends are either from the Sudan or work with people in the Sudan. Here in Phoenix we have a number of cathedral members who work on the southern Mexican border with Guatemala. In all those places the situation is dire because an epidemic of preventable diseases, lack of basic infrastructure and extreme poverty. The […]
There’s an article in the Wall Street Journal today by a number of former Cold War leaders (including George Schultz, Sam Nunn and Henry Kissinger) that calls for the U.S. to rethink its M.A.D. nuclear weapons policy. Not a dove among the lot. While you can’t access that article without a subscription, you can read the open letter at the http://www.nti.org Here are some of the key paragraphs: “Today, the Cold War is almost 20 […]
I haven’t written much about Swaziland recently as the situation in that small country in Southern Africa hasn’t changed very much. But I received this article from the primary English language newspaper this morning. The short version appears to be that the Swazi King is becoming increasingly frustrated with the low level unrest in the populace. There have been increasing calls for governmental reform as the economic and public health situation has deteriorated. Rather than […]
