"The voice of One" -- by the Rev. Mike Kinman

John the Baptist said, “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’” (John 1:23)

What One Can Do. This has been EGR’s mantra from the beginning. It is a statement of hope and conviction. That God acting through one person, one congregation, one diocese, one church, can change and reconcile the world.

What One Can Do is nothing new. John the Baptist in the wilderness claimed it, too. “I am the voice of One,” he said. What the One who was John the Baptist could do was to look around, recognize that he was living in God’s defining moment, and cry out. Cry out the amazing news that another One was coming – and that the time had arrived for everyone to take a good look at themselves and ask not just “What Can One Person … me … Do?” but to dream with joy and wonder, “What Can One Person … me … Be?”

This Advent, we are so much like John. We can look around and realize that the present moment is every bit as much God’s defining moment as that day in Bethany. What will One person … you … do? What will One person … you … cry? Who, with God’s help, will One person .. each of us … become?”

The Rev. Mike Kinman is the Executive Director of Episcopalians for Global Reconciliation

"A Killer and a Cure" -- by Dr. Josh Ruxin

This December 1st marked the 20th commemoration of World AIDS Day. The international commemoration has perennially been accompanied by new, bleak reports, and bureaucratic hand-wringing over the invariable failure of supply – in the form of drugs, management and financing – to keep up with the needs of the desperately ill around the world. However, this year, there’s actually some rather interesting news.

A new study just released by Harvard shows that President Mbeki has now topped the charts as one of the world’s top killers of all time. His outrageous ignorance and deadly policies resulted in excess deaths of at least 350,000 South Africans. The study does not include the lives lost in other countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa where South Africa’s perspectives are deeply influential. Quantifying the toll of Mbeki’s malfeasance is an important step toward rectifying the challenges in Africa: leadership in the fight against AIDS does make a difference and those who choose not to lead must be identified as collaborators in the killing.

Meanwhile, for the first time since the advent of anti-retroviral therapy and vaccine trials, hope for a cure has emerged. Through a bone marrow transplant, a German scientist has perhaps cleared the first AIDS patient of the virus – quite possibly the first time in human history that a person with AIDS has been effectively freed of the virus. There is nothing easily replicable about this case, but this breakthrough offers a glimmer of hope for what is essential to bring the pandemic to a halt: a cure. Despite nearly a quarter of a century of treatment and research, over 30 million people are currently afflicted with HIV and close to 2 million die from AIDS each year. Most worrisome is the momentum of the pandemic itself: 2008 registered nearly 3 million new cases of the disease, and only a small proportion of them are likely to receive treatment before perishing.

Treatment is an area of notable success in spite of its failure to reach a high proportion of those in need. In 2002, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria was born and the dream of billions for fighting the pandemic became a reality. In 2003, President Bush launched the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) to combat global HIV/AIDS – the largest commitment by any nation to combat a single disease in human history. In 2003, approximately 50,000 people in all of Sub-Saharan Africa were receiving anti-retroviral treatment. Today, the Global Fund and PEPFAR support anti-retroviral treatment for nearly 1.7 million people in the region – and tens of thousands more around the world, from Asia to Eastern Europe. Unfortunately, that is still not enough. In June of this past year, a joint WHO/UN Aids report showed that nearly three million people are now receiving anti-retroviral drugs in the developing world, but this is less than a third of the estimated 9.7 million people who need them today (what isn’t stated is those 2/3rds in need will likely die in the next 24 months). We must reach more people and we must do it quickly.

As we see a world-wide recession take root, we have to redouble efforts to raise money for treatment and research. Global surges in poverty are a recipe for increases in diseases like AIDS. Short-term budgetary cuts can have massive and multiplied effect in the public health world: now is the time to increase, not decrease expenditures. For example, we have made remarkable advances in the fight against malaria over the past few years, so much so, that deaths can potentially be eliminated over the next few years with the proper infrastructure and funding. The same could be true for AIDS with the right approach and commitment.

The key to fighting AIDS includes a multi-pronged approach for now.

Private donors and for profit organizations should join in the effort as well. Organizations like MAC AIDS Fund and the Gates Foundation have helped the cause dramatically. There are key roles for players of all sizes. Here are some top recommendations taken from the report of the Global HIV Prevention Working Group:

• National political and public health leaders should develop and implement AIDS strategies and operational plans tailored to the particular dynamics of national epidemics; integrate prevention and treatment services; and increase prevention interventions sufficiently to have measurable impact. Countries scaling-up adult male circumcision – and any other biomedical strategy that proves effective – should combine these efforts with complementary behavior modification campaigns to decrease the risk behavior that can occur when new strategies or tools are introduced.

• International donors should commit to rapidly funding these tailored national HIV prevention programs. Additionally they should make available by 2010 at least $11.9 billion U.S. annually to support scale-up of evidence-based HIV prevention programs as part of a comprehensive response to HIV. Donors should ensure robust financing for community-driven responses that build local civil society capacity and leadership.

• Multilateral and other technical agencies should develop mechanisms to assess the soundness of national HIV prevention strategies, identifying instances where national plans conflict with available evidence about the dynamics of HIV incidence, or where selected prevention strategies are not based on evidence of what is effective with particular populations.

• AIDS activists and other civil society groups should strongly advocate for the simultaneous scaling up of HIV prevention and treatment.

President Bush has committed significant U.S. funds to combat AIDS, and over the next four years, President-elect Obama should dedicate as much, if not more, of the country’s resources to this fight. He should also give due consideration to what worked well in the Bush Administration’s approach and what could have been done more effectively with the same resources. If we’re found simply debating whether we have the means to win the battle, we will find that we have already lost it.

Dr. Josh Ruxin is a Columbia University expert on public health who has spent the last couple of years living in Rwanda, where he administers the Millennium Villages Project in Mayange. He’s an unusual mix of academic expert and mud-between-the-toes aid worker. His regular posts can be found on the blogroll of Nick Kristof of the New York Times, and he has given his permission to be cross-posted here. Josh and EGR executive director Mike Kinman team-teach a global poverty module for Trinity, Wall Street's Clergy Leadership Project.

"Reflection of an Image" -- by Craig Cole

It is Advent and we await the coming of Jesus as a child born into a dirty, smelly manger. It is hard to grasp what that might have been like. I sometimes wonder as a parent of two small children what it might have been like to be Joseph. Would he have been scared about Mary actually delivering the baby without her life being threatened?

Even to this day, mothers in many countries die from complications associated with childbirth. Years ago, I walked into a maternity ward in Haiti and I noticed a few flies hovering above a mother in the corner. As I approached I realized she had recently died. I called the doctor over and he quickly checked her pulse, and then had the nurse cover her face with the sheet and he moved on. I was stunned by his nonchalant attitude. In the states we would have done everything possible to save the mother using the latest in technology. When questioned, the doctor told me that postoperative death is common and he had to tend to the living. Moments later, still in the maternity ward, a nurse in our group came running out with a baby who was turning blue. She raced toward another room where the only available oxygen tank in the whole building could be found. It was 1960s vintage but it worked and the baby lived.

That very night at the hotel, I watched an episode of ER, the television show that depicts an emergency room at a hospital in Chicago. The tragic irony was not lost on me as the doctors raced from room to room trying to save lives.

Childbirth was far from easy in the time of Jesus. And in some places it still is and that’s why to reduce child mortality and improve maternal health are the fourth and fifth Millennium Development Goals. I can imagine Joseph breathing a sigh of relief as the baby Jesus cried out for the first time and Mary had not suffered any ill effects. Even with all the medical facilities we had available at the hospital, I know I breathed easier when the doctors gave the thumbs up!

I wrote these few words soon after my daughter was born almost six years ago. I found them while writing this essay and I thought they might be appropriate at this time of the year.

“I looked into the mirror and it was you who smiled back at me – a smile so wide I almost cried.

The father finds a reflection of himself as he holds his first-born daughter. Only, instead of a tired, unshaven face at 4 a.m., she has wide, innocent eyes that sparkle happiness and joy. What will she become? I ask under the glow of the bathroom light.

It won’t be long until she is standing and looking into the mirror with no one to hold her. Will she see my reflection in herself just like I sometimes see my parents reflected in me?

More importantly, will she know that she is made in God’s image and the beauty she radiates comes from Him?”

Have a blessed Advent and Christmas!

"One Word: Plastics" -- by Reynolds Whalen

I got off a plane in Kigali yesterday after a trip that took 35 hours including layovers. Driving through the city, one of the first things I noticed was the remarkable lack of trash. I believe this can be largely attributed to the Rwandan government's decision to ban plastic bags from the country.

In many parts of nearby Kenya, especially informal settlements and slums, one of the most striking images is streets lined with plastic bags, strewn across roads like carpets whose designs are the art of the nation's waste. Now, Kenya too has banned plastic bags.

Several weeks ago, I watched an independent documentary about an area the size of Texas in the Pacific Ocean known as the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch." Here, plastic floats freely and collects in large, ice berg-type chunks the size of a small car. Gutting a fish or an albatross reveals stomachs lined with plastic bags, wrappers, cellophane, and bits of plastic jugs. The biggest problem, however, is more subtle. Because plastic is non biodegradable, it breaks down smaller and smaller, literally changing the composition of the sea water and poisoning everything with which it has contact.

Perhaps our country too should consider banning plastic in as many forms as possible and using our political clout to encourage others to do the same. As with many issues I have noticed and studied, perhaps we should focus less on what we have to teach Africa and more on what Africa has to teach us.

"Alleluia! We Messed Up!" -- by the Rev. Mike Kinman

"And there went out to him all the country of Judea, and all the people of Jerusalem; and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins." (Mark 1:5)

Confession is a party. At least is was for John the Baptist. And it should be for us.

In this Sunday's Gospel, the people are coming to John looking for a big change in their lives. That's what he was preaching - repentance -- literally a turning around or a changing of mind and heart.

Well, if you're going to turn around, you need not just to know where you're turning to but where you are turning from. And that means confession -- acknowledging all the ways and things we have done that are not who we want to be.

For us, maybe confession brings to mind a small booth with a priest ... or an awkward period of silence before a mumbled group prayer.

Not for John. Not for those people in the Jordan that day.

The Greek word Mark uses for confession is exomologeo, which not only means "saying out loud together" but has connotations of "acknowledging opening AND JOYFULLY!"

Loud, communal, joyful confession.

Sound strange? It shouldn't. The joy of confession is that it liberates us from feeling like we have to hide all the ways we've messed up. It lets us own them and at the same time give them to God. It lets us clear the decks and say we really want things to be different ... and open the door for God to do extraordinary things through us.

The Millennium Development Goals are an amazing dream -- God's dream of global reconciliation -- and also a huge change. And to accomplish them, we must not only look forward but look back. We do have much to confess:

*A world where we're willing to keep Chinese children in factories as long as it means cheap TVs at Wal-Mart.

*A world where we spend enough each year on video games to achieve universal primary education.

*A world where a child dies every 30 seconds of malaria for lack of a $10 bed net.

These are not things to be happy about -- that's not the joy. The joy is that we can confess them ... and we can accept God's forgiveness ... and then we really can turn around, we really can let God change us so we can change the world.

Oscar Wilde said, "Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future." And for us to embrace the amazing future God has in store for us we first must say with the expectant joy of being forgiven, "Alleluia! We messed up."

And then turn around, invite the coming of Christ into our lives, and adventurously embrace what God will do through us next.

The Rev. Mike Kinman is the Executive Director of Episcopalians for Global Reconciliation.

"MDG #7 - Ensure Environmental Sustainability" -- by John Miers

"After this, when Jesus knew that all was now finished,
he said (in order to fulfill the scripture),
'I thirst.'"
John 19:28

Many people are thirsty. Much of our environment is in trouble. Our planet is suffering. What should people do? What should nations do? What should Christians do?

Like the old song reminds us: “Problems, we’ve got problems; we’ve got stacks and stacks of problems…..”

Well, the world has problems, too. Big problems. These problems are bigger than one geographic area – bigger than a city. Larger than a county, state, or even a multi-state area. These problems affect our entire country, our continent, even the whole wide world. What kind of problems? Well, it’s getting warmer, our ice is melting, it is harder to grow stuff, more expensive to move stuff, and the wells are going dry, just to name a few concerns.

This set of problems is like a big mobile, like the one I hang over my patio every spring. It is wide, and has many arms, all delicately balanced, awaiting the slightest breeze. When the breeze comes, and it always does, the mobile swerves, dances, and swings around, always in harmony. But go ahead and pull on one of these arms, and something happens: Almost everything moves, somehow. Yes, it may be possible to affect only one other arm, but that’s very hard to do. Pull on one, and there is a widespread effect. One moves, and then another, and still another. Pretty soon, all are impacted. This movement spreads from one place to another, all around the system.

It’s sometime hard to understand – or even believe – that what you do in Maryland will have an effect on someone in North Dakota, or Somalia, or Venezuela, or even New Zealand. But it will; just like pulling one arm on the mobile.

What we do to preserve our environment will have an effect somewhere, sometime, somehow. These effects are often not easy to discern or to understand. Sometimes they are not economically logical But they usually make sense when you look at the bigger picture, and investigate just what will happen – or what will NOT happen if this action is undertaken. Education and imagination and boldness are all essential.

Sometimes what is done here means that something will NOT have to be done over there, leading to another movement in their arm of the mobile. If you don’t need the paper, maybe a tree in Canada won’t be cut down, and then the wood won’t have to be cut and sawed up. The pulp won’t have to be made into paper, and the wood and the paper won’t have to be shipped thousands of miles. Less energy will be needed, so maybe the electricity generating station won’t need to be started up today, with less coal being burned and less pollution being expelled into the sky. Maybe. Perhaps if it isn’t quite as warm in Nigeria today, someone will not have to buy a coat, and can use that money instead on a goat, which will give milk to his family for years to come. Maybe. Maybe if the coal consumption falls below the “magic level,” a new mine won’t have to be dug. Maybe. All of these are little slivers of “maybes”, but lots of them add up to something significant. Absolutely.

The Christian way does not do things any old way; it seeks to do things “the right way.” We see ourselves as stewards, not just for our immediate relatives, but for the rest of the world, as well as for those who will be future inhabitants. What better way to be “right” than to try to leave things better off than they were when we found them. This is what sustainability is all about. We should not just do things to benefit ourselves, but to also benefit others. The best way to ensure this sustainability is to be careful and judicious in our use of our resources. Using them wisely will mean that there will be more to “go around” and that there will be more available in the future. One of the most exciting and important uses for our modern technology is to allow this wise use to become a way of our lives. We can use less, and we can use things better – things that can be used again, and things that can be easily replaced.

It is amazing how inter-connected we are in “this fragile Earth, our island home.” That is to be discussed next month, when I turn to MDG 8, which is “Create a Global Partnership for Development.”

John Miers is from Bethesda, Maryland, where he was employed at the National Institutes of Health from 1968 to 2005. He serves on the board of St. Luke’s House, a halfway house for persons recovering from mental illness and also serves as Jubilee Officer for the Diocese of Washington. He was a member of National Commission on Science, Technology and Faith for the Episcopal Church and is active in his local church, where he is in the choir, worship committee, pastoral care committee, and the prayer team, and he also visits patients in a local hospital on behalf of the Chaplain.

Rowan Williams' World AIDS Day Video

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams has recorded a video message to mark the 20th annual World AIDS Day today.



The video sees the Archbishop talk about the Church's worldwide involvement in care and education surrounding HIV and AIDS, and calls for faith leaders to 'encourage and support' what is being done by listening to those who work on the front lines.

There are currently 30 million people worldwide living with HIV.

He says "Our hope and our prayer today is that the excellent work that's done, not just in developing countries but here at home too by the Churches will continue and deepen and be strengthened by our prayer and our commitment."

"Recognising that people living with HIV is us not them, whether it's leaders and congregations, congregations and 'outsiders' - it's us. It's all of our business...Church leaders and Church congregations taking responsibility for educating the wider public."

In the video Dr Williams speaks with representatives from Tearfund, Christian Aid, NAHIP and African HIV Policy Network, Zimbabwe Womens Network UK and Rise Community Action.

This video, along with all other Lambeth Palace videos, can be viewed at the Lambeth Palace YouTube channel - http://youtube.com/lambethpress

If you would like to find out about some of the ways Anglican organisations are seeking to combat HIV and support and empower those living with HIV, please see the links below:

Australian Board of Mission - Fighting For Life: STOPAIDS and the Anglican Church in PNG

CHAA - The Christian HIV/AIDS Alliance - CHAA has initiated a Creed for the AIDS pandemic suitable to be read in church services for World AIDS day or any other occasion when the pandemic is remembered.

USPG - Projects: Action on HIV

See also - AngliCORD, Episcopal Relief and Development, The Primate's World Relief and Development Fund, Christian Aid, CMS Britain, CMS Ireland