I have, today, been reading the current (February 2022) edition of “FAN” – full name – “Flying Angel News. This is the newsletter of the Mission to Seafarers based at St. Michael Paternoster Royal in London. It has in it two simple sentences which, to me, stand out starkly and are almost at the extremes of contrast.
One sentence comes in their advertisement reminding people that this year
“Sea Sunday” falls on the 10th July. It says, “More than 90% of the world’s goods and fuels are transported around the world, thanks to seafarers.” The other comes from a series quotations from letters sent in to Mission Centres around the world. One of these begins as follows, “We are treated like lepers by the majority of port officials”.
Quite what one can do about this oneself, other than to support the Mission generally, I do not know. But it is a rather startling thing to find – especially for those of us who live on an island – that the people who keep the world ticking over can be treated so badly by officials dependent upon their activities !
