Hello again from Calais. So this morning I went into one of the living sites where refugees are sleeping outside. I think a lot of people might picture, you know, those kind of refugee camps you see on the news, UN or big NGO kind of big tents and a lot of structure, but it's not like that here because these tents, they're not, you know, there's no space where people are allowed to be. 
So as I walked in..A lot of times the... Yeah, you come up and there's a fire where people are cooking food. And a lot of times, you know, if there's three chairs, know, these two people will jump up and offer you a place to sit down. I've, you know, often you feel uncomfortable that I don't want to be, you know, sitting and other people are standing. But I've learned, you know, over the years that the thing to do is actually to receive hospitality. Then I think I have to be the one to give, but to be a guest. 
But this time it was a bit different because there were no chairs. and there was a woman that I know there that, she said, I'm sorry, you know, it's okay for us, but the last night or yesterday, the police took our chairs. so in these evictions where they, you know, destroy tents, throw them away. This time they chose to take tents or to take, chairs. and she said, you know, for me, it's okay but for you we know we would like to offer you know a place to to sit and then you know somebody found a little piece of a palette kind of a little square thing and I sat down and they offered me tea and we we shared just a nice moment together. 
So I'm thinking about that and I'm thinking about in our culture, how do we welcome, how do we make space or not make space for people that are different? And I think especially of these protests that we saw even more of over the summer where... 
Yeah, going to these hotels where people that are vulnerable and traumatized have been through awful things to make them feel unwelcome and unsafe. 
You know, marches, these voices of fear, you know, crying out very loudly to say things that actually kind of, they're not true, they're far from the reality. And it's so hard to, how do we get out of this kind of dynamic? I just think in the church, we know the answer, we know it's love, know, perfect love drives out fear. And I think if we choose love. If we choose these small gestures of kindness, I want to ask you to think about in your life, are there people that are from a different place? And what can you do to make them feel welcome even in a small way? Because I think those small gestures can actually have way more power than we know, both in how people feel them, but also think in reverberating in bigger ways and going further than we imagine. 
 
I'll talk to you again next month. Thank you.