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Day 7:  Caring for those we know and those we don't know

Bakewell to Derby

What a beautiful day's cycling - wonderful canal paths, lanes and railway cuttings.   

Our morning meeting was very quiet - there is a lovely coming together of the group of riders with the local support - this time of Bakewell Quakers - Friends that we have never met any may never meet again yet they have organised themselves to support us?

How is that some human beings want to care for those who they have never met?  

Usually it seems to depend on their ability to recognise that there is something that we hold in common and their ability to feel that they can share what they have without losing out.  The sharing of food seems to form a natural way of both giving and receiving and of letting each other know that we come in peace - that we do not intend to hurt or harm.

Many of the meetings that we are visiting are involved in the Sanctuary Movement assisting refugees who are arriving in the country after long and difficult journeys.  Sanctuary offers the kindness of strangers who want to show what they have with those who have struggled with so much.

However there is a definite sense that we are moving into worlds that feel more challenged.  Friends in Bakewell had shared an article about a man who had travelled to the UK from Afghanistan only to find it so difficult that he had chosen voluntarily to leave.  Here in Derby the meeting clearly feels surrounded by an environment that feels more hostile and more vulnerable to intruders and we were cautioned to be careful out and about in town and invited to keep windows and doors locked 

It begs the question, if human beings can show such care and kindness, what is happening - when human beings start to be dangerous to each other?  What needs have not been met?


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