Hospitality is the heart of Beth-Salem. We currently practice it in different ways:

• two hospitality groups: SERVAS et Warmshowers; SERVAS is very important to us because of its pacifist origins; it allows us to welcome guests from all over the world for short stays but intense and rich encounters; Warmshowers allows us to meet many cyclists and, in particular, young people who ask themselves real questions about the meaning of their lives and make real choices.
• we welcome pilgrims to Santiago de Compostela; Beth-Salem is presented as "donativo" at stage 7 of the Piedmont route, in the Lepère guide.
• we regularly welcome people from different backgrounds and walks of life.

We consider ourselves as "immobile travellers", as Jean Giono defined himself in his novel "L'eau vive". Indeed, we rarely leave our Minervois, but the travellers we welcome take us along on their adventures. Each encounter is a story, a slice of life, a joy of discovery.

"Travelling is going from oneself to oneself through others..." (Tuareg proverb)

"Welcoming someone is not about taking them and suffocating them or changing them according to my ideas and my way of seeing. Welcoming is giving space to the other person inside me so that he or she can bring something to me, and, by the same token, transform me a little.

Welcoming is an openness, a capacity and a desire for evolution, change and growth. If I believe that I know everything and that I must act as the only master, I no longer welcome. I do not admit that I still have to grow.

In welcoming, there is an element of the unexpected. I no longer act as a master, I receive what is given to me. Receiving someone to take from their ideas what can enrich me and rejecting them when they disturb me is not welcoming. To welcome is to expose oneself to a risk. There is an element of insecurity...

Life is a risk. Love is a risk. It is by taking risks that we become alive and loving. And the fruit of this risk is the fidelity of love, the tenderness experienced, the celebration of a covenant, a friendship and a mutual trust.

Jesus said: "Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me".

Welcoming is the path that leads to the liberation of the heart, to the truth and to Jesus. It is the way to a renewed society, based on love. "

Jean Vanier