 The first item of business this afternoon is time for reflection, and our time for reflection leader today is Reverend Dr Stuart Gillan, the Minister of St Michael's Parish Church in Llynyddgo. May I thank you, Presiding Officer, for your kind welcome and for this invitation. It's an honour to address Parliament in this time for reflection. May I bring you greetings from St Michael's Parish Church in Llynyddgo, that ancient and royal borough with its storied part in the body politic of Scotland through all centuries, the 21st century, not least, set to celebrate its annual riding of the marches and children's holiday next week. We are met in this chamber at an historic juncture with the date for the EU referendum fast approaching. One may say nothing, of course, of the ins and outs of the matter, but I thought I would mention it, the elephant in the room. Large things, elephants in rooms, not meant to be indoors, high maintenance, and squeezing the available space for other things, needful things. I spent 12 years of my life in Lesotho and South Africa, this from 86 to 98 years of historic change, from the imposition of a national state of emergency by PW Borta, through to the release of Nelson Mandela, his election as state president, so easy to rhyme it off now, so much more difficult then, and through to the presentation of the first five volumes of the report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. I had five congregations in townships in and around Johannesburg, and though the lingua franca of the struggle against apartheid was English, my parishioners felt more at home in their first language, which was southern Sotho, and often, when they spoke of their lives, they made reference to Sotho stories and proverbs, some of which introduced elephants, and I thought I'd pass on two bits of what we might call elephant wisdom with an eye on our current moment. My first lesson came by way of a proverb, when two elephants fight, it is the grass that gets hurt. I heard this often in Alexandra township, where though they were resilient in defiance, they were also battered and bereaved, they were valiant and vulnerable. Thinking of the proverb today we might think of refugees, and of our desire to welcome them warmly and wisely. It is a call to diligence regarding our care of those who are most vulnerable, even when large campaigns are being waged. The second lesson features an elephant and a hippo. Early on I received the following guidance, a young Canadian in Africa. You must be like the elephant, and not like the hippo. The hippo has a very, very large mouth, very small ears. The elephant, on the other hand, has very, very large ears, a very small mouth. You must be like the elephant, and not the hippo. You'll know who you are. The challenge to listen well comes into its own precisely when we disagree with what we're hearing, or with the person who is saying it or both. And there is no end of opportunity to test that elephant wisdom. Elephants, how much better they look when they're let out of rooms. May God grant you grace and wisdom as together you serve the people of Scotland.