About Our Title, Logo and Prayer
I chose the title ‘Led by the Spirit’ for our diocesan discernment process. The Holy Spirit guides the Church and so we must increasingly allow ourselves to be led by the Spirit.
It is my conviction that God has beautiful designs for our diocese. In his loving plan he knows how he wants us to develop and mature. The more we correspond to God’s design the more effective disciples we will be. Therefore, we must not rely our own wisdom and preferences but rather allow the Spirit to guide us.
Fr Roddy McAuley, Parish Priest of St Mun’s in Dunoon, has a talent for expressing prayer through art. I invited him to paint a logo that would reflect our unique diocese. Please read below Fr Roddy’s personal reflection on the inspiration behind his unique piece of spiritual art.
I am also delighted that our Led by the Spirit prayer was written by a lay person, John Taylor from St Mary’s Parish on Skye. John’s beautiful prayer appears on a prayer card which is now being distributed in parishes, with Fr Roddy’s painting on the other side. I ask you to recite the prayer daily.
Bishop Brian
14th December 2022
The Design of our Logo
The day dreaming and reflection behind the piece of encaustic art (painting method in which wax and pigment are fused onto a surface with heat, in this case an iron), is the hymn, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be” (Marty Haugen), based on Matthew 6:21. Check out Job 12:7-10 as well.... “If you would learn more, ask the cattle, seek information from the birds of the air. The creeping things of earth will give you lessons, and the fishes of the sea will tell you all....”
The Diocese of Argyll and the Isles has some of the most beautiful scenery in Scotland, and the world for that matter. Think of the hills, the glens, the rivers, the flora and the fauna. Don’t forget the people either! Look around you. Reflect on some of the lines in Marty Haugen’s hymn: “ Look at the ravens high above you”, “Behold the lilies in their splendour, in grace and beauty they are dressed” etc.
Richard Rohr, in “Daily Meditation”, 16th November, 2016, wisely said, “For a true contemplative (which we all fundamentally are), a fallen green leaf will awaken awe and wonder just as much as a golden tabernacle in a cathedral.”
Carlo Carretto called on the experience of nature to express his sense of spiritual awakening, “......The moment when God’s love penetrated every corner of my being and filtered through my being like sun through the leaves of a forest. I feel immersed in God like a drop in the ocean, like a star in the immensity of light, like a lark in the summer, like a fish in the sea. Most of all, like a child in its mothers lap”. (Carlo Carretto, Love is for Living. London: Darton, Longman &Todd, 1976, p.19).
“All ground is holy ground. The land we stand on is sacred; we are connected to it and part of it. All we need, in our fretting and worrying, is to realise this truth, to be intensely aware of the connectedness of all things. It is in this connectedness to all things and creatures that we are connected to God. That is when we find a deep peace and freedom”. (An Astonishing Secret, Daniel O’Leary. Columba Press. 2017. p.99).
Fr Roddy McAuley
