Prayer for the Iona Community

1. February 2014
There is a prayer that Members of the Iona Community use when gathering. It is a prayer that I have said so often over so many years that I know it very well, even though I readily admit that I don’t fully engage with (or perhaps fully understand?) each line in it. Recently, when walking the dog near the village I live in, the prayer came to mind as I began to make photographs. Interestingly, it didn’t consciously come to mind as I was walking, but I realised later that it was present in my subconscious and I was looking for ways to interpret what I was hearing in my head and seeing in the landscape (that is beginning to be more familiar to me, having now lived here since November). Originally written by George MacLeod, the founder of the Community in 1938, the current version of the prayer uses more contemporary language. Some parts of this prayer mean more to me than others, but regardless of what it might mean to any one person, I think there is a profound sense of poetry here that has the potential to touch folk.
Here, then, is the prayer - in each image caption, line by line.

O God, who gave to your servant Columba

the gifts of courage, faith and cheerfulness,

and sent people out from Iona

to carry the word of your gospel to every creature,

grant, we pray, a like spirit to your church,

even at this present time.

Further in all things the purpose of our Community,

that hidden things may be revealed to us,

and new ways found to touch the hearts of all.

May we preserve with each other

sincere charity and peace,

and if it be your holy will,

grant that a place of your abiding be continued

still to be a sanctuary and a light.

Through Jesus Christ, Amen.

Of course, the images mean and represent something to me, though they do not necessarily represent directly what they maybe appear to do. Some would argue that that’s not dissimilar to the idea of prayer!

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