Another meeting to plan Days in the Diocese of Maitland-Newcastle paused to reflect on words of Aboriginal spirituality and a liturgy with smoke.
Many of the visitors will be welcomed to Newcastle and the Hunter Valley to spend several eventful days just prior to the gathering in Sydney.
Those who plan to take part in World Youth Day painted a cross to take with them and chose to paint in the style of Aboriginal dot painting.
This group of people at the meeting must surely see how capable they are of making arrangments and the potential they have for decision making and responsibility, as laity, now and into the future.

The World Youth Day Cross and Icon has reached every diocese in Australia.
Religious Icons hold a special place in Christian heritage. This window, in a Hunter valley institution, is modelled, I read, after a mosaic in the Church of Saint Pudentiana in Rome. European imagery and heraldic themes were adoped by the founders of the church in this land.
This depiction of Our Lady of Mercy was assigned by the Pope to the Mercy nuns a century ago.