Lighting a Candle - Christ Church St. Laurence


Over the years I've had several dear friends who have called Christ Church St. Laurence their spiritual home. Hidden down at the dull end of Chinatown, CCSL is an ultra-High Anglican church renowned for its exquisite music, it's love of ritual and its suffocating clouds of incense of a Sunday morning. There's almost nowhere better to visit for the High Holy Days - Ash Wednesday, for example, is an incredible spectacle, with full choral masses, processions and lots of men in dresses.
Christ Church St. Laurence is one of the rare churches in Sydney that makes the effort to stay open all day, every day (I don't know why every church in the CBD doesn't do this), and it is a beautifully quiet spot to come and light a candle and say a prayer. Empty, shadowy and cool, Christ Church is filled with quite good art, and as well as its little candle side-shrine, also boasts a rather small shrine to Our Lady of Walsingham - one of my special favourite objects of devotion. The scent of frankincense lingers always.
They also offer meditation on Monday nights, and I think it is one of the most exquisite spots in Sydney to sit in meditation for an hour.

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