St. James, King St

For anyone interested, I have a really ghastly cold - but I won't go on about it.
There are a number of spiritual sites in the City that I love, and I visit them often if I have a spare moment and I happen to be in the area. I go in, sit for a while and say some prayers and, if the facilities are there, light a candle for someone in my life who needs it.
One of these places is St. James Anglican church in King St. St. James carries the distinction of being the oldest church in Australia, having been designed by Francis Greenaway (though not, ironically, as a church!). These days it is distinguished by its gorgeous High Church ceremonies and its tolerant and open culture. They run a fantastic adult education program, do great charity work, and I sometimes go to meditation there on Wednesday mornings. And their musical program is just wonderful!
Sounds perfect, doesn't it? Even better, it is almost always open during the day, and so the perfect place to drop into for a spot of meditation or prayer. There's a kooky little chapel at the side, obviously added on in the 1980s, judging by its wild design. Now this is usually the sort of addition I'd despise, but its been there long enough now to have acquired a veneer of reverence, even style. It is a perfect little spot to hide away in and pray, and you can light a candle and leave a prayer request, making it almost heaven on earth in my equation.
Oh, and sometimes (it has exceedingly eccentric opening hours) the extraordinary children's chapel is open in the crypt, and that is my friend Maggie Hamilton's favourite place in Sydney.

Prayer

I don't think I've talked about prayer before.
I pray a lot - all day, in fact. I have many prayer triggers, and I keep a list of people for whom I am praying. Even as a child I was a great pray-er.
My interest in prayer - a more intellectual interest - was sparked a couple of years ago by reading Philip Yancey's truly wonderful book on Prayer. It is such a beautifully written and persuasive book that it really forced me to approach prayer with a renewed energy and focus, and I find that lately I have been praying even more.
I love sacred spaces, of all religions, because they always seem to encourage prayer, and carry in them the combined energies of thousands of prayers.
And as the years progress I am more and more of the opinion that prayer and meditation are the same thing. Yes, I know lots of learned people will disagree with me, and there's the old adage about prayer being talking to God and meditation being about listening to God. But anyone who has sat for a long period in prayer will know that words soon fade away, and you are left sitting in silence - exactly in an attitude of meditation. Certainly the great monastics have always known this, and the traditions of Centering Prayer, Contemplative Prayer and Christian Meditation all prove that somewhere at the centre of things all prayerful and meditative intentions meet.
As I mentioned in my last entry, we visited the Bahai Temple last weekend, and I was really impressed by the prayerful energy of that place. And reading their literature afterward has helped me to realise that prayer is indeed the focus of Bahai life.

Icons

I love Icons, and am convinced of their special spiritual power. Two of my favourite authors - namely Wilson Van Dusen and Henri Nouwen - both wrote books about the spiritual efficacy of meditation on icons, and I sometimes wish I could take up icon painting as a hobby. Sadly, I am largely devoid of artistic talent, and so I am afraid that my icons would be a little wobbly, but doubtless it's the intent that is most important!
When I was at Christchurch St. Laurence on Monday I spent some time reflecting on the exquisitely beautiful contemporary icons that are on display there. They really are very nice, and Earle Bracken, the talented artist who did them, deserves to be much better recognised on the Australian art scene.

Christchurch St. Laurence

Sometimes (rarely) I go to meditation at Christchurch St. Laurence in Chinatown on a Monday night. Now Christchurch is a beautiful place - some say the only true High Anglican Church in Sydney. It has been the spiritual home to generations of gay Sydney men, and is frequently filled with artists and intellectuals and the very cream of Sydney cultural life. Services there are wonderful - exquisite music, everyone frocked up, clouds of incense and more bowing and genuflecting than is healthy. I have many dear friends there, though my inherent paganism means I can never feel thoroughly comfortable in an Anglican milieu, aware as I am of the great tradition and richness of Anglo-Catholicism.
Oh, and you'll notice the red door - I just found out on the weekend that all Anglican churches should have a red door, in order to indicate welcome and the presence of the Holy Spirit - kind of nice symbolism, don't you think?

Meditation

I do my best to be a meditator - I have my own reasonably regular practice at home (though I could do with a little more self-discipline!), I occasionally venture out to meditate with other communities and I teach my own meditation class, which I find enormously beneficial. I am absolutely not a meditation fascist - i.e. someone who says you need to sit for 3 hours a day in full lotus position following the Vipassana method in order to garner any benefits. The fact is that most of us are so disconnected from ourselves and from the present moment that even 3 minutes a day following any method would be of enormous benefit to the vast majority. Mine is a softly-softly approach, for which I don't apologise.
I took my friend to the Buddhist Library in Camperdown this week to attend the Lotus Buds Sangha meditation session. This is a group of people who follow the tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh, a man for whom I have enormous respect. It was a lovely night, though I found the singing unbearably daggy - an obvious attempt to ape Christian traditions which I think is completely unnecessary. The format is sufficiently varied so as not to cause discomfort, and there is a lovely, zen-like atmosphere of peace and calm. I'm not sure if my friend will go back, but I probably will. If only Camperdown weren't such an impossible place to get too...