Nam Mo Quan The Am Bo Tat!

The Gentle Mother Kwan Yin hears all the sounds of the universe, and today I am sending her my prayers for healing.
Here is a pic of the Kwan Yin who looks over my room.

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.

Holy Pictures

I have a thing for Holy Pictures.
As a child I always envied my Catholic cousins, whose books and belongings were always jam-packed with Holy Pictures, gifts from Nuns and Priests and Italian Nonnas and other impossibly exotic personages. Lifting a bible off the shelf in my cousin's house would reward you with a veritable shower of these exquisitely decorated little cards, gilt-edged, syrupy recreations of the BVM or St. Teresa.
When I stay at St. Benedict's and am permitted to sit in choir with the monks, I am always gratified to see that their psalters and hymn books have places liberally marked with HPs of all descriptions.
I'm not the only one, either. I have just recently purchased a beautiful coffee table book of reproductions of vintage Holy Pictures - there's obviously a market out there!
Here is my favourite Guardian Angel Picture, with its accompanying prayer. May you be blessed with Angelic protection!

Kwan Yin

For those who might be interested, please mark your diaries for Friday the 11th of April, when I will be doing a presentation on the popular worship of Kwan Yin at the Swedenborg Association - hope to see you there!
Probably my first real introduction to Buddhism was through the popular devotion to Kwan Yin I witnessed while travelling through Vietnam and Taiwan. One comes across her image everywhere in those countries, and I soon found myself fascinated by her and all of the qualities she manifested. To my, at that time ignorant, mind she reminded me of all the very best in popular Marian worship and the very sight of a statue of Kwan Yin stirred up all of my own mystical and spiritual instincts.
In Vietnam she is worshipped as 'The Gentle Mother', and during the Ullambana festival she is revered and celebrated. There are popular shrines to her scattered throughout the country, many of them credited with miraculous powers.
One of my favourite places in the world is the ugly little port city of Keelung in Taiwan, just a short train ride away from Taipei. I've spent many hours there climbing all over the holy mountain there dedicated to Kwan Yin, and featuring at its peak one of those enormous Disney-esque statues of the Bodhisattva, replete with gift shop and vegetarian restaurant.
Right near my house is a beautiful Kwan Yin temple built by Indo-Chinese boat people to thank the Goddess for protecting them on the high seas while they were refugees. I go there whenever I can and offer my prayers to the Great Compassionate Kwan Yin.
This is a picture of the main hall and its exquisite image of the Bodhisattva.