The church

It's been a while since I was in Wellington, but I wrote a brief reflection after spending a Sunday there and attending Liturgy.

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My first full day in Wellington was a Sunday, and I was excited to go to church.

That may sound strange, but after two months in Taupo, I hadn't had the opportunity to participate in the Divine Liturgy, and I was looking forward to the chance to finally do so.

New Zealand, with its sparse population, has very few Orthodox churches, and they are found mainly in the larger cities (I guess "large" is relative in NZ!). The closest one to Taupo was about two hours away. I know that similar situations U.S. states, but it's a strange experience for me, having most recently lived in Boston, where over 50 Orthodox churches exist in the metro area alone.

So, upon my arrival to New Zealand's capital city of Wellington, I was happy to discover that there was a Greek Orthodox parish only an 8 minute walk from my hostel.

Part of the interior of Annunciation, Wellington. Low resolution because it was taken on my phone.

Though I find traveling to be an incredibly spiritual experience, so much of it is necessarily self-focused ("Where do I want to go? What do I want to do?" etc). In a way, this can been very enriching, as I continually learn about myself and (hopefully) grow as a human being. In another way, it can sometimes become too much. The sacred time and sacred space of Liturgy reminds me, quite refreshingly, that "I'm not the center of the universe," removing me from my own reality and planting me in actual reality, in God's presence, with other members of the body.

In the words of Alexander Schmemann:
“The liturgy of the Eucharist is best understood as a journey or procession. It is the journey of the Church into the dimension of the Kingdom. We use the word 'dimension' because it seems the best way to indicate the manner of our sacramental entrance into the risen life of Christ. Color transparencies 'come alive' when viewed in three dimensions instead of two. The presence of the added dimension allows us to see much better the actual reality of what has been photographed. In very much the same way, though of course any analogy is condemned to fail, our entrance into the presence of Christ is an entrance into a fourth dimension which allows us to see the ultimate reality of life. It is not an escape from the world, rather it is the arrival at a vantage point from which we can see more deeply into the reality of the world.” (Schmemann, For the Life of the World)