Our community met Marie in the summer of 2012 when our team insulated and replaced a ceiling in her home. We all feel instantly in love.  It was easy to do.  We were quickly encircled in her gratitude and hospitality.

There are objects all over Marie’s home that reveal her nature: bird feeders, pictures of children, grandchildren, great nieces, handmade objects, baby dolls, and the most telling—a toy once enjoyed by a grandson who died.  Marie has lived a life full of great sadness and great love.  She has raised a gaggle of children, not all biologically hers, and with such love has come sorrow. She is honest about her heart break and free with her love. Her husbands have disappointed her, but she continues to live in the world as one who trusts love is the only answer.

How could we not have fallen in love with Marie?

Last year after installing a skirt around her trailer and painting the back of her home we had a lazy afternoon before us, talking with Marie about her farm. She had lost her coop in a fire and now only had a few chickens strolling around her yard. One of these chickens, a rooster, had a comb splattered with white paint from our children’s wild painting job. Marie was tickled pink at the sight. She enjoyed even more watching our children play in her field, exploring the nooks and crannies of her beautiful farm.

Not too long after I was called aside by the treasurer in our community. Knowing the numbers, she was happy to report we had a surplus in our mission trip account. What if we hired someone to build a coop for Marie to house her chickens? It didn’t take long for the “official” leaders in our community (note: that is pretty much all the adults) to agree that this would be the best way to spend our surplus. By October, Marie had a coop. Last winter she wrote us twice to report on her snug chickens and the joy they brought her was evident on the lined page.

I once read an article entitled Bread and Roses. Although I cannot remember the details of the article, the title has forever informed my thinking about those who Jesus calls the least among us. The author of the article argued (more articulately than I ever can) that the poor need both bread and roses. We could have made sure Marie’s oil tank was full for the winter, paid her electric bill, or filled her pantry. We could have even done more repair work on Marie’s home which sorely needs it. But our wise treasurer thought building Marie a chicken coop was the best thing to do and she was right. Marie, like all of us, needs bread and roses. Her new chicken coop is, I am sure, more beautiful to her than a vase of long stem roses. And there is no question that is has brought her great joy.

We’re going to see Marie in a few short days. We are eager to see her new coop and meet her new chickens. Hopefully her roosters white painted comb has worn off. I am sure Marie will encircle us in love and her natural hospitality. But I wonder what roses we might offer her this year. I wonder what roses we all need in our lives, beyond daily bread, that remind us that love is always worth the risk of heartache. 

I am not cool. I teeter on the edge, possessing perhaps the potential to enter cool-hood, but I have never pulled it off. In the span of five years in my early twenties I became a wife, ordained minister, and mother. At that moment, I wrote off cool forever; it was no longer even a fleeting dream. I wore a robe, drove a minivan, and my husband was pleased to just have me naked whenever he could (what I wore had no relevance to him).

I am still a wife, ordained minister, and mother. I still drive a minivan and worse pay a mortgage in the suburbs. And yes, my husband still prefers me naked making cool clothes irrelevant. I have no tats, no interesting piercings (in fact, I am a little squeamish about gauges), and I prefer to wear solid clothing. The potential exists: I have solar panels, am a member of a CSA, and send my children to Montessori school. But if you could just see me, you would know this only makes me a suburban want-to-be hippie. And if you saw my husband it would make it worse. If you looked up WASP in the dictionary his picture would appear. We just aren’t cool.

If I haven’t achieved cool-hood at 38, the writing is on the wall, right? So why does any of this matter now?  Recently, I have been in earnest pursuit of cool-hood, because it has become clear to me that the emergent ministers getting media coverage are SUPER cool and very edgy. Rob Bell does not buy anything, I am positive, from LLBean. He wears big glasses and dark t-shirts under his blazer. Very cool. Nadia Bloz-Weber has more tattoos than I have fingers and toes. Exceptionally edgy. Shane Claiborne has dreads! All three are so beyond cool they are cool.

My reasoning is quite simple: if I could somehow achieve cool-hood my emergent community would thrive. (Yes, I am aware this is delusional and shallow thinking). Since I have no interest in tattoos, cannot afford a personal shopper (really I can’t make the dressing thing work), and dreads take too long, I decided I would seal the deal with Chuck Taylors. They would be my signature look. I love Chucks. I have since I was in sixth grade when I bought my first pair with my own money. The plan is quite streamlined and simple: I will wear different colored Chuck Taylors every time I preach and viola: I am cool!

It hasn’t worked. I started preaching in my chucks back at Christmas. And this Pentecost I spent an ungodly amount of money ($50 to be exact) on red chucks. I have not achieved stardom or cool-hood. I am still just a lonely emergent church pastor out there working like a dog, loving my people, wrestling with God, and trying desperately to breathe new life into a worn out institution. I still wonder every month if this will be the last month our community can afford my salary. Chucks have not sealed the deal. 

Yesterday as I caught a glimpse of myself on facebook, preforming a recent marriage of two women in my red chucks, I realized something besides just how delusional my grandeur is. The kids in my community, including my own biological, will never think I am cool. However, I am positive that one day they will look back on their faith community with pride. They will scroll through old facebook pictures and laugh at my red chucks. They will point out to their secular friends that actually there were faithful and progressive people working for justice back in 2014. They will tell of hot bread communion for all in a coffee house in which they tripped over chairs just to get an extra piece.  They will remember the spoken words of Jesus about love and justice. They will describe people of all sorts: young, old, poor, rich, faithful, agnostic, gay, straight, trans, undocumented, lawyers and laborers sharing a common conversation about the God of love. They will speak of a community shaped by laughter and prayer more than rigid formality and doctrine.  And I am hopeful, they will regale (yes this could be my new delusion, but please do not wake me up to reality yet) their children and friends and partners with stories about a pastor who loved them.

I think I have achieved cool-hood. I just may not enter the fullness of its glory until I am 80. I think I can wait. In the meantime, I am still wearing Chuck Taylors in case I am discovered. 

As a minister, people call upon me to make sense of the world, especially after 20 children and six teachers are slain, a mentally ill boy lies dead clutching an assault rifle, a school is forever stained with blood, dozens of emergency workers are permanently damaged, and an entire community is stricken with collective PTSD.

Last December my middle child was in first grade. Last December I had no words to offer as either a mother or a minister. Last December I had no “religious ability” to make sense of such horror. Last December I only had tears and rage. Righteous, holy rage.

Last December I tried to pray, but what for? I tried to send every ounce of love and presence to Newtown, CT. I held each child, family, teacher, police officer, administrator, neighbor, as close as I could to my heart, but what for? I knew the God of the universe was on her knees with them, weeping, spinning, disoriented. I did not need to pray God would draw near to the Sandy Hook community; she was already there.

Last December I signed every petition I could lobbying our government for gun control. I plastered a bumper sticker on my car that read: Ban Assault Weapons Now. I searched the editorials for a shift in our nation’s obsession with guns, but learned only that guns sales were up and the NRA was brasher than before.  

Last December I felt certain God was powerless as were the families of the slaughtered.

This December I still have no words. This December I am still filled with righteous rage, although I believe it is more tempered. This December I am able to pray, although I still wonder about the efficacy of my prayers.

Yet, this December, I am hopeful that God is more active and powerful in the universe than I believed a year ago. This December I am fervently praying that the light of the world will break into our lives in a palpable way. I am praying that the child born to us, to two unwed teenage parents, will once again turn the world upside down with his light. I am praying that guns will cease to be owned, children will skip off to school, teachers will laugh, police officers will rescue cats out of trees, and communities will be blessed to bury their elderly, not their sweet mittened children.

If you feel powerless as the one year of Sandy Hook is upon us, please join Grace Community Boston in collecting mittens and gloves for families in need. We will be hanging 20 children’s gloves/mittens and 7 adult gloves in our sacred gathering space as a way to remember those who were lost. At the end of Advent we will donate them to a local shelter. Gloves and mittens can be dropped off at 28 Gould Street, Walpole or during a Sunday evening gathering at 10 Cottage Street, Norwood.  For more information visit GraceCommunityBoston.org

I love Christmas. I HATE the holidays. Why? Christmas is a sacred, mysterious, and even a wonderfully cozy time. The “Holidays” is a terrifying consumer driven shop until you drop frenzy. My life is frantic enough. I hate shopping. I don’t have a large cash flow. Of course I hate the Holidays.

I use to try to boycott the holidays. I would shut out all of the consumer bling. It didn’t work. I still wanted to buy gifts for a dear friend, my new godson. I even wanted to buy the holiday pump soap that smelled of ginger bread. It’s difficult to shut out the holiday bling machine.

I have sought out alternative consumerism to resist the bling machine. What is that? SERRV.org, local markets, used goods (try your local Salvation Army or Good Will store), Heifer Project, Unicef, and well any environmentally conscious, small, local entrepreneur.

@Grace we are offering an alternative to Holiday consumerism Nov 23rd. Celebrate Christmas with us. Ignore the holidays. Use the money you have for good to support fair trade across the global and local trade right in your backyard.