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

Just last week my childhood friend Kimmy was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia while she was 35 weeks pregnant with her third child. 


Kimmy and I have been best friends since we were both placed in Mrs. Durney’s 2nd grade class. We became friends as a result of happenstance, yet God has transformed our friendship over the past thirty years from childhood chance into something holy other. I wondered, however, as I spent three days with my dear friend on an oncology unit just how that transformation occurred. I wondered how I could count the three days I spent with Kimmy as toxic chemo, pasty platelets, and vivid red blood cells dripped into her blood stream as blessed. I wonder how those three days, which left me utterly exhausted and heartbroken, were deeply holy.


What else are you supposed to do when you learn your childhood friend has been diagnosed with Leukemia and must give birth in order to save her life? You show up. (Note to reader: I am no saint. I did what everyone would do.) I coordinated with her sister, arriving after the initial wave had settled down. Her baby boy was safe and sound in the hospital NNICU and my friend was hooked up to chemo. I brought scarfs and haircutting scissors, advice from others who had gone through cancer treatments and prayers rocks. I also brought knitting, because what is one to do? I assumed I would sit by her bed and knit.


I did knit, but I didn’t do a lot of sitting by her hospital bed. Mostly I spent the days lying beside Kimmy in her bed, cuddled next to her, watching her 5 pound baby boy on the TV screen (hospital IT guys connected a live feed to her TV set). We talked and we talked like we always have. We shared stories of our children. We spoke openly of our fears. We tried to plan for her children’s upcoming weeks without her. We mourned her lost summer plans: working with her eldest on reading, teaching the girls how to swim, nursing her newborn. We wept. We laughed. We shared our lives.


Perhaps my husband said it best, “You and Kimmy are like twin sisters.” Maybe we are. Maybe the holiness of our relationship has to do with an intertwined past. But if that were the answer wouldn’t all childhood friendships swaddled in sweet memories mature into deep relationships? Perhaps God knew we would need one another, but don’t all people need abiding friendships?


I have come to one overly simple conclusion. I believe our friendship moved from blessed to holy on that oncology unit because we continued, as we always have, to share our lives openly and honestly with one another. Yet this time, we did it with full awareness that God, as God always has been, was the third friend listening.


Kimmy and I share a common faith. We both view the world as a place tenderly held in God’s love. Yet never before, together, as a friendship, have we so desperately needed God to hold not just the world, but us, in agapic love. We were held.


Kimmy is not cured. Nothing is okay in her day to day life. My visit certainly did not heal her. Yet our visit with each other somehow, reminded us in a new and profound way that God is ever so close.


For the heck of it, a timeline that made me feel better to record: 
       1984: K & A spend every weekend at each other’s house
1986: K & A go to different schools but remain best friends

1988: K & A begin wearing matching half-heart bbf necklaces

1994: K & A attend each other’s high school graduations and have sorrowful goodbye’s before the first day of college

2001: K & A both get married and stand up in each other’s weddings

July 2013: Kimmy is diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia while she is 35 weeks pregnant with her third child.