We live next door to a church

We live next door to a church. I think I've told you about it before.

It's newish, concrete with asphalt surrounds, and bass guitars thrumming from inside. It is not the traditional type of church I grew up with, with arches and spires and statues of Jesus, whose languid eyes looked down on us, silently judging things like sin and human weakness and bass guitars.

I grew up Catholic, and with a suspicion of what we called the 'happy clappy' churches ingrained in me.

That suspicion peaked when a relative of mine took an evangelical turn, beginning an earnest quest to equip my young soul for the battle with Satan and zits and Miami Wine Cooler that was teenagehood in early 90s Southland. Mostly, this quest involved lending me a book about the horrific things that befall girls who have sex, and a VHS tape with instructive samples of the kinds of popular music that would send me straight to hell.

I watched the VHS tape, a kid of thirteen or fourteen, and quietly concluded I would stay Catholic, for the time being anyway. For all His faults, at least Catholic God lets you listen to Led Zepellin, so long as it's on your own time.

We Catholics have more decorum than that kind of stuff, I suppose I must have thought - perhaps with a little disdain towards the happy clappies, even as we cloaked in Latin phrases and embroidered robes the abuse of our own precious children.

And I was wary, too, of what I thought were the crude anti-woman and anti-gay stances of the happy clappies. Perhaps, because it was hammered out behind the closed doors of conclaves, and handed down to us in ritual and in incense, our Catholic misogyny and homophobia seemed somehow more intellectual.

Whatever.

When I became an adult and able to renounce it all - the Catholics and the happy clappies and the whole shooting match - as vigorously as they might once have denounced an unmarried mother like me, it felt like a delicious, righteous counterpunch.

This was part of the baggage I brought with me when we moved to our house in Upper Hutt, beside the church; and perhaps you could say I never fully unpacked it.

The church next door to us, they have only ever been the best of neighbours, through all the random chats and fence-painting and blown-over wheelie bins that being neighbours entails.

That neighbourliness has run from the sacred to the profane: the congregant who said of our trans son that Jesus never spoke anything about gender, only that we are all made in His own image; and who later dropped an f-bomb in solidarity when he found out we got burgled.

Hard not to like a guy like that. Both the sacred and the profane neighbourliness have been appreciated.

Every month, since 1989, the church next door to my house has held a weekend market.

With my sustainability bent and love of the mildly wacky, I've bought a bunch of stuff there, over the years since we moved in. Potplants and kitch. Cakes and biscuits baked by old ladies, sold for less than they cost to make. Weird-smelling second hand clothes, and a colander that was not as crappy as my previous colander.

A rather handsome wine rack. I figured if I took it off the church's hands, they would not be led into temptation. I'm good like that. It's the residual Catholic in me.

And over the years, we've donated a bunch of stuff to the market too. When the kids outgrew their books and puzzles and toys, I let them keep a few nostagic favourites, but sent them next door to gift the rest. I said to them, when you've got more than you need, you share. The kids agreed.

But the market run by the church next door was not a market; or not only that.

For thirty years, the church market has welcomed, has been kind to, those who needed welcome and kindness. And what they have done is essential, like a beating heart; because in these thirty years, for all the changes that have happened in our society, both good and bad, there were people to whom we forgot to be welcoming and kind.

At the market, there was a cafe where anyone could come, for a bickie and cup of tea. It didn't matter if you had no money: there was no charge. Didn't matter if you had no job, or you had holes in your clothes. Didn't matter if you were different in some way, if you were struggling, on the margins and lonely. This was a place where people had friends, had dignity.

Today, we found out the market is shutting down, after thirty years. This morning's market, days out from Christmes, was the last.

I don't know why. I could speculate that anything that runs on volunteer labour is finding it hard these days, because volunteers are becoming fewer and older, stretched thinner. And it's a humbling reflection. All that time I spent pondering the finer points of theology, who was morally right or wrong, others quietly rolled up their sleeves. I theorised. They, without fanfare, served cups of tea and dignity.

I am fond of my neighbours, the church. I sometimes wish they could turn down the amp on the bass guitar and praise Jesus with fewer decibels. But then, they take in good heart my flamboyant trans son belting show tunes from the other side of the fence. Live and let live, I guess you call it. On a really good day, you could say it's loving thy neighbour.

Service is these days an old-fashioned notion. To the church next door, for the thirty years your market has served my community, I simply want to say thank you. The bakers, the tea-makers, those who staffed the stalls, the offerers of kindness. The value of what you have done, it is quiet and infinite.

You have a place in my thoughts this Christmas.

May we all find grace, whatever that means to each of us.