I was completely unprepared for the rush adrenaline I felt this morning as I helped count the ballots. My hands shook as I unfolded slip after slip of paper, marveling with relief that they (almost) all said yes. We stacked the ballots in piles of ten, setting the single no off to the side. Fran whipped out a calculator to figure the exact percentages, and two minutes later the moderator announced, “The First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia, in a vote of 75 to 1, calls the Reverend Nathan C. Walker to be our settled minister.”

People stood up and cheered. Mardi Gras beads appeared and were handed around. Friends hugged and grinned. Many of us started to cry.

I spent the last year on the search committee, giving up evenings, Saturdays and entire weekends to help find the right minister for the church. I feel really confident that we’ve found him. And I am so thrilled that the rest of the congregation feels that way too.

After the vote, I found myself standing in the back of the church as we waited for Nate to return to accept the call. A man I had never seen before came up to me and asked, “What are you all celebrating?”

I explained to him that we had just voted on a new minister. He said, “I was just walking by and I felt pulled to come inside. You folks certainly have something here, I’ve never felt anything like it. Do you have any information about the church?”

I walked over and grabbed some brochures for him, explaining as I moved that this was a place where all people were accepted and welcomed. He took the materials, introduced himself as Frank, and settled into a pew to read and sit in on the excitement for a little while. Somehow I don’t think that he is going to be the only person to feel the tug of excitement coming from our building these days. Energetic times are ahead.

1. Zak and Sara – Ben Folds (Ben Folds Live)

2. Move Closer to What Deaner was Talking About – Various Artists (Sounds from the Sixth Borough)

3. Track 09 – Ani DiFranco (Live at Falcon Ridge 99)

4. Which Describes How You’re Feeling – They Might Be Giants (Apollo 18)

5. Morning Theft – Jeff Buckley (Sketches for my Sweetheart)

6. My Life – Dido (No Angel)

7. The Gaze – Reverend Tor Band (Whatever it Takes)

8. One Good Man – Janis Joplin (18 Essential Songs)

9. Freedom For My People – U2 (Rattle and Hum)

10. Ring of Fire – Johnny Cash (Super Hits)

I’ve been trying to get this list up all day, and haven’t had much success, so I’m going to post without analyzing the songs that the pod spit out this week.

Linkage will come later, when there aren’t people sitting in my living room drinking wine and eating sushi!

My desk is tucked into the far corner of my dining room, just to the left of the bank of windows that take up most of the external wall. I can’t see outside if I look directly in front of me, but if I turn my head to the right just a bit, I see slivers of blue sky in between office buildings and the rapidly rising Comcast tower.

Set up in front of half of the windows I have an old wooden ironing board with green metal legs. I stumbled across it at a funky old antique store that used to be on 20th Street, when I first moved to Philly. I used it as a beside table for a while, but it slants a bit, and after the third glass of water slid off of it to a splashy demise, I decided it needed to serve a different purpose. It became the home of my apartment garden, elevating the plants to window level so that they were able to get the maximum amount of sunlight that my north-facing apartment can provide.

The plants have come and gone over the years. I used to have a bunch of frond-y ferns that I grew from a friend’s clippings, but after months of green vibrancy, they turned inexplicably brown and shriveled. Last summer I experimented with oregano and thyme, but that pot became bug-infested and gnats swarmed me every time I sat down at my computer. It was not conducive for working, and I was afraid I would actually get a bug in my computer. I had a successful stint with basil, it continued to produce fragrant leaves for nearly five months, until it suddenly went to seed seemingly overnight.

These days I have a sickly rosemary plant that I talk to and encourage (as I’d really love to see it thrive). There’s a money tree that a friend gave me for my birthday four years ago. It’s done so well that it is in it’s fourth pot and is threatening to outgrow that one as well. If only it actually grew money. I have a little bay tree that I ordered online as a mini-sapling a year ago, it has since sent out a second full branch. There’s an enormous tree of unknown origins that would happily take over the entire apartment if I let it. The last one is a christmas cactus that had been sent to my grandmother as a holiday gift just before I moved to Philly. It was a stumpy little thing when I arrived, but over the years it has quadrupled in size and right now has some new leaves that are so freshly green that they seem to glow.

These plants filter the light that come through my windows, and I get accustomed to the patterns of shadows that they cast across my desk and down onto the floor. Last night, I was watering them and decided to give everything a bit of a rotation, in order to give the leaves that faced away from the light a chance to get their full dose of sun.

When I sat down at my computer this morning something felt different. I looked around, trying to get a handle on what felt altered in the space and air. Glancing to the plants, I realized that the seemingly insignificant adjustment of their pots hadn’t only give them a change in angle, but refreshed my own view and perspective as well. I’m always happily delighted when you are able to give yourself something you need without even knowing it.

I am big fan of the potluck. Getting together with friends to share a couple of hours and a meal is one of my favorite things to do. Over the years, I’ve developed a stable of reliable potluck recipes, but this one is my very favorite. It is easy to throw together, is always yummy, and every ingredient it requires can be purchased at Trader Joe’s, which is helpful for me, since that’s my closest grocery store.

It’s just a quick pasta bake that combines traditional American Italian flavors, but is often a hit nonetheless. I start off by cooking off a bag of whole wheat rotini pasta. Before draining the al dente pasta (you don’t want it to be too mushy, since you’re going to stick it in the oven for a little while) I use a Pyrex measuring cup to pull out some of the pasta water, in case the sauce needs to be thinned down a little.

Once the pasta is drained, I turn it back into the pot and add two jars of pasta sauce (this is a great way to use up those leftover half-jars that have a habit of gathering in the back of the fridge). After giving that quick stir, I toss in a bag of frozen, chopped spinach, a couple of cloves of minced garlic and some dried herbs (typically oregano and basil). I let the heat come up a little and then dump in a tub of cottage cheese and half a cup of grated parmesan cheese. Then it’s just a quick tumble into a baking pan (my aunt Doris’s brownie pan is my favorite), a topping of grated or sliced mozzarella and ten or fifteen minutes in the oven. I bake it at 350 degrees for a while to make sure that the whole thing is well heated before giving it a minute or two under the broiler to ensure that the top gets brown and bubbly.

And that’s it. It’s great for a potluck because it’s fairly healthy (I always go for the low or non-fat cheese, Cabot makes a great non-fat cottage cheese), doesn’t contain any meat (always a safer choice when you don’t know exactly who’s going to be attending), makes a ton and improves as it sits in the fridge (on the off-chance that you have leftovers).

One of my favorite books when I was growing up was a story and picture book called A Time To Keep by Tasha Tudor. It was a detailed, month by month account of the celebrations that her family would have throughout the year. My favorite month was May, not only because that was when my birthday was, but also because she showed the children dancing around the May Pole and leaving small surprise bouquets on the doorsteps of their neighbors.

The idea of leaving small bundles of flowers as a surprise for friends and neighbors stuck with me, and I often felt unnecessarily sad as a child that this wasn’t a tradition that was celebrated anymore.

When I was 13, I was in a production of Ramona Quimby, Age 8 at a local theater. The first of May fell on a Saturday that year and we had both a matinee and evening performance that day. My parents were out of town, and the young woman who was staying with my sister and me told me that if I wanted, I could take the bus downtown to the theater by myself. I thought that was a fantastic idea and so that morning I got myself up and got myself ready to head to the theater. Before I left, I went out to the back yard with a scissor and a large brown paper shopping bag that had handles.

The house we lived in at that time had once been owned by a botanist. She had planted a variety of unusual trees, bushes and shrubs around the property. I always felt that the very best thing she had done was plant an entire row of lilac bushes along the back of the yard. Each bush produced a different color lilac and they were older than me by at least 30 years. I clipped off more than 30 sprays of flowers that morning without making even a dent in the appearance of the abundant blooms.

That day I got on the bus with a bag filled with fragrant flowers. I got to the theater a little early and went around putting sprigs of lilac at all the stations in all the dressing rooms. Most people were confused by the flowers, not certain as to why they were receving them, but I got a deep sense of satisfaction from sharing them and celebrating the first of May the way Tasha Tudor’s characters did.