September 15: Coffee Rendezvous

Not only did I have a delightful coffee date with a friend, I ran into two other friends at the coffee shop! I love serendipity (that's the theme of next week's sermon) and it seems to happen to me all the time. Seeing all these friends at Starbucks almost made it feel like life was back to pre-pandemic normal, where you could just stroll around town and see all kinds of people you knew. However, we are definitely still in the midst of the pandemic; we wore masks inside to order, and we sat outside to drink and chat, which felt way more comfortable than sitting inside. I am so thankful they have a decent outdoor seating area. It was delightful to catch up with my friends and have a sociable afternoon, and I hope to have many more in the future.

With delight,

♥Jamie

September 14: Cannabis Trimming

My husband grew a few cannabis plants this year that just exploded with growth and it was time to finally harvest them. I had his cousin come over to give me some pointers, and I spent the whole day outside in the gorgeous late summer/early fall weather (sunny and warm but with a cool breeze) trimming cannabis. While I no longer even use cannabis, it was delightful to be outside working with this plant. It is really a gorgeous living thing, with beautiful crystals on its leaves and buds and perfectly shaped leaves. It is related to the hop plant, and I could totally tell by the way it grows and develops its vines and buds, I've harvested lots of hops in my day and this cannabis plant reminded me a lot of those hop harvests. It was also incredibly rewarding to have the plant go from a mess of vines and leaves to an organized and cleaned up selection of buds. It is currently drying out in our utility closet and the whole house smells of cannabis, which I definitely still enjoy.

With delight,

♥Jamie

September 13: Adult Friends

It is delightful to be able to make new friends as an adult. I am lucky and blessed to have become friends with my fellow alto sax player from the Rockport Legion Band. She is an awesome person and we have incredibly similar interests and motivations, so I was looking forward to being able to spend time with her (and her wife) outside of the musical context. I invited them over for dinner and games on Monday, and we had the best evening. I taught them how to play Puerto Rico, and they were excellent game players. Afterwards, we talked video games for over an hour. I have been concerned about how to make friends as an adult; it was especially hard in my twenties as I had been so used to being able to make friends at school that it was super weird to no longer be in school and I often felt lost as to how to make new friends! But especially now that I feel like I know myself better, it is easier to find friends based on similar interests (music, games, etc). And I 'm delighted that I have been able to find people in my life to surround myself with whom I genuinely enjoy spending time with!

With delight,

♥Jamie

September 12: Terraforming Mars

 Right before the pandemic, one of my friends brought over a new board game called Transforming Mars. We learned it and played it once, before the world shut down, and we haven't played it since. At Board Game Night this Sunday, I felt inspired to relearn and replay it, and thankfully two other friends agreed to play with me. It is a delightfully complex game, revolving around terraforming Mars into a planet where humans could actually live, so you do things like create oceans and green spaces and increase oxygen and temperature levels (which totally reminds me of the books I am reading about sentient spiders and octopi on terraformed planets [Children of Time and Children of Ruin]). There are about a million rules, and we did not follow all of them (oops) but we still had a great time playing and I hope to play again soon, so I don't forget all the rules again!

With delight,

♥Jamie

September 11: Food is My Primary Love Language

 I had friends over for dinner and games again on Saturday night, and one of them commented about me that "Food is my primary love language" and she was totally right. It delights me to cook and to provide a meal for someone. Not only do I try to do this often for friends and family, it's also what motivates me to volunteer for Meals for Wheels, and what motivated me in the past to start the nonprofit "Groton Community Dinners" and help host meals at churches I've worked for. I once read this great book about this very topic, called "Take This Bread: A Radical Conversion" by Sara Miles. Sara, a lesbian left-wing journalist who was raised an atheist, one day wandered into a church, received communion, and found herself transformed; her new-found faith centered on feeding the hungry and within a few years, she started nearly a dozen food pantries in the poorest parts of her city. She wrote eloquently about how providing food was the ministry she was called to, and I feel very similarly. Not only do you need food to survive, there is something special about sharing a meal with others; it builds community, which arguably you *also* need to survive, or at least to live a more fulfilling life. Even though most of my calling (sharing food, building community, etc) has been limited by the pandemic, I delight even in these small moments in which I can break bread with others...though not literally bread because...keto :)

With delight,

♥Jamie

September 10: A Tapestry of the Periodic Table of Elements

 Last year I officiated a wedding for a friend in my backyard. She bought several tapestries to lay out on the grass so people could block off six feet of distance from each other (because...pandemic) and she specifically purchased two for me and my husband, one with staffs of musical notes, the other with the Periodic Table of Elements. They sat in our closet for the longest time, because we were not going out and doing things (because...pandemic). The first time we were able to use one was when we went to Tanglewood; we used it as a ground cover for our sitting area. We chose the Periodic Table of Elements because we were seeing a nerdy news quiz show not a concert. The second time we used it was last night; we attended the Cape Ann Big Band at the "Music on Meetinghouse Green" outdoor concert series. We got there a little late and set up our area toward the back of the lawn. I took out the tapestry (I chose the Periodic Table of Elements because it was readily available since we had just used it) and laid it out on the ground. As I did, a friend came over to say hi. He had seen us come in, but wasn't 100% it was us until we laid out our tapestry, and then he KNEW it was us! HAHAHAHAHA! It was delightful! Of course WE would be the ones with a Periodic Table of Elements tapestry! :) The show was great, the night was cool and breezy, and the evening was perfectly delightful. 

With delight,

♥Jamie

September 9: Sermon Writing

I spent the afternoon writing the sermon I will be preaching on September 19 at St. Paul Lutheran Church in Gloucester. The only sermons I have written since leaving my last church in 2015 have been wedding sermons, so it has been delightful to get back into this practice again. I am super excited about this particular sermon, which combines three seemingly disparate topics: a 1997 role-playing video game called “Final Fantasy VII”, Disney’s 1989 movie “The Little Mermaid”, and Jesus’ message in Mark 9:30-37 about the last being first. If you’re curious about how I could possibly tie these things together, definitely join us online or in person (I will also post the sermon here on the 19th!). I have very much enjoyed doing the research and pulling together different stories and anecdotes to teach the lesson that sometimes we have to go against the status quo and overturn expectations, no matter how shocking or difficult it may be, in order to do what's right. 

With delight,

♥Jamie