As Prairie Circle doesn’t have a central office (yet) for me to use, a room in my home will be my office.  You can call me directly at my home, 847-629-5868. However, the nature of ministry means I may be called away for meetings and pastoral visits and thus not be in the “office” when you call.  I am not saying this to dissuade you from calling me.  Just be aware that I might not always be there.

Being a three-quarter time minister, I want to experiment with my office hours.  So, for now, as a “general” guideline, please call me between 8:30 a.m. and 1 p.m., Tuesday through Friday. Be aware that you can also make an appointment to meet with me at a mutually convenient time.  Why not Monday? If I am in the pulpit on Sunday, I can be exhausted on Monday and need some recuperation time. If these hours/days don’t work, I’ll change them.

Note that I am always available for emergencies.  Please call me even if it is in the early morning hours. If I am not home, please leave a message stating that it is an emergency and also provide the number where you can be reached (please speak slowly and repeat the number twice) and I will call you back as soon as I can.

I had the opportunity in August to attend three excellent Sunday services. I have heard from a number of people that all of the summer services were great.  I invite all of you to thank the Worship Committee for putting together these services.  As the old saying goes, “We couldn’t have done it without you!”

I want to state what may be obvious: endings lead to beginnings.  I am excited about what the beginning of this new period in the life of this Congregation portends.  I invite you to come and be a part of creating a beautiful and healthy future for your beloved religious community.

I look forward to boldly stepping with all of you into a known and unknown future . . . both of which promise to be exciting and busy.

Good people, may your noses help you sniff out your old friends pals and then lead you to additional new sweet-smelling friends!   See you . . . ah, I mean sniff you in church.

Bright Blessings, Rev. Jackie

As we start the new church year, I want to share two beautiful selections.  The first is a meditation from my colleague, Reverend David S. Blanchard:

‘Come down off the ladder.
Wash out that paintbrush.
Shake the sand out of your shoes.
Get up off your muddy knees,
and give the garden a morning off.
Fold up the newspaper.
Turn off the coffeepot.
Close up your calendar,
already filled with dates,
and times,
and people,
and places that claim you.
This church is ready for you to fill its rooms,
to create its spirit, to generate its warmth,
to kindle its light.
This church is ready for you to make community,
to create beauty, to bend it toward justice,
to serve its ideals.
This church is ready for you to be here,
honoring our past,
invigorating our present,
and dreaming our future.
This is your church.
Here we are home.
Here we are whole.
Let us begin.’

Yes, let us begin!  Now, if you haven’t been to church for a while, for whatever reason, you’re invited to come back.  Your friends here miss you and will rejoice in seeing you again. No questions will be asked, no recriminations, just “Geez, it’s good to see you.”  And if I haven’t met you, I’d love to meet you.  As Reverend Blanchard says, “This church is ready for you to be here . . .  This is your church.”

As I thought about getting into the “swing of things” again, sweet memories about being in junior high and going back to school after summer vacation came to me.  Then, as fate sometimes intervenes, a couple of days before I sat down to write this column I read a new meditation manual that I bought a couple of years ago.  And, lo and behold, I found a gem of a reading to share with you as you prepare to be actively re-involved with your beloved faith community.  So, the second selection I want to share with you is a reading called “Odiferous Beginnings” and comes from my colleague Kaaren Solveig Anderson’s book, Glad To Be Human.

‘The other day I sat on the beach in literary frustration. My hardcover book was a detailed, brilliant, biting commentary on contemporary society. A double latte, coffee house kind of book. I should have grabbed a paperback “lush trash” — one more suitable to frequent interruptions and water-seeped defacement. In short, without the latte, my mind wandered. I escaped into eavesdropping. For the first time in a long time, I was thankful for teenage lamenting prattle. The topic: going back to school. Romantic in their revelry, four lanky high school boys brooded over the end to their undisciplined days, their perfect tans, and their daily preoccupation and rapture over the sixteen-year-old Venus lifeguard.

I joined their revelry. Daydreaming commenced. School days of old wafted across my thoughts with visions of new school clothes: sweaters, jeans, and boots. The fall kind of clothes we always wore on the first day of school despite an eighty-degree August swelter. Teachers, likable and unlikable, flickered before my eyes. And then I was bemused by an odiferous cacophony of memory. The smell of school.  It was right before me, like a visual image, only more pungent. We all recognize that scent. It banters with you when you walk into any educational institution. The co-mingling of gym shoes, industrial cleanser, dime-store perfume, and rotting lockers. The smell that reminds me what time of year it is. But, as I was thinking about school smells and autumn approaching, my mind turned. So did my nose. Another equally familiar, equally discernible odor, pierced my Nordic snoz. The aroma of church.

It’s that time of year again. Yours is calling you back. When you walk in those doors on Homecoming Sunday, it’s the odor that calls you back. Ours is not a gym locker, dime-store ingredient, crisp clothes kind of reek. No, the church odor is more of a strong perfume that beckons us back to new beginnings, to friends known and unknown, to history prophesied and history awakening. A delicate combination of our treasured yet timeworn building, warm, overcooked coffee, with a base note of the peculiar yet oddly familiar linger of laughter, tears, and thanksgiving. Open your windows and breathe deeply. Heed the beguiling aroma and follow your nose back to church. Come celebrate, rejoice together. Come. Breathe in the perfume of your church, your community, your home.’”

The new church year begins on September 11. For many Unitarian Universalist congregations, including Prairie Circle, the first service of the new church year is usually a Homecoming and Water Communion service.  However, this year the new church year begins on the 10th anniversary of 9-11. Thus, I will be offering a special remembrance service.  Many, if not most, Unitarian Universalist congregations will be offering some kind of 9-11 service so that their members and friends can be in the company of friends as the nation reflects on that infamous day from many different perspectives.  I invite you to come and be in the loving company of your Prairie Circle friends as together we remember, mediate, pray, sing and share stories about that day and its impact on our country. ‘Come . . . . Breathe in the perfume of your church, your spiritual community, your religious home.’