Letter from Shannon, Rosh Hashanah
Today, we have a special edition of the Letter to the Future from our Associate Dean, Rev. Dr. Shannon Daley-Harris, in honor of Rosh Hashanah.
Friends of Auburn,
Wednesday evening marks the beginning of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, observed with prayer, self-reflection, and t’shuvah (Hebrew meaning “return”)— repentance that involves looking back and then moving in a new direction, beginning anew. While the practice lies at the heart of the Jewish High Holy Days, repentance—looking back, reckoning with what one has done and left undone, and prayerfully determining to turn in a new direction—is a practice for each of us in every tradition, sharing as we do our human flaws and failings.
So, why would a “letter to the future” start with a call for this inward and backward look? Because we can’t know where we’re going if we don’t know where we’ve been. We can’t build a healthier future for our children and the next generations if we don’t reckon with and repair the harm in what has come before and remains. Like the symbolic African Sankofa bird, our feet may be pointed forward but we will be guided by an honest look back.
We find the courage for this practice of reflection, repentance, and turning in a new direction in the grounding of our faith traditions. Our traditions vary—Jewish, Protestant, Catholic, Muslim, and more—yet each offers roots that both steady and nourish, ground and feed our growth. Grounded in our traditions, we can not only reckon with our individual failures and harm, but we can also reckon with the harm that systems, institutions, and beliefs have done and are doing.
For some Jews, Rosh Hashanah includes the practice of tashlich—casting stones or breadcrumbs as symbols of our sins and shortcomings on moving water that, like God’s mercy, bears them away. Words from Micah 7 are read, including this assurance: “God will take us back in love; God will cover up our iniquities, You will hurl all our sins into the depths of the sea.” What do we need to name, repent of, release to God’s mercy and prepare us to turn in a new direction?
At the June Installation of Auburn’s President and Dean, Dr. Emma Jordan-Simpson read from a photocopied bill of sale recording the purchase of enslaved human beings and the rights to their descendants. As she spoke, Dr. Jordan-Simpson ripped the paper to shreds and proclaimed that it is time to send a better letter to the future for our children.
Monday, September 30th, was Orange Shirt Day on which Dean Reyes and Auburn staff joined peoples across North America in remembering and reckoning with the generational harm done to indigenous people by the Indian Residential School system. It is time to recollect, reckon with, and then cast away the sins and failures of the past so that we can turn to the future to write a more hopeful, loving, and just chapter for generations to come.
This morning, we woke once again to a nation fractured along long-standing and current divides—political, economic, cultural, and more. We all woke to a world that is shaking with the trauma and horror of violence, fear, hatred, and harm. Our aching world calls for healing-centered leaders in every context who build community, bridge divides, and pursue justice through new narratives that aim to heal the world.
Later this month, Auburn’s third Emerging Leaders cohort of Jewish, Muslim, and Christian young adults will gather to ground more deeply in their traditions, be further equipped with practices and perspectives, and connect with each other to strengthen their work in their own contexts to build communities, bridge divides, pursue justice, and heal the world and become living letters to that better future.
Affirming the call to lead with love and with the assurance that God holds us in love, we offer this prayer by Rabbi Jill Hammer as you reflect, repent, repair, and renew.
The Offering: A Tashlikh Prayer
I cast this gift to the water.
It is my past: blessing and regret.
It is my present: reflection and listening.
It is my future: intention and mystery.It is what I did
and did not;
it is yes and no and silence.It is what was done
and what arose from what was done
and what arises in this body remembering.I let it all go. I own
neither the sting nor the sweetness.
I hold on to nothing.The river has no past.
Each moment of rushing water
Is a new beginning.Harm that has been:
heal in the rush of love and truth and time.
We who are lost:
let the current take us homeward.May these waters churn what is broken
into what is whole.
May each separate droplet
reach the ocean that is becoming.The journey awaits.
I have no power to refrain from it;
only to steer it when I can.May the One who is
the great Crossroad
guide my turning.Three times I declare:
It is finished.
It is born.
It is unending.Three times I listen:
It is love.
It is the river.
It is before me.May my offering go where it is meant to go
and may the one who offers it
find the way.Amen.
To our Jewish friends and family, we close extending the traditional wishes: l’shanah tovah u’metukah, may you have a good and sweet year. And may each and every one of us have a year that knows the goodness of building community, bridging divides, pursuing justice, and healing the world.
Link to Prayer by Jill Hammer at the Open Siddur.
Rev. Dr. Shannon Daley-Harris is ordained as a minister of Word and Sacrament in the Presbyterian Church (USA) and has a forthcoming book The Just Love Story Bible (Beaming Books 2025).