A Letter to the Future in Times of Fear

To the beloved ones, five generations from now,

You are the dream, the laughter echoing through the long corridors of time. We lived and loved with fierce intention, not because love was an easy thing, but because it was the work of our hands and hearts, a practice sanctified each day.

We placed our hope in this sacred labor, believing your lives could unfold in joy, not in the shadow of fear. We prayed for you under Shabbat candles, through tears and the ache of honest conversation, longing for a time when no child wonders if gathering to pray is safe.

We looked to a future where no one queries if Grandpa will return home. Where family is not divided by borders or suspicion, but bound together by hospitality and justice.

May your communities be circles of wisdom—elders, healers, storytellers—gathering you in, teaching you the songs and languages that keep memory alive and joy communal. Let your feet know land that welcomes you, that the sky above and the ground below are familiar and kind, restored by your relationship with creation.

May you open the news and see stories of joy. Where we shared our love with the world, not our war.

May you know the weight and the lightness of history, its courage and its failure, its liberation and its pain, and hold each with humility, refusing to turn away from any piece of truth. May your generation be the ones who mend wounds, who make healing our true inheritance.

I hope you see in your ancestors, those we call emerging leaders at Auburn. They are the leaders who stayed present, who chose repair over retreat, who kept pouring life into those who would come after, like Joy, Liz, Alma, Josh, Abeera, Zuogwi, Blake, Alex, Davion, Grace, Sylvie, like Ross, Caleb, Charlotte, Jael, Anthony, Brandon, Ali, Devon, and so many others.

I hope you know the chain of love is unbroken, that what was entrusted to us has been entrusted to you, and you have made it more whole. That you are defining the world by your laughter.

You are the future we served, the story we labored to tell, one where love and courage are your birthright, and laughter is the language of your days.

A Prayer for Healing

To a known God,

Heal what has been broken in us and between us.

Heal the wounds that were passed down through generations before anyone had words for them.

Heal the land that has been taken from and not returned to.

Heal the communities that were told their belonging was conditional.

Heal the fear that lived in the bodies of parents who only wanted to worship, to rest, to raise their children in peace.

Make us instruments of that healing.

Give us the courage to do the work that outlasts us, to love beyond what we can see, to equip those who come after us with more than we had.

Let those five generations from now, the future we now serve, grow up in wholeness.

Let them know, in their bodies and in their communities, that they are beloved.

May it be so. May we make it so. Amen.

With love that refuses to give up on a dream of a healed future,

Rev. Patrick B. Reyes, Ph.D.
Executive Vice President and Dean