Dear Fremont Family:
Tonight 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. Repentance, as we know from our own Christian tradition, includes looking back, reckoning with what one has done and left undone, and prayerfully determining to turn in a new direction. I remember many years ago, my father and I participated in a beautiful service for Rosh Hashanah, where we went to a public botanical garden, together with the Rabbi and the gathered community, we each took a stone. We named the things from the previous year that we wanted to let go of, hurts and regrets and poor choices, and then we threw the stones into the water, releasing those things for the new year. That beautiful ritual has stayed with me so many years later, and I long for that kind of embodied practice of repentance.
This Sunday, we have a wonderful opportunity for hospitality. We will be welcoming a guest preacher, Rev. Greg Jarrell, into our pulpit. Rev. Jarrell is here in Portland for the Christian Community Development Association’s annual gathering. The vision of the CCDA is “flourishing communities with Christians (w)holistically engaged.” Charlie, in his work with the PDX Housing Solidarity Project, will be offering a workshop for the CCDA as will Rev. Jarrell. Rev. Jarrell is also one of Charlie’s published authors at Wipf and Stock Publishers.
Rev. Jarrell will speak to us about repentance, both about our need to name the harmful practices of our past and the complicity of our silence, as well as the necessary work of turning toward repair and healing. I look forward to this beautiful chance to hear from someone deeply engaged in the work of repentance in his own community.
Ultimately, repentance is always about working toward God’s preferred future. But, not before we also look back at our past. 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. What I love about Fremont UMC is how courageously you all are willing to do just that.
As a community of Christ (w)holistically engaged, may we continually welcome the Spirit of truth into our midst, and may we seek to release the sins of the past so as to cooperate fully in a more healed tomorrow.
See you on Sunday!
Grace and peace,
Erin
Here is a more complete bio for Rev. Greg Jarrell:
Rev. Greg Jarrell is an author and community organizer in Charlotte, NC. His recent book Our Trespasses: White Churches and the Taking of American Neighborhoods, examines the influence of white churches and Christians in planning, executing, and profiting from the federal Urban Renewal projects of the 1950s and 60s, in Charlotte and beyond. Greg is Senior Campaign Organizer for The Redress Movement, a national nonprofit organizing local communities for housing justice. Greg is based in west Charlotte’s Enderly Park neighborhood, where he has lived and worked on equitable housing issues since 2005. He is one of the co-founders of QC Family Tree, a cultural organizing group in his neighborhood, and a founding organizer of Charlotte’s West Side Community Land Trust. He and his spouse Helms are both ordained ministers, and are parents to two teens.
