If you have come here tonight on Rosh Hashanah and feel that there is nothing to examine, no wound in your life to heal, no relationship to repair—then I hope you will listen especially closely to the shofar.

The path of repentance is one that can help us not only to repair what we have broken, but to grow in the process of doing so.

A person is not entitled to forgiveness if they haven’t done the work of repair.

The work of repentance demands curiosity, care, and a willingness to face hard things with bravery and honesty.

We must choose each other again and again, though conflict and through plenty.

America has not yet faced our history of slavery, nor the malicious colonization and oppression of the Indigenous peoples.

We feel the season turning. The early sunset glancing through the red-tinged leaves. The newspaper arriving in the cool morning air. The flock of migrating swallows. A feeling of being on the edge of something new. These are the Days of Awe. A time to welcome a new year and a time to make the old...