The fire crackled in the center of the courtyard as students stepped forward one by one, unfolding slips of paper filled with anonymous prayers the Interfaith Council collected throughout the semester. Notes sparked briefly as participants read them aloud before releasing them into the flames, participants’ voices blending with the sound of burning paper.

The Office of Religious and Spiritual Life started the prayer reading and burning ceremony in 2009 as a way to encourage campus to gather around shared reflection. 

“What you heard earlier really was the full spectrum of belief and lived experiences. By doing that, [students] get to hear things that maybe they were already thinking, but they never put into prayer and never put into the box. This is a chance for them to perhaps feel some validation in knowing they’re not alone in those feelings,” said Vanessa Gomez Brake, the senior associate dean of religious life.

Mallory Wilson, a senior majoring in international relations who is also pursuing a master’s degree in urban planning, said she decided to attend after hearing about the event from a friend who wanted a meaningful break from finals. Once Wilson began reading aloud, she found the messages unexpectedly emotional. 

“There was a profound amount of sadness, but also a profound amount of hope,” Wilson said. “A lot of people seemed like they were going through a dark time when they went and wrote their prayers, but that they still felt hope and are hoping to be resilient and to work through their problems.”

She said several prayers lingered with her as she tossed them into the flames, specifically ones asking for world peace and to “end the genocide,” as well as messages asking for the health of family members.

Interfaith Director Jessica Moss, who helped lead the ceremony, said she was especially struck by the prayers that questioned belief in God. 

“The ones that I noticed the most were the ones that said ‘I don’t know if there’s a God,’ or ‘I don’t know who this is or if someone’s out there,’” Moss said. “I think that there’s this innate human need to be seen and heard and valued by something external.” 

Moss said this attitude reflects the core of the Interfaith Council’s mission: honoring the specificity of each tradition without flattening differences. Wilson described the event as both spiritual and communal. 

“It was a connective experience, because we were able to look through [the prayers] together and to speak about them and react in real time to what we found funny and to what we found sad,” Wilson said.

After the final prayer was read and the last ember dimmed, students stayed to roast s’mores around the courtyard fire pit. 

Moss said the ceremony is open to anyone regardless of their religious background because understanding how spirituality and ethics appear in everyday life is an important skill for navigating a diverse community. 

“Whether people recognize it or not, religion, ethical practices and spirituality are woven into every space, every interaction, especially in [the United States], where we are confronted on the daily with Christian nationalism,” Moss said. 

As the ceremony ended, a warm glow lingered in the courtyard, partly from the fire and partly from the sense of togetherness created by honoring hundreds of private hopes aloud.

“All are welcome here, and this is an opportunity for them to meet other Trojans and to make meaningful connections with people in this space, but also with the greater community that is USC,” Gomez Brake said.