As it is Holy Week for Christians, and just a few days after the March for Our Lives, it seems appropriate to post this poetic reflection from our old friend Rod Kennedy.

Rodney Kennedy has a Ph.D. in Rhetoric from Louisiana State University and 45 years of preaching experience. Among other publications, he is co-author Will Campbell, Preacher Man: Essays in the Spirit of a Divine Provocateur (Cascade, 2016). He is currently Interim Pastor at the First Baptist Church of Peoria (IL).

Students Participating in the March for Our Lives. (c) CNN, 2018

Staring out my office window, distracted from the last run through of my sermon as twelve inches of snow on March 25 give my mind a metaphorical turn. Spring started days ago and yet here is all this white stuff on the ground. For a day it poured forth from the sky as if having an anger fit over the end of winter.

Since the stuff is so pure and white, I couldn’t help but think that this late, last-gasp snow represents the last stand of angry white people across America. While they keep attacking gays, Muslims, immigrants, human rights, and almost everything that is diverse and good, our children and grandchildren are massing across the country to demand an end to gun violence.

Yes, the snow is here but will be gone soon. Winter is almost over and Spring will have her time in spite of Winter’s last all-out blitzkrieg. I sip my vanilla latte, delete a sentence from my sermon, smile at the idea of warmth and the arrival of all the colors of the human race. Welcome to Spring! 

P.S. In an event sponsored by the Ohio Humanities Council, today (Mar. 29) at 6:30 P.M. Bill is speaking at the Barberton Public Library (near Akron) on the topic, Ohio’s Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s.