Dear ,
Here in Richmond, Virginia, the weather this week feels like a long-awaited exhale. After days of switching between heat and air conditioning, something has finally settled. The air is softer (and full of pollen). The sun lingers a little longer in the evenings. A new season has arrived with an invitation to pause and reflect on what new seasons truly mean.
As we mark the beginning of Spring, we also find ourselves at a remarkable convergence. This week, the Jewish community begins the sacred observance of Passover, and Christians around the world enter Holy Week, the days leading to Resurrection Sunday. That these two observances meet at the same threshold of the calendar does not feel like coincidence. It feels, as many things do when we pay close enough attention, divinely orchestrated.
The Passover Seder is a remembrance of liberation of a people held in bondage who cried out and were heard. Holy Week traces its own journey through suffering and surrender, toward a resurrection that defies every expectation of what an ending is supposed to look like. At the heart of both is the same aching, hopeful truth: that bondage and death are not the final word. There is always the possibility of something new. These are living traditions that call us to remember. And remembering, in both faiths, is an act of resistance that asks what liberation requires of us now.
We live in a moment when the fight for justice is ongoing and urgent. Fannie Lou Hamer, said it plainly: "Nobody's free until everybody's free." The freedom we celebrate must be wide enough to hold everyone, or it is not freedom at all.
So in this season of renewal, we invite you to remember and allow that moment to fuel our continued fight for justice. May the bread of affliction and the empty tomb both remind us that suffering has been witnessed and that liberation is possible. May the faith that held those who came before us hold us still.
In Solidarity,
Keisha
Rev. Dr. LaKeisha Cook, Executive Director
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