The murders of 17 students and teachers at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School has fully occupied the season of Lent for those who pay attention to that kind of stuff. We have been forced, again, to examine in public what we Americans are made of and our allegiances.   That brutal carnage happened on Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent. The next day I posted the stunning picture of a terrified Marjory Stoneman mother with an ashen cross on her forehead, clutching her child. This Saturday, to the end of Lent we were Marching For Our Lives with hundreds of thousands of people all across this country and, indeed, around the world, led by the students. This weekend was Palm Sunday, a holy week before the beginning of Easter.

Every Palm Sunday, I repeat a little known but essential fact: There were two parades. Christians know about the one: that palm-branches-waving-hosanna-in-the-highest march at one end of the City…the Jesus Parade. But from Josephus and other historians of the time, we now know, with factual confidence, there was another march at the other end of town. When and wherever the occasion called for a show of imperial domination in the Pax Romana, the army staged a military parade, much like the one that so captivated our President on his visit to South Korea recently.

They showed up with legions, mounted and armed, and horses pulling huge caissons of weaponry. The message, of course, was “don’t step out of line!” And in case there was some question about what happens to would-be rebels and insurgents, all the main thoroughfares were lined with crosses laden with corpses nailed and lashed. These were not hung high as so many paintings picture Jesus as on some ceremonial figurine. The bodies of the victims of capital murder in various stages of decay were mounted at eye-level so the masses could see what happens when you challenge the powers. For the most part they were left to bake in the hot desert sun until the wolves and wild dogs had stripped them to skulls and rib cages.

So there were two parades: the one was ever-present and is, to this day, ever-present. It is the march of violence, fear and the threat of retaliation and death. It is the parade of the status quo, armed to the teeth for fear of losing control of some imagined security in the good old days of the way things are supposed to be. But many of us in the family of humanity await a second parade. And sometimes it isn’t much of a show. Compare, for instance, several armed Roman legions at one end of town to a couple hundred poorest of the poor assembled at the other, led by a diminutive peasant with nothing more to lose, possibly 5 foot 2 in stature, riding an ass small enough so his sandaled feet drag the dusty road. This is the parade of the significance of the insignificant, of however we imagine the alternative to our children dying on the floor of math class next to their companions and oh-we’re-screwed-anyway-so-why-try!?! Call it love. Name it an insane hoping against hope…the possibility of the impossible. #neveragain.

I’m not sure it’s the same thing exactly, but we remember when our son was in college in Carlisle PA, twenty years ago (1998). He had connected with the local food scene and often hung out on Saturday mornings with the farmers at the Old Pomfret Street farmer’s market down town.   Early one week in the fall, it was rumored the KKK was going to parade through down town that coming Saturday, including through the farmer’s marketplace. The farmers organized and moved the market to the other side of the City and held their own parade. No one showed up for the the March of the Klan and the local paper chose not to cover it in the news.

What an important time it is to be alive with a multitude of opportunities, almost daily, to join a second march. It may not be the same thing exactly as the Jesus Parade. But it feels like part of the same movement in the moral history of the universe. The march of the status quo of fear moves forward. This time it’s led by the same old Romans, perhaps under the guise of the National Rifle Association and the momentum of the terrifying military industrial complex, with it’s stranglehold on the throats, voices and political futures of our lawmakers at every level with seemingly no alternative in sight for millennia. Every time the violent rat-a-tat-pop-pop-pop of another AR 15 tears the flesh, eviscerates the organs and snuffs the bright futures of another 17 in another place that’s supposed to be safe, it sends us spiraling down once again into the black hole of national despair.

But there’s always the chance for a second parade. Like dreamers all over the country, a few hundred of us lifted our signs and raised our voice in McMinnville, Oregon.   The signs read: Arm Yourself With Knowledge Not Fear, Kid Power Not Fire Power, Arms are 4 Hugs, #Pray For America (with Pray crossed out and Policy + Change inserted), Not 1 More, #Enough. Debbie and the other voices of the McMinnville Women’s Choir kept us moving to the tune of “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me ‘Round.” The March of Business As Usual is always going to go on. There were two black pick-ups parked on the other side of the street across from the Women’s Choir.   Parents and children were waving Old Glory and a few of their own signs: 2A Is A Right Not A Privilege, Train and Arm Our Teachers. At the other end of town Collectors West Association was beginning the 2 day run of their Gun and Knife Show at the county fairgrounds.   The folks who wave signs on the other side of the street and go to gun shows aren’t necessarily the first parade in themselves, though they certainly symbolize it and give it momentum. It is the NRA and its affiliates who play the role of Pontius Pilate in this drama. They are the ones in power. They are the ones in need of washing the blood of our students from their hands.

It’s not the NRA members who own shotguns and rifles and enjoy hunting with their children who are necessarily responsible.   Those people should continue to enjoy hunting while giving up their membership in the organization that stands directly in the political path of common sense gun legislation. Half way through the march I realized there was a man walking with us with a sign reading: “Keep Schools Free—-End Gun Free Zones.” We were on the same side of the street. The students who have stepped to the front of the parade since Ash Wednesday seem to be learning how to march together to save children’s lives even as they disagree. I look forward to learning more from them.

But the most important dimension of our drama today, is that the kids are watching and listening. They are taking charge. And it’s only right, because the pathways of our society are lined with the corpses of our children, scapegoated, crucified and hung on crosses of our own making and we elders, so far, have only been able to pray and give them proper burial.\

My favorite part of the legend of the Jesus Parade into Jerusalem, is where the political leaders come to J.C. and ask him to tell the crowd to shut up! People who think they have no power tend to get excited when they get a glimpse of a world that just might be possible. People who have no standing alone, who discover, in their time of despair, the strength in their numbers often dance and shout. People who come to the realization that, if there is going to be an end to the carnage and hopelessness, they will have to become the end…those people tend to get rowdy. People who discover they have no choice but to speak, because no one is going to speak for them are likely to ignite a parade. So Jesus says to the powerful, “If these were silent the very stones would cry out!” This is the parade. This is the march our youth are leading for all of us. We must keep marching with them and never desert. Guns are killing our children. We must ban them, starting with assault weapons. Because we know this makes a safer world. It is the only way from death to life. It is the only pathway through the crucifixion of our sons and daughters to their rising up to create a resurrected society. The parade of death will keep marching its legions through the heart and soul of our people.   But just remember, there’s always a second parade.