They just keep coming
It seems like my sharing schedule is seasonal. It’s the schedule that is working for me right now. In the midst of all the yuck that is all the things right now, I am trying to just be more present in each moment, so if that moment isn’t focusing on writing, well, that’s ok. I’ve spent a lot of time in the garden this year; planted a raised bed (which, to be honest, has not been very productive but I’m learning), trying to maintain the yard better than years past. Spending more time outside has been its own spiritual practice for me, and has been exceptionally good for both my mental and physical health.
Today, I want to share a poem I wrote several years ago now. I was reminded of it recently and was surprised to find that I wrote it on July 10, 2018 and was called back to it on July 10, 2025. I’ll note that many people have been writing versions of this, especially since 2016 (unsurprisingly), so this isn’t particularly new or unique, but it is what came to me back in 2018. I’ve since edited it a few times.
Through college, I had a poster of the poetic version of Pastor Martin Niemöller’s famous confessional speech in my dorm room. It likely moved to my first apartment, and maybe even the second apartment, with me. Niemöller had complicated and maybe not always ideal feelings about what was happening in 1930s Germany, that's made clear in the confession.
The reason it is a confession is because he realized there was more he, and folks like him, could and should have been doing to raise the alarm. He gave versions of his confessional speech several times in 1946, and the key points were later turned into the poem that now appears in Holocaust museums and dorm rooms around the world.
Let me be very clear: I am increasingly scared. I do not like seeing similarities between the systematic disassembly and sidestepping of the guardrails that existed in the constitution of the Weimar Republic and what has been happening in the U.S. over the last six months. This is purposeful, this is planned, and no one is lying about it or trying to hide it. The point is to dismantle democracy via democratic processes, which was exactly what happened in Germany beginning in 1933.
We are all complicated, and we can have complicated and conflicting feelings about what is going on in the world. Yet, like Niemöller implores in his confession, we do all have some responsibility, some agency. Let's not need to confess we stood by and did nothing this time around.
They Just Keep Coming
Written in conversation with Martin Niemöller’s “First they came…”
And then they came for Muslims, but I did not speak out -
Because I figure it would all blow over.
Then they came for immigrants, and I did not speak out -
Because I forgot my family’s history.
Then they came for women’s bodies, and I did not speak out -
Because my body wasn’t on the line.
Then they came for Black folks, and I did not speak out -
Because it seemed like someone else's problem.
They they came for queers, and I did not speak out -
Because I was too afraid.
Then they came for my loved ones, and I did not speak out -
Because they had already come for me.
