The Fight I Am Called To

The Weight of a Promise

I stood in the Hall of Remembrance at the National Holocaust Museum.
It was the mid-90s and the Museum had just opened.

I can’t describe the feelings coursing through me.
The person I was paired with, the name on my card, didn’t survive.
I thought I knew the horrors of the Holocaust, but I wasn’t prepared for standing in that train car… the room with all the shoes…

Nothing could, or should, have prepared me for the weight of what happened.
I thought I understood, but I didn’t.
I couldn’t.
It was too much.

I was shaking when I finished the tour.
Never again.
The words resonated within me.
Never again.

I sat in the Hall of Remembrance crying, chanting never again like a mantra.

Never again.
The words rang through me like a bell.
They still resonate.
They carry so much meaning.

Of course, I was thinking about the Holocaust in all its terror and loss, but all that death and suffering didn’t happen in a vacuum.
Never again means everything that led up to that moment.
It means never allowing camps again.
Never allowing authoritarianism again.
Never allowing bigotry and prejudice to wield power again.
Never following a charismatic leader again.

We are failing at so many of those.

I am failing at stopping so many of those.
While I have never bowed the knee to a charismatic leader, our country has.
And not just with Trump, we did it with Obama and George W. Bush too.
Too many people allowed themselves to believe that the Great Man would save us.
I failed to stop that.
We failed and allowed that.

We are failing to stop bigotry and prejudice from wielding power again.
Our country has failed that throughout its history.
We weaponized bigotry through the Patriot Act, with Freedom Fries, with Abu Ghraib.
Now we are banning drag shows, attacking trans people, and deporting refugees without due process.

We are failing to stop authoritarianism.
The authoritarians set their plans in motion in the 1970s.
Too many expected a fast, violent coup, not a slow power creep, incrementally taking over the courts and establishing their power structures over time.
We watched their TV shows and movies and made them into heroes: the billionaires, the authoritarians, the violent.

I failed to keep my promise.
Never again.

We are here again.
But there is still time to push back, to make changes, to stop us from going to the next step.
The genocide has already started, but we can stop it.

It’s been hard to speak up because so many already are.
I don’t just want to repeat what others are saying just to be heard.
I don’t want to react to the news, because that isn’t good for any of our mental health.
It has been difficult to find my voice and figure out what I can, and should, be doing.

Never again means never again.

I am a storyteller, a philosopher, and a mystic.
My work is to tell stories, celebrate victories and good things, and to work on what we could and should be doing to make the world a better place.

None of us should feel guilty for celebrating, even in these dark times.
Celebration emboldens our resistance.
The goal of authoritarians is to make us all depressed and afraid, so broken down that they can walk over us.

That fight, the fight for joy, hope, and endurance, is the one I am called to.
This is the work I am going to do.