"In Germany, they came first for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for me. And there was no one left to speak up."
Pastor Martin Niemoller inspired these words with his speeches in 1946. My grandmother sat across the table from me in 1991 and spoke with quiet force, her eyes on me but her words in response to a conversation between my parents who sat with us:
“They came first for the Christians, and I did nothing because I am not a Christian. Then they came for the Blacks, and I did nothing because I am not a Black. Then they came for the women, and I did nothing because I am not a woman. When they finally came for me, there was no one left to do anything.”
I was eleven. My cheeks burned. I shook so hard I spilled my glass. I couldn't take my eyes off my grandmother. Of course, she was a Christian, and brown-skinned, and a woman. But that was not the point. The point was it means one thing to fight for someone just like us. Someone easy to love. And it means something completely different to fight for someone nothing like us at all.
Would you die for the person you despise the most?
Would you defend the person who makes your life the hardest?
It is so easy... so very easy... to bolster ourselves and attack those we hate and those who make our life harder. It is simple to hate the enemy. It is easier to rescue a friend than it is to rescue an enemy. It is simple to garner pity. It is easy to rally forces against someone who is Other Than you. We all do it. Complain about the boss with family. Nitpick a husband with friends. Gripe about the world and laws and conventions of culture at an anonymous forum. We are never at fault. We are often comforted and supported and "justified."
But it is not Christian. Nor is it excusable.
The sociological phrase is political apathy. When we only take up arms to defend those like us. The homogenized culture that will we never have in America. And PTL for that, baby, or this brown grrl wouldn't be here. Political apathy is the refusal to see community outside likeness and commonality. It is also the inability to claim identity. It is a seed for spiritual apathy.
I am...
I am...
I am not...
Socio-political labels exist so that we understand on what foundation we stand. They are not necessarily who we are. Five days after my grandmother ended that argument at the dinner table both of my parents marched in the Boston Gay Pride Parade. They were happily married all my father's life. I do not believe either of them ever thought of themselves personally as gay or lesbian. But they did consider themselves members of the GLBT community and the numerous organizations and helplines and centers they gave time and money to would certainty agree with that membership.
When we are feeling alone in the world we turn, most often, to those who are like us. Maybe they have the same skin color. Maybe the same economic status. Maybe gender, sexuality, religion. Whatever. But when we are feeling the most lost, we rarely turn to those truly alien and different. We don't want to learn and take risks. We want to be coddled and stroked. We do not turn to those who are the briers or wolves that hinder and hunt us.
But who did Christ turn to?
In the desert, in His life, in the years He walked and taught and fought on this, His own green world, did He turn again and again to those loyal and true to Him? Did He find Himself enriched by constant isolation with His inner circle of common men? Or did He turn to the thieves, the prostitutes, the lost men?
You are lost. You tear through briers to ask the wolf, “Do you know where we are?” Do you truly think the wolf would eat you when you have asked him a question?
I have not been afraid of wolves since that dinnertime with my grandmother. And though I have found that sometimes when I speak to the wolf, he still bites me, he has never taken me down. Maybe this is because I know so very strongly who I am that I am not shaken by anything anyone else might say. The bricks that make up my foundation have nice, clear, strong labels engraved on them. They are society's labels but not what society thinks they are (Christian. Grrl. Raver.). Rather they are words with my own definitions (Lover. Woman. Fighter.) that do not waiver in the quakes that life rocks me with.
Often the wolf sheds his skin to become my closest ally.
He rarely looks like me -- in or out of his hide.
I said to a friend recently, “Does your lover mind that you blog so explicitly about him?” It is beautiful, sexy, powerful, earth-shaking writing, but despite the fact that the names and places are striped away, it is *very* explicit. Hauntingly so.
My friend takes a long time to answer me. Finally he says, “The poet Minnie Bruce Pratt once asked her partner, transgendered writer and activist Leslie Feinberg, if it was alright with Leslie that Minnie wrote about them explicitly. Leslie answered, 'If you do not write of us, how will anyone know we existed?'”
We lived and loved and existed on this only green world. But we said nothing. We wrote nothing. We did nothing.
And then... none of us were left to tell our story.
I am writing on the digital cave walls.
For me. For you. For them.
Now then forever.
EJ
