Questioning

Will I wait until they come for me?

A short post today to break the ice/ICE, to kick off my newsletter in 2026. It’s overwhelming to locate mindful words when so much is going on in the world and internally. I don’t want to add to the noise.

As I drafted this post, my eyes fell on Fatimah Asghar’s slim volume of poetry, prominent on my shelf. The title alone speaks volumes. The collection’s first poem, “For Peshawar” (December 16, 2014), refers to the Taliban's terror campaign against its children and its citizens.

The final stanza hauntingly resonates with the growing campaign of ICE terror in these United States.

“I didn’t know I needed to worry

about them

until they were gone.”

As I read it today, the poem rang alarm bells, nearly a dozen years later, far from Peshawar. “They” could stand in for victims of ICE, families who have been separated, alongside our fellow citizens and neighbors who have been shot, injured, and killed. Or the loss and demise of Constitutional freedoms, voting rights. Or the shame and dismay at the reprehensible words and deeds of the Criminal in Chief, headlining this month with Minnesota, Venezuela, and Greenland and counting…

Each reader can fill in the blank with the losses of a given day under Trump’s America.

A Minneapolis writing colleague, Nik Haug, whom I have been thinking of over the last few weeks, shared this Link Tree (https://linktr.ee/mplsmutualaid )in his recent newsletter for a compendium of ways to support people in Minnesota.

Please check it out, if you are looking for a way to help, as our fellow Minnesotan neighbors cope with the terror campaign by the government in their state.

Mindful actions - in whatever form - through money, time, attention, prayer, protests, whatever may work in one’s life - speak louder than words.

And to quote the talented Asghar again from their poem, “For Peshawar”:

Every year I manage to live on this earth

I collect more questions than answers.

This is a good thing.

Questioning.