As the world watched a historic hurricane pummel the Southeast on their news screens, I perched on the top stair of my house, measuring tape extended into a dark abyss of storm surge that filled the lower level of my home, my wife peeking out the rain-soaked window to inform me that toxic waters ripped off the door to my publishing company’s studio.
It was around 1:30 a.m. and our two children were sound asleep in their dry bedrooms, unaware the power was out and would remain so for weeks, oblivious that half their home and both our vehicles were destroyed by flood waters, their peaceful dreams a protection against the fact that my entire ministry — the nonprofit business that pays my salary — was gone.
Grateful they were safe, I was simultaneously devastated that Tehom Center Publishing’s entire inventory of books penned by marginalized ministers, subversive icons that had toured cathedrals, chapels, churches and museums around the world, and array of office supplies and furniture swirled soggy in the largest storm surge from Tampa Bay’s recorded history. Hurricane Helene destroyed $30,000 of TCP’s property that insurance cannot replace.
Angela Yarber
The next day, as we joined neighbors in hauling out a generation’s worth of memories, now considered hurricane debris, the Junk Chicks towed my life’s work to the dump. In survival mode, we tore off baseboards and ripped drywall, sodden insulation gushing storm waters across our bleached and rebleached subfloors, aided by volunteers who braved Florida’s heat to help those of us who lost everything, half of everything or part of everything to Hurricane Helene.
Less than two weeks later, Hurricane Milton ripped through with winds more than 100 mph and destroyed what was left of the roof, both of our home and Tehom Center Publishing’s studio. With our vehicles destroyed and no rental cars available in St. Petersburg, we evacuated our queer little family to Atlanta by flying just before the Tampa airport shut down. We returned a week later when power and potable water were restored to sheer devastation.
It’s a story you likely know well after nearly two months of coverage featuring mass flooding in Western North Carolina and hurricane destruction throughout the West Coast of Florida. Our fledgling nonprofit had made it through volcanic eruptions in Hawai’i, a tornado in Colorado, wind and sandstorms in California and New Mexico, but Helene and Milton finally took us down.
For a brief moment, I questioned whether my ministry could continue, whether I could welcome the next Ministry from the Margins Books cohort, which was scheduled to begin coaching sessions only days after our not-so-triumphal return.
Ministry from the Margins Books is a coaching program of Tehom Center Publishing, which is a nonprofit press publishing feminist and queer authors, with a commitment to elevate BIPOC writers. Through Ministry from the Margins Books, we gather together clergy from around the world who have been historically marginalized in religious leadership, be they queer, BIPOC, women or clergy with combinations of these identities. As one of our previous cohort members put it: “In any other group, we’d be tokens. In Ministry from the Margins Books, we’re community.”
“My life’s work was literally at the dump.”
A relatively new ministry that has thus far coached nearly 50 marginalized ministers in book writing, book marketing, authorpreneurship ministry, and securing a publishing contract with Tehom Center, I was on the precipice of welcoming 11 new eager writers into the program when my overwhelming feeling was, “I just can’t.”
My life’s work was literally at the dump, I had no safe place for me or my team to work, my two disabled children understandably needed double the care and connection typically required, I was wrangling 10 different claims, I didn’t have a vehicle or internet, my home was a construction zone, and all my usual creativity and organizational skills seemed to have blown away with Milton’s winds.
The problem was that, if I didn’t take on this new cohort, Tehom Center Publishing wouldn’t just lose the $30,000 of destroyed property Helene stole from us, but we’d lose any chance at recovery. We had to have the money from that coaching cohort to pay the bills, bills that don’t stop when hurricanes hit.
And this is where the story begins to shift due to the resilience of the marginalized community we serve.
Donations were made. A T-shirt fundraiser organized. Progressive, allied churches and denominations sent checks. The “We Need Diverse Books Foundation” awarded TCP a small recovery grant. Volunteers arrived to clear debris and slowly begin to rebuild. And while there certainly were allies who showed support — for which I am tremendously grateful — the vast majority of donations, volunteers and recovery support TCP received has been from people with the precise marginalities we serve: Queer, BIPOC, women, and people with intersectionally oppressed identities.
So far, our resilience has raised nearly $10,000 of our $30,000 goal to rebuild. I believe this dedication is an example of marginalized ministers teaching the world — and the church, in particular — what it means to be resilient. Those who experience daily minority stress, historic marginalization, overt discrimination from religious institutions, consistent microaggressions, and have elements of our very lives on voting ballots still to this day know what it means to be resilient. To rebuild. To be faithful.
Just ask any of the clergy I coach in Ministry from the Margins Books.
When the church has been unfaithful to you, why do you stay?
When your country votes against your very existence, your love, your rights, how do you keep going?
When other ministers twist our sacred texts to say the way we look, love, live or believe is a sin worthy of damnation, where do you find resilience?
And while I’m no fan of toxic positivity that bright-sides victims into false hope, I do believe marginalized ministers have shown me how resilience washed in with Helene’s storm surge, and faithfulness to our beloved community wafted in Milton’s winds. Whether it’s churches who demonize us, politicians who try to legislate our existence away or hurricanes that attempt to wash our dreams down the drain, we marginalized ministers aren’t going anywhere.
If anything, Helene, Milton and our current election cycle have reinvigorated my calling to bring the perspectives of those on the margins to the center. Because those are the perspectives the church and the world need most.
Angela Yarber is an award-winning author of eight books and the founder and executive director of Tehom Center Publishing. Her work has been featured in Forbes, NPR, HuffPo, Ms. Magazine, Tiny House Nation, and more.