Hugh Hollowell

Creating a compelling vision of a better world.

Don’t Be Afraid

by Leave a Comment

Open Door Mennonite Church
July 1, 2018
Mark 4:35-41 (NRSV)

On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, “Let us go across to the other side.” And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him. A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing ?” He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. He said to them, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”

When I was a little boy, there was a swimming hole we all went to. It was just a small pond, really, but there was a big tree with a rope hanging from it, and when the weather was as hot as it is right now, we would take turns swinging from it and dropping into the pond.

Nothing ever felt as good as crashing into that cool water on a hot day like today.

I probably swam in that pond 50 times, at least. Everybody I knew did. It was a thing you did if you grew up where I did, when I did.

One day when I wasn’t there, a boy whose family was known to us went swimming, and this time when he let go of the rope and went crashing in the water, he landed in a nest of water moccasins. He got bit more than a dozen times, and he died before anybody could get him help.

Nobody went to the swimming hole after that.

It was still pretty to look at. The water was still cool to your skin, and the weather was still just as hot as it ever was. But the problem was, you couldn’t see what was under the surface. You didn’t know if the water was safe and refreshing, or full of water moccasins. It no longer felt safe, and you couldn’t tell if it was safe.

The safest thing was to just stay out of the water. To this day, I won’t swim in a pond of any sort.

We always have fears about the things we can’t see, and people in the ancient world were no different. The sea, the water, was a wild, unpredictable place, where sailors went off in boats and never came back. It was a place inhabited by strange creatures that lived hidden under the surface and would suddenly grab you and pull you under. The sea was calm and beautiful, but a storm could suddenly come up that would destroy your village, or crash your boat, or take your family from you.

The sea was a wild and dangerous place in the ancient world, and it was often used by ancient authors to represent chaos.

In the book of Genesis, when the author is trying to explain the chaos that existed before God created the world, they used the image of the sea:

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

It was so chaotic before God put order to it, the author tells us, it was all water. All sea. All unpredictable. All scary. All unknown.

In the story today, Jesus and the disciples head out to cross the sea, and sure enough, a storm came up out of nowhere. It was a fierce storm, full of fury, and it threatened to sink the boat.

One of the things about this story that stands out to me isn’t that there is a storm – storms happened on the water. It’s that the disciples are so scared. I mean, these guys were fishermen, who made their living on the water. They had seen storms, had survived many storms. And this storm scared them. It must have been a serious storm to have scared such men as that.

Back in the late 90’s, I had a chance to go deep sea fishing off the coast of Florida with some people I knew. It was a beautiful day, and I had never been deep sea fishing before. But we hadn’t been out there but a few hours before the wind picked up and the waves started. First they were little waves, but they kept getting bigger and bigger until they were six feet tall or more, and the little boat was rocking hard, and we had to head back to the port.

But we were several hours out when the storm hit, and so it was a rough trip getting back. At first I was scared, seeing as I know nothing about boats, but the crew seemed calm, and that had a calming effect on me. After all, these were guys who did this sort of work every day, and they were not scared.

No, I wasn’t scared at all until the moment I saw the first mate throw down his pole, shout out a curse word and run to grab a hold of the mast to keep from being swept over the side. If he was scared, this must be serious!

But in the storm in the story, Jesus is calm – so calm, in fact, that he falls asleep. And when in desperation the disciples cry out to him, he rebukes the storm, and it stops.

How is it, they wonder, that this man can calm the storms with his commands?

Today in 2018, the world seems like a pretty chaotic place. Like the sea in the ancient world, dangers are everywhere. Young black men get killed at alarming rates by police officers. The opioid epidemic is, well, an epidemic.  Wherever you fall on the political spectrum, you can’t say it is all calm there, either.

If you turn on the news, or talk to your friends, or even just open up Facebook, it seems like everything is going bad all at once.

It seems like chaos rules the day.

And sometimes, when we are overwhelmed by the chaos, when the storms are raging all around us and it seems like we just are not capable of surviving this one, it can sometimes feel like Jesus is asleep and we are left to handle this all by ourselves. Sometimes, it feels like he is not even there at all.

You know, when you read the story of Jesus and the storm, it seems like the important thing is that Jesus can stop the storm and save you from it. But to me, that is not the most remarkable thing. To me, the thing that stands out is this: In the midst of the storm, Jesus is right there beside you, enduring the storm with you. And what’s more, he has been there the whole time. Even when you were losing it. Even when you were terrified. Even when you didn’t know what to do, or how to do it. In the midst of all of that, Jesus was there, right beside you.

Don’t be afraid, dear ones. Don’t be afraid. The storms are bad – bad enough to scare seasoned fishermen who have survived many storms. But don’t be afraid. God has not forsaken us, and even in the midst of the storm, we are not forgotten nor are we alone.

And we never were.

The one who can command the storms and have them obey him is in the boat with us, and we will ride through the storm, together, to the other side.

Another world is possible

by Leave a Comment

I have been pretty silent the last few weeks.

Part of that has been because we are in the process of moving, and my house is filled with boxes and packing paper and my days are filled with conversations with moving companies, utility companies and closing attorneys.

But part of it is because I don’t know what to say.

Every time I listen to the news, there is something to be outraged about. And It isn’t manufactured – it’s real. Concentration camps for children, for example, is a real thing, and it is horrifying.

And crippling. The constant news cycle and the constant pinging of our attention creates spike after spike in our lizard brain, the oldest part of our brain that seeks to search out threats and protect us. The lizard brain in our head sees all of the outrage and seeks to escape the threat, but is also afraid to tune out, because you have to be alert in case another threat is coming.

You want to look away, you need to look away, but you are afraid to look away.

Part of my silence is because I don’t know what else I can say.

My outrage on Facebook is unlikely to change the mind of someone who believes that putting the infant child of someone who comes here seeking sanctuary in a cage is the right thing to do. That person and I don’t have a difference of opinion, we have a difference of morality.

But just because I don’t think there is anything to say doesn’t mean there is nothing to do – there is so much to do. Call your elected officials. Donate funds to organizations that seek to build the world you want. Protest. Insert yourself in the cogs and shut down the machine. Show up. Amplify the voices of those with less power and privilege than you have. Resist.

But as important as the work of resistance to the current world order is, it is also vital that we seek to build the world we want. The best critique of the existing world is the building of a better one. Viktor Frankl tells us that even in the Nazi death camps, there were people who sought to comfort others, to share their meager rations, who sacrificed for the good of others.

We cannot, on the day to day level, control what the Powers That Be do. But their actions have no impact on our responsibility to live into the world we desire to exist.

The government can never dictate what is right, only what is legal. Whether the Powers That Be respond with crushing cruelty to those who seek sanctuary or provide a welcoming hospitality, my responsibility is the same either way. The government does not make it possible to do the right thing – they can only make it easier.

They have the power to imprison brown babies. We have the responsibility to hide those babies.

They have the power to control the narrative that dehumanizes people. We have the responsibility to share a different narrative.

They have the power to strip the health care from people. We have the responsibility to band together and pool our resources to make sure each other is OK.

They have the power to terrorize. We have the responsibility to comfort.

They have the power to separate and divide. We have the responsibility to build and unite.

We are not powerless. We are many and they are few. Their plans require our cooperation, but our plans do not require them.

I am outraged, but in the midst of outrage, we have a responsibility to resist the current world order and to build a new one. And we can start that right where we are, today.

The journey to becoming an LGBT ally and advocate: Part 1

by 2 Comments

“How did you become such a fierce LGBT advocate?”

The other night, a high school classmate sent me that question on Facebook Messenger. I haven’t spoken to this person in years and years, and as the question was out of the blue, it caught me by surprise.

It has been years since someone asked me a basic-level question like that. I muddled my way through the answer, but I have been thinking about it since then. How did I get here? How did I change the views about sexuality I was born in to, that I was taught, that were assumed in my culture?

And since I am about to change my context, perhaps I should think about this deliberately, because no doubt the question will come up again.

Like most changes, it wasn’t a radical clean cut with the past, but rather a series of events that collectively add up to where I am now. At least, that is how I think about it – a series of stories that shaped me and where I am now is the logical result.

Since it is a series of stories, I feel like I should tell them that way, in a series of posts over a period of time.

Here is the first story.

* * *

I was 19 and in the Marines. I was in love with a Marine named Heather who, when she smiled, had dimples deep enough for you to fall into.

Heather had grown up in a big city up North, and I was raised 10 miles outside a town of 800 people in Mississippi. We were very different people, who had each inherited the political beliefs of people who raised us. She was probably my first “liberal” friend. Everyone I had known closely until then you could assume believed more or less like I did.

It was a Saturday. We were at the museum on a date when she told me.

“Hugh, I’m gay.”

I wish I could say how accepting I was. I wish I could say I saw her coming out to me as the gift that it was, that I recognized she was putting her safety and her career in the Marines in my hands, that she loved me enough to tell me the truth about who she was.

But I didn’t handle it well. I mean, I am Southern enough that I probably wasn’t rude, but I was hurt and confused by it all. It wasn’t just breaking up with someone. Instead, it felt like they were gone forever.

When we got back to the barracks, I went for a long walk to process. Everything I knew, everything I had been taught, about sexuality told me that being gay was a sin. Everything I knew about Heather told me she was one of the kindest, best people I knew. It was my first ethical crisis – do I stay true to the religion I grew up in, or do I stay true to the person I knew and (still) loved?

In the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, there is a point where Jim, the escaped slave, is captured, and Huck is faced with a choice: To stay safe, or to rescue Jim. To rescue Jim is to break the law and to go against the things he had been taught about religion, morality, and race. But it would also be the only way he could be true to his friendship with Jim.

He came to a conclusion: “Alright then. I’ll go to hell!” And he helped Jim escape.

I didn’t use these words, but the sentiment is the same. I decided that I was throwing in with Heather. I knew her, loved her, and would support her, even if it meant I would not be able to be her partner or her lover. And if it meant betraying the religion I grew up with, then so be it.

Over the next six months or so, she introduced me to her friends – other Marines who were also lesbians, people I had known but who were not out. This was the first circle of LGBT folks I had ever been invited into. They were so accepting of me, answered so many of my questions – even the ones that were unintentionally rude – so loving toward me. I think I freaked some of them out, but they knew I was important to Heather, so I was accepted.

Reading back over that, I recognize that there is a way to read this that makes me sound heroic, whereas in reality, I was scared.  I was changing, what I believed was changing, and I had a small circle of people who supported this change, while the dominant culture I was raised in and immersed in did not.

So, I took the coward’s way out. I supported Heather and her friends but kept my mouth shut in other situations. I was like the guy who has black friends at work, but laugh’s at his white friend’s racist jokes so he can fit in.

And it’s important to point out that I still believed same-sex attraction was sinful. I just overlooked it in Heather and her friends.

But the Evangelical faith of my childhood had a chink in it, and I would never be the same.

NB: Heather and I are still friends to this day. She is a grandmother, a nurse, and a cancer survivor who has a beautiful family and life. She has given me permission to use her actual name when I tell this story.

Quarry Street

by 1 Comment

The house had been a rental for years and years, in a neighborhood where it did not make economic sense for the landlord to spend too much money fixing it up. It had been built in 1964, part of a neighborhood built for working-class black folks. We are constantly reminded of this when we note the cost-cutting measures the builder made – it was designed to be cheap housing, to be built fast and sold fast.

Even the land serves as a reminder of this history. The house lies in Southeast Raleigh, in a neighborhood built in the remains of an old rock quarry, the same rock quarry where slaves cut giant blocks for the state capital building. The rocks that are dug up every time I plant something remind me of the slaves who cut rock here, the land that was thrown away and sat empty after it was used up until they could find a way to build houses on it for the poor descendants of those slaves 100 years later.

The house is a small three bedroom with one tiny bathroom. There is a basement that in the early 90’s was converted into two small apartments, forever sealing the house’s destiny as a “rental property”. When we moved in, it was obvious no one had loved this house in a really long time.

We didn’t pick this neighborhood – it picked us. The house was owned by a friend who owned a lot of real estate and was in the process of letting go of some of the lower end things he owned, and he offered it to us on good terms. Like most of our new neighbors, we moved here because it was where we could afford to live.

When we moved in this house 5 years ago, we were the only white people for three blocks. I know this because the black neighbors I would talk too would constantly tell me that. A neighbor once introduced me to another neighbor as, “The white guy that lives on Quarry St.”

Shortly after we moved in, the police were called by a neighbor for a domestic dispute. I recognized the officer – a white man – from my work, so I went over to say hi. He asked what I was doing there.

“Oh, I live here,” I said, pointing to my house.

He was amazed. “You live here? On this street? Why would you do that? I wouldn’t even drive down this street if my job didn’t require it. No way would I let my wife live here among these animals.”

* * *

Shortly after our moving in, we saw the ways the neighborhood was already beginning to change.

The vacant lot next to our house was bought shortly after our moving in, and the owners built a large duplex on it. The owner told me she felt better building there after she saw “the type of people we were.” I wondered if she meant because we were white, but I didn’t ask her. I wish I had.

A triplex down the street was owned by a woman who also lived on the street. Her aunt had left it to her in her will. She tried to manage it, but she had no talent for it, so when she got one of the hundreds of letters we get every year asking to buy our house for cash, she sold it. I looked it up, and she sold it for less than 1/3rd what a fair offer would have been. She bought a shiny new SUV with her proceeds.

The owner of a rent house on our street wanted me to meet some people from the suburbs who were considering renting. “They want to know what it’s like to live here, and I want them to see that normal people live on this street.”

Normal people.

While Renee and I were talking to the prospective renters, a car went by with a booming stereo.

“Does that happen all the time?” the prospective tenant asked.

It does happen some, I said. The thing to remember is that this isn’t our neighborhood. It wasn’t built for us, it isn’t our culture, and we weren’t invited here. We can’t really expect people to change to make us more comfortable just because we decided to live here.

“Well, it’s our now”, the landlord said.

The suburban would-be tenants didn’t move in.

* * *

The landlord to the house next door called me.

“I just wanted you to know that I called the police on the drug dealers on our street today.”

We haven’t had drug dealers on this block for years, so I was confused. “Drug dealers?”

“Yeah. I was over to look at the building and I saw a group of young black men all standing on the street corner, talking to one another. You could tell they were up to no good,” she said

I sighed. “Well, the reason they were standing there is that is where the bus stop is. They live on this street, and they were waiting for the bus.”

* * *

The next block over was the first to flip. A developer bought a run down fourplex for $100,000, tore it down, and built three houses on the lot that sold for $250,000 each.

Since then it has only gotten crazier. Houses are routinely being flipped after only cosmetic repairs, often bought for pennies on the dollar from poor folks who never dreamed of seeing a check that large who don’t know the value of their property.

The police cruise our streets now. Since tech workers from other cities have begun moving downtown, things have shot up quickly. People that have lived here for years and years are being forced to move.

Ms. Portia lives a few houses down from us – she has lived there now 15 years, and she rents. She has a beautiful yard, filled with rose bushes and flowers, and she is terrified that the owner of her home will sell it. “He says he won’t, but you can’t never tell what a rent man is gonna do,” she tells me one afternoon.

One of the things we are happy about is our decision to sell our house to another couple who will live in it, who will care for the flowers I planted, who plan to keep renting to the tenant in the basement apartment. We left money on the table by not selling it to flippers, but money isn’t everything.

* * *

I was working in the yard the other day when I saw a young white couple looking at the house for sale across the street.

It was bought last year by a flipper, who now has it listed for three times more than we paid for our house five years ago. They tell me they are waiting for their realtor.

“I love this house,” the woman tells me.

“Yeah, the husband said. “It’s great. And I like how close it is to downtown. Tell me, is it a good neighborhood?”

I smile. “We love this neighborhood. It’s been really good to us. I hope it’s good to you, too.”

And then I went back to working in my yard.