The Value of Hooey

My uncle has a Word-a-Day calendar discipline, begun when his daughter gifted him (and educated the rest of us) with a calendar from which he would muse quarterly, eloquently and of course, from time to time, punnishly. I believe each installment was called “Words of Interest,” mailed to his daughter as a return of sorts. I’m not sure it’s ethical to receive interest from a gift, come to think of it, but that didn’t matter to us. In his rather large-shoes, I’ve developed my own fascination with words, often taken one at a time. Today’s word is hooey.

It’s actually in the dictionary, believe it or not. Supposed “first use” listed in early 1900’s, whether 1912 or 1921. The dictionary appears dyslexic, which is fun. More interesting entries would promised in such fashion. Hooey is both an interjection and a noun, the former being a statement of disbelief or surprise, the latter referring to “nonsense” or “nothing.” Surprising to me, at least in this stage of my life, I’m drawn to both definitions almost immediately.

I’m in the business of meaning, one might say. Significance. Relevance. Nothing livens my wire quite so much as the drive of direction, the pursuits of purpose. That’s how I wound up in seminary, after all. I had been a chemistry major, planning on medical school—it’s what my dad did, so why not? I fell into a Kierkegaard philosophy class in college, despite my best efforts to land in an upper level English class I would have hated. Instead, I landed in the library stacks, fascinated with poetic philosophy with a religious hue, finally charting a respectable path through shelves of other peoples’ meanings, discovering secondary literature for the first time in my life. How cool to learn from others’ quests for significance, I thought. How much easier that is. It was a short fall into seminary from there, though I took the scenic route through L.A. and the Rodney King riots. Seminary is chock full of other peoples’ meanings, littering the hallways for those who have come there—whether their own or others, one can’t really tell. So now I’m a seminary graduate, with a doctorate of other people’s meanings.

What if the whole blooming thing is hooey? I mean, what if the quest for meaning is not best engaged by delving into centuries of human history and theology but by learning to live compassionately amidst the radical evil alongside the delights of the world? Most of the world which, I might add, will never steep in the centuries of literate prose I have? What if choosing that path was the original error, yea, the original sin?

Maybe it’s time to schedule the midlife crisis. Past time.

Thankfully, I’m not alone. My husband's survey results came in today, alerting him to a quandary he’d not confronted fully before. He’s pursuing a DMin degree at a prestigious institution some distance from home, so it has online-learning components. Part of the degree requirement has been inviting his congregation to fill out a survey about church life, leadership, direction, and mission (among other things). He called this morning with his ambivalent news. “Over 69% of the congregation identified “the minister” as the reason they joined the church. When the survey asked what was the most significant factor in keeping folks at the church, do you know what the percentage was?” he asked. “No, do tell,” I responded. “Over 90% identified “the minister” as the one factor that kept them at the church. Over 90%. That’s f—ked,” he exclaimed, then explained: “At first, my reaction was emotional, like ‘They like me.’ But then I thought about it. The minister—most definitely I—should not be the reason that people choose a church or choose to stay in a church. This thing is broken!” he exclaimed.

For him, “this thing” meant the congregation, the church, the social structure that seminary graduates are “trained” to lead and teach in pulpit and bedside manner. For me, “this thing” means that, as well as the theological educational system which has “prepared” alumni to enter into service in such bodies. What if the whole thing were busted? Would anyone in the comforts of the Matrix ever know it? If so, what would they do about it?

Existential questions never have immediate answers, of course, so let’s rachet it down a bit. Even if the whole thing is hooey—a statement of disbelief there, or an assessment of “nothing” or “nonsense”—I’m programmed to see the value even in hooey. I think sometimes my own journey requires me to acknowledge the human-construction and utter inanity of finding meaning in a world like we live in today. Talk about Herculean effort. That’s good: Herculean Hooey. There’s little quite as freeing as living into the void of hooey-ness in the human condition. If it all is nothingness, one can at least play a little.

Because it IS all nothingness, in one sense. Think about all that which deflates hope: children dying in the bombs of corporate greed become international politics; domestic sex-trafficking, right here in the good ol’ USA; overwhelming loneliness of a cyberspace, unlanded populace hungry for human touch; the list is endless. Noting the utter hooey-ness of religious significance in face of such things can be an emancipation proclamation for all of us. Confessions of faith are hooey in such venues. The value of hooey becomes a something when the nothingness is recognized, honored for what it is.

But then the rub: only human beings willing to awaken to what really is can testify to it, can give value to the nothingness in this fashion. The act of seeing what actually is creates meaning, whether one desires it or not. Truth-telling, whether desired or only compelled, lands each of us into an experience of meaning, of significance, which draws us forward despite ourselves.

What a pain in the ass. Even to say it’s all hooey is an act of meaning-making. Might as well strive for the meanings that matter—good friends, skills of learned-compassion amidst inane ego-desires, regulated ways to tradition what one has learned on the offchance that those who come after us might benefit, might make the world more beautiful than we could. The value of hooey seems to be returning us to where we never left—the embrace of the Holy One who smiles when we rant and rave. "It will all be woven into the World to Come, little one", I hear. "Not to worry."

Not to worry indeed. L’chaim—to life—no matter what. J