Hogwash
“Kitchen swill for pigs…”
— Dictionary
Hogwash is a funny word. It puts me in mind of British nannies or Catholic nuns lecturing and harrumphing at some retort or raised eyebrow from a supposed underling, though I should confess, I’ve spent precious little time with any ladies of either sort, so perhaps these are stereotypes I have no business disseminating. There’s a whole host of these crisp, cranky words waiting for me in the thesaurus this week: poppycock, drivel, balderdash—like the game I played so often with friends in my formative years. I was good at it too, easily making up definitions out of thin air that had all the hallmarks of sophistication needed to convince those around me that the sentences I strung together came straight from the thick, hardback Oxford that sat on the top shelf of the living room where we played. Memoirists are encouraged to “tell the truth, but tell it slant”; perhaps those afternoons were my first drills for an art form that I would come to love so deeply. I’m thankful for all the hours of playing around with words, savoring the laughing and the lying. Those though, were lies of no consequence. In the real world, I try to be more sober in defining. Too much of my life is spent unraveling the saccharine and sinister yarns I have been handed as though they were gifts rather than leftover, mixed-up, sullied scraps of something previously delightful. Here are a few examples of such rubbish.
1. Black people don’t tan, can’t swim, love watermelon, and other summertime stereotypes.
I got into so many unnecessary arguments as a child about whether or not my caramel-colored skin could get a sunburn. One reason it was unnecessary was because often I was mid-active-skin-peel when someone insisted at me that Black people were unendingly unmolested by the scorching summer sun. Providing the evidence of my own body did not always work. “Oh, that’s not really a burn,” they’d say, “mine would be worse,” and so on, and so forth. Even at the time I understood on some level that the truth was not the actual desire for those who so eagerly progressed from presumption to accusation about me, my skin, what hurts and what I should be thankin’ my lucky stars for. And, I should confirm, I was getting that burned-turned-tan skin via all the swimming I was doing at our local community pool. As for watermelon, it took me a few decades to even discover whether I liked it because the minute I understood it to be a trope used to conflate blackness with sloppy, carnal, street life, I stopped eating it. A real case of fighting hogwash with hogwash, I suppose. Turns out I do like it, almost as much as swimming ‘til I tire, reading on a towel, feeling and watching the sun kiss me for a while before I reapply.
2. You don’t know what real love is until and unless you become a parent.
This is like really, severely dumb, as are all of the ways that we insist on trying to make the human experience a competition for best joy and most sorrow. What if I went around saying you could never possibly develop the virtue of courage if you were partnered? What if I suggested that only people who are professors can develop the skill to teach? My friend Amy was the first mother to ever tell me that she didn’t actually feel any more capable of love after the birth of her firstborn than she had before. It was one of the best gifts I was ever given—the complete opposite of Hogwash. Amy was probably one of my first friends having a child in or near our thirties which meant she had had the time to watch herself grow and change as an individual and therefore did not attribute all of her own personal expansion as a result of this one set of experiences. Look if, you didn’t/couldn’t/wouldn’t conceive of love without first conceiving life, then I guess, I’m glad it eventually happened for you, but don’t go around telling other people what is (im)possible for them in the deep and wide mystery we call love. It’s not cute. It’s not kind. Its pigswill is what it is.
3. You can’t complain if you have privilege.
Oh, you definitely can, if you are struggling to figure it out, I can certainly demonstrate for you. I think gratitude for the ways fate has fallen favorably on us is virtuous and I certainly think we should exercise caution in the where, when, how, and with whom we do our cussing and fussing, but part of being human is getting to struggle with and in good company. I don’t have to be drowning to be allowed to be scared of the waves. Something doesn’t have to be hogwash for it to sit heavy in my stomach, and when, even if out of my own abundance I have overfilled my body, I hope I always have partners in this world who will graciously bear witness to my moans. And when I have been allowed to be present, to confess what is going on in my own body, mind, life, I am free to see the world around me, with all its profound need, more clearly and more compassionately too.
4. All/Real/True Christians believe (fill-in-the-blank).
There is no such thing as universal belief or practice for any group, so when someone suggests that they are the representative sent by God to tell you the one precise way to interpret what a holy text or holy being has to say about how we must live, I’d suggest holding this message loosely. Even if we agree that the answer to most things is to love, what is love? Is it Acceptance? Correction? Warmth? Space? Freedom? Tether? Truth? Mystery? If it is all these things, in which proportions should it be offered? If it depends, who gets to decide what it depends upon? If it is the still small voice of the spirit, what will we do when she tells me, a black woman something very different than she is said to be whispering to the white man who worships next door? I believe in truth even truth with a capital T. I am less inclined to believe that we can know or hold all of it at once. At my church after the preaching portion of the service, the speaker says a beautiful thing, it reads something like this: “In this place, we like to leave a moment at the close of the sermon for the holy spirit to correct something I might have said incorrectly or to say or do something new.” This sentiment is an important reason I came to this church and an important reason that I stay. I like places and a people that have a built-in assumption that some Hogwash finds its way in to even well-intended, well-researched, and well-practiced offerings.
Hogwash is a funny word.
But the slop itself?
I think its best we consume
and contribute
as little as we possibly can.
