A group of 16 quirky and lovely folks from the church spent five days listening to stories and playing around Los Angeles. One of the interesting phrases that I heard over these days was “what the heck.” It continues to echo in my head as I replay stories and realize how many Holy Spirit moments are prompted by the surrender of “what the heck.”
Our own trip started with such a sentiment. We try to do a service trip every winter. I have three goals with these trips:
1. Be warm and refresh Vitamin D supply
2. Serve others and learn about national issues on a personal level
3. Get to know each other as a group
I know something about Jesus should be on that list, but I find that Jesus shows up whether I put him on the list or not.
I choose where we go with the simple calculation of where we can fly cheaply and who we can mooch off. This year, we could go to LA for $275 roundtrip and we had a prime mooching opportunity so we said what the heck. We’ll fill in the rest of the details as we go along.
I live a lot of my life like that so it was consoling to hear others who dive into adventures because . . . why not?
The house we deep cleaned for a couple of hours for families who are experiencing homelessness started with a couple who said, “what the heck, why wouldn’t we buy an old Victorian house to help house families in our neighborhood?”
The gang member who got a new start at Homeboy Industries said “what the hell, can’t be worse than what’s happening in life now.”
Then there was a ping pong “what the heck” game going on at the Martin Luther King Jr. parade. I love our group of folks from Juneau. There is nothing more fabulous than taking a group of people with very pale skin to the largest Martin Luther King Jr. parade in the nation.
Juneau doesn’t have a huge population of African-Americans and all the talk about race in the news has not resonated with this crew, until the parade. We stood out, but we made lots of friends and it was a blast.
There was an episode of civil disobedience that sparked tremendous conversations and realizations. There was a huge police presence in the parade and partway through a team of protestors went out into the middle of the parade and lay down. They were chanting about police brutality. The only part that made us nervous was a guy behind our group who was chanting profanities and rage.
We experienced some tension. But the fascinating thing was to hear the “what the hecks”. What the heck? Why are our unarmed young men of color being shot? Why this huge police presence? Why isn’t anyone listening? And there were those responding with what the heck? Why are you ruining a fine parade? Why aren’t we doing something to stop the gang violence? Where are the jobs?
There are complexities going on that I can’t even pretend to grasp and a lot more profanity than I’m putting here.
But, there are lots of connections that go off in my brain when I hear the question in it’s non-prudish version. . . what the hell?
It can mean surrender, giving in to a risk. It can mean a questioning and critiquing of the status quo.
There is no information about the etymology of “what the hell.” It started showing up in the English language around 1921.
All I know is hell is an odd word. It comes from the Germanic roots for hidden under a covering. It is the translation in the Bible for Sheol (the place of shades), Gehenna (the cursed valley outside Jerusalem) and Hades (the underworld). It comes to means a place of either torture or the sometimes worse affliction of numbness.
Without starting too much of a conversation, I began thinking about what people are trying to say when they utter, “what the hell.”
It can be the risk to escape the pain that was, a statement about the cursed or hidden places in our lives, or a declaration against the numbness that can be.
And all of this might just be the pondering of a tired lady on a long flight home from LA who’s seen the spirit of the living God often erupt in lives when we finally say, “what the heck.”
• Tari Stage-Harvey is the pastor of Shepherd of the Valley Lutheran Church.
