Hutchmoot

Well, the Hutchmoot is over. That perfect doxology echoed in the Church of the Redeemer ending the weekend and the little taste of heaven that it was.

Hutchmoot was community, beauty and vulnerability. God smiling on us, encouraging all of our tiny (and not so tiny) stuff. Excellent books, spectacular food, awesome music, thoughtful discourse (don’t think I ever used that word in a sentence before) and so many people I’ve never met.

That part was kind of scary. My husband pulled up to the church in our rental car and booted me out. “Go play with your friends,” he said.

“But I don’t know them!” I answered.

He insisted (What? I came all this way NOT to attend Hutchmoot?). So I stepped out of the car and burst into the what I later found out was the living room where staff members sat, heads bowed and eyes closed in pre-Hutchmoot prayer.

Yikes.

I sat cross-legged in the corner listening to someone pray for self-forgetfulness so I asked for some of that too.

After that inauspicious beginning, it got easier. I asked people their names and told them mine. Got interested when they told me pieces of their stories.

I went outside looking for quiet and found it watching bumblebees on spiky purple flowers while I wondered what this Hutchmoot thing I’d been trying to get to for the last three years was all about.

The bees seemed a little frantic. Fall was in the air and there was work to be done. I prayed. Kept watching the bees.

Along about then, the only person I’d met before the weekend, walked across the parking lot and hugged me.

The Hutchmoot (still undefined) was on.

I met more people, listened better than I usually do, embraced people and cried with them. Someone at the beginning said to pay attention – everyone had something to offer.

I did and they did.

This weekend, I may have discovered a new way of relating to people. This could be big.

So I’m sitting at O’Hare waiting to fly back into the forest better equipped to write the antagonist in my novel after listening to Travis Prinzi and Andrew Peterson talk about evil and sadness.

Philippians is more meaningful. So is space.

I feel more aware of my flaws and more loved in spite of them.

I am tiny, but I took part. I am happy to be a cog, a stone mason or even a block of stone being chiseled. My tiny stuff is important but walking with Jesus, loving God, and loving others are crucial.

He will make me able.

And I will follow him all of my days.

September 24, 2012