It seems unreal that this is the tenth Hutchmoot (eleventh if you count HM UK!), but here we are. Some days it feels like things are a well-oiled machine and we know what we’re doing. Other days it feels like the first year and we’re sure we don’t have a clue. But if there’s one thing that’s constant, it’s this: we still can’t believe we get to have this much fun. And here’s what I mean:
We’ve got a hoot of a show planned for Thursday night (just you wait).
We’ve got Carolyn Arends flying in from the Great White North. We’ve got Michael Card coming in from just down the road to talk about Scripture. We’ve got Ruth Naomi Floyd and Mark Meynell reprising their legendary session from HM UK. We’ve got Buddy Greene and Odessa Settles telling tales and singing songs. We’ve got Sara Groves and Eric Peters and Andrew Peterson and Drew Miller and Jonathan Rogers talking it up and playing music in the Friday night show and Ella Mine bringing her Dream War to the masses. We’ve got guitars being built. Songs being written. Poetry being open-miced (no idea how to verb that). Gardens being planned. Ink to moot. Oh, and book releases like Adorning the Dark, The Light Princess, and Martin & Marco (not to mention the card game!). And we’ve got a special surprise for Sunday that we’re keeping hidden.
Honestly, there’s so much going on that I’m giddy just thinking about it.
One thing that became clear to us this year, though, was the realization that after a decade of Moots, we had grown in our interests and our sessions had stretched to encompass a huge variety of topics. So this year we’re taking things back to basics. We’re reminding ourselves why we started doing this in the first place. It was writers like Tolkien, MacDonald, Berry, O’Connor, Mullins, Saint Paul, and the Gospel-writers that played such a strong role in waking up our imaginations when the Rabbit Room was founded, and this year we’re going back to our roots. So if this is your first time, we hope you feel welcome and we hope you’ll go home with a deeper understanding of why the Rabbit Room exists and what brought it about.
Because we are chasers after great mystery, we will never come to the end of our delight in the one who lights us. And if that's true, and this is only year ten, we've got a lot to look forward to. Pete Peterson
If you’re returning for the second, forth, seventh, or tenth time, don’t worry, there’s plenty for you too. The great thing about the Gospel is that it’s inexhaustible. I think I heard Steve Guthrie (who is also leading a session this year) say once that when we talk about the “mystery” of God it doesn’t mean that God is a puzzle that we have to uncover and solve like in a detective novel, but rather, God is infinitely knowable. He can be known both intimately—and infinitely. I like to think that Hutchmoot embraces that idea. Because we are chasers after great mystery, we will never come to the end of our delight in the one who lights us. And if that’s true, and this is only year ten, we’ve got to look forward to.
Travel safely. John is in the kitchen and it smells wonderful. There will be something warm and delicious waiting for you when you arrive. Let’s do this—again.
Convene the Hutchmoot.
Poster by Stephen Crotts