My First Hutchmoot

Oct 15

After a good while of writing contributions for the Rabbit Room, a circle of faithful writers and musicians as collected by the author/singer Andrew Peterson, I made it this year to my first Hutchmoot, their annual gathering in Tennessee.

I went to share the stage with my friend Ben Palpant, the interviewer from An Axe for the Frozen Sea, about how to keep that axe sharp: what are the areas of resistance writers face (including the freezing indifference of the world) and what do we do about them? I was a bit nervous—I'm easy about giving readings and talks, but what's a live interview? What if it never, you know, gets going?—but I needn't have been. It was magic. We sold out of all the poetry books they had ordered for me ahead of time, and I even gave away the copies I read from, and still didn't have enough. More importantly, the audience asked substantive questions that turned into a real discussion about creativity and calling. And we had fun.

In addition, the programming was tops. At the very start, to open the proceedings, there was a concert of Rich Mullins covers by Ben Shive, Andrew Osenga, Taylor Leonhart, and others who did it such justice, I was in tears before the first song ended. When I looked over and saw the man next to me also weeping for joy, I knew I was among my people. I loved hearing Tim and Jon from the Bible Project talk about mediating on Scriptures, hearing Malcolm Guite and Pete Peterson talk about the Arthurian epic.

They had a perfectly curated bookstore set up too, with Rabbit Room stuff, obvs, but also the most beautiful copies of Wind in the Willows and Paradise Lost; they had that new Faerie Queen edition, and a little stand of Moody Press books. I loved looking through prints by Joe Sutphin, John Hendrix, and Stephen Crotts, how craft-y it all was, and homey.

But it was also just great to meet people. I found myself at dinner with Jonathan Rogers from The Habit, with the poets Katy Bowser Hutson, JJ Brinski, Kate Gaston, and Matthew Landrum; I went to breakfast w/ musicians Matt Wheeler and Jason Gray, and well, there are too many fine folk to name, but the point is that everyone I talked to is doing something worthy and exciting, and they were all so kind.

I was touched to walk into North Wind Manor and find copies of my books on the shelf.

Also, those who know me personally know that I'm very bad at flying, but this time, though the flights were awful, of course, they weren't frightening, and my heart seems to me okay.

In any case, I plan to be back sometime. Such gatherings are good for the soul, good for one’s creativity, but also good for the church body at large.

And I got to tell some people—exactly the right sort of people—about the Whitworth Creative Writing program!

There are other conferences in this space, each with a slightly different emphasis, or regional texture: Mockingbird NYC is a bit more focused on theology and church, The Glen Workshop is more attended by actual makers (in many genres), Square Halo does a cool thing in Lancaster, PA, Anselm Society in Colorado, and there’s single-day affairs by Inkwell all over. A number of these remind me of the C.S. Lewis Foundation's offerings, especially in Oxbridge. Together, in my view, these are the houses of Borgias and Medici, fueling the new Christian renaissance I believe we're at the beginning of. Seek one out. Come further in.