Ego

Hutchmoot does not predetermine a theme for each year, but every year a definite theme emerges. That theme, though, may be different for each participant. Once, when a friend was asking me about Hutchmoot, I said that Hutchmoot meets you where you are.

I was reading through all my notes for 2012 and noticed a definite theme that I don’t know that I picked up on at the time. Here are some quotes:

It doesn’t matter what you think of me. It doesn’t even matter what I think of me. The only thing that matters is what God thinks of me — and He loves me.

Russ Ramsey — Friday chapel devotion

How did you become you? Pain.

Jason Gray, Recovery Through Song

I need to show up in my own life.

Andrew Osenga, Recovery Through Song

…to be nobody-but-yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else.

e.e. cummings, quoted by either Lanier Ivester or Sarah Clarkson, The Art of Spiritual Subcontext

Over and over, I was reminded to lean into my own story and that who I am is known and seen by God. The pain in my life shapes me. I need to be present. I need to be me.

Looking back, I remember the horrendous year I had had leading up to my second Hutchmoot. I had started this blog in 2011, I think, but by mid-2012, I had acquired a most un-welcome follower. The verbal attacks caused me to really question who I was and ask myself if anybody could possibly love me. I had stopped writing in this blog.