Category: A to Z Blogging Challenge

A to Z Blogging Challenge

Collaboration/Condescension

Sally11 Comments

This is my own A-to-Z Challenge for the month of June — likes and dislikes. If you want to join me, just add a comment of something you like that begins with the letter C and something you don’t like.

The other day I was at TJ Maxx returning a few things I had purchased at the same time as my mother-of-the-bride dress when the checkout clerk asked me, “What’s the Rabbit Room?”

I was, at first, startled by the question. Why would she be asking me that? Then I saw her looking at my bag, a lovely spacious bag that I carry everywhere.

My bag has everything I could possibly need if I was stranded in a snowstorm — lots and lots of pens, a blank mini-journal, several other journals, a book (sometimes two), cough drops, scissors, a key fob to get into work, scraps of paper with little reminders on them, a few receipts, an empty glasses case, my wallet, a couple of notes from people I love to remind me who I am, hand sanitizer, a flashlight, and a tic-tac box with one mint left. There’s more, but I’ll stop now.

The sales clerk was looking at my bag as I was shuffling through it trying to find my wallet. On the outside, it says “The Rabbit Room.“

My Rabbit Room bag, complete with Rabbit Room personalities pinned to the front

I fumbled for words to answer her. It was like being asked to define family.

I think I said something like this, “The Rabbit Room is a gathering place for creative people. It’s named after a room in a pub in London where JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis, and some other writers met to encourage each other. It’s both a virtual and a physical space for encouragement, collaboration, and community among artists.”

She looked at me and nodded like she understood. “I had just never heard of it before,” she said.

Once I was back in my car, I tried to rethink my answer. The Rabbit Room is so hard to explain. Community is at its heart. Collaboration is an outworking of that.

Condescension, however, can shut down collaboration with just a word or two.

John Steinbeck said, “There are no ugly questions except those clothed in condescension.”

Unfortunately, there are far too many answers clothed in condescension too.

Condescension is a smothering blanket on any discourse. Can you tell that I don’t like it?

Collaboration allows questions and answers to be exchanged without condescension shutting the whole process down.

The Rabbit Room is place where that happens

How about you? What do you like that begins with C? What do you dislike?

A to Z Blogging Challenge · family

B things

Sally19 Comments

This is my own A-to-Z Challenge for the month of June — likes and dislikes. If you want to join me, just add a comment of something you like that begins with the letter B and something you don’t like.

“What’s something I like that begins with B?” I asked Mary.

“Biscotti,” she said immediately. Ooh, I do like biscotti.

“Books,” she said.

“Bosnia.”

“Blue.”

Does this girl know me or what?

“Bugs,” she said.

“I don’t like bugs,” I replied.

“But you need a ‘don’t like,’ don’t you?” she said.

That was the problem. I had had an idea for a post, but when I sat down to write it, my words went off in a direction and I was stuck with a “don’t like” that I hadn’t expected. Sometimes that happens.

But I really do like biscotti, books, Bosnia (one of my best trips ever), and the color blue.

If you want to read what I don’t like, you’ll have to suffer through the next part. Please forgive the TMI.

I am not a shopper. Other than my frequent trips to the grocery store and occasional trips to Target, I really don’t spend much time shopping.

When my oldest daughter set the date for her wedding, my co-workers asked to take me shopping — dress shopping to be precise.

“Um… no,” I said.

“It’ll be fun,” they said.

“No,” I said.

“We’ll make a day of it,” they said.

“Really — no,” I said.

So I went shopping with my daughters. It was a painful experience — leafing through racks of frou-frouey dresses, trying on a few here and there. No, no, no. They all belonged on some other woman, not me. My daughters were great. They were encouraging and kind, but no. We all needed to face the fact that I was not a dress shopper.

In the end I bought some fabric and a pattern and sent them to a dear friend. She had helped me out of this very pinch once before by making a dress for me that I wore to two sons’ weddings.

My friend and I messaged back and forth. She sent me a mock-up of the bodice to make sure it would fit. Finally, about two weeks before the wedding, she mailed the package.

I waited.

And waited.

I messaged her that it hadn’t come. She went to the post office. The tracking number was dead. I pictured my package falling off the conveyor belt of a vast postal facility and getting kicked into some dim corner. Dead.

The wedding was in three days.

This meant another round of dreaded dress-shopping. This time I found one.

But here’s the very worst part of the whole ordeal. Because of the neckline of the dress I found, I had to go bra shopping.

I HATE bra shopping — and that’s my B.

And that’s enough said about THAT.

My new dress matched my daughters perfectly.

 In Scottish Gaelic: Is toil leam biscotti, leabhraichean, Bosnia, agus gorm. Cha toil leam ceannach airson fo-aodach.

How about you? What do you like that begins with B? What do you dislike?

A to Z Blogging Challenge · Life

Authenticity/Aches and Pains

Sally23 Comments

This is my own A-to-Z Challenge for the month of June — likes and dislikes. If you want to join me, just add a comment of something you like that begins with the letter A and something you don’t like.

Authenticity

I’m applying for a new job. I saw Mary staring at the printed resume and cover letter in my hand. Her brow was slightly furrowed. “What?” I asked. “Does the paper look like it expired in 2017?” It’s kind of a running joke at the house these days. We keep finding outdated food items.

She pointed to the cover letter printed on plain old white paper. “This looks very professional,” she said. Then, pointing at the resume printed on a heavier slightly marbled-looking paper, she said, “But this is more you.”

“Great,” I said. “I’m going to use it.”

I hate trying to pretend to be something I am not. I said something like that to one of my co-workers when I was struggling to hide my irritation with a situation. “Stick with me,” she said, “and I’ll teach you how.”

She is masterful at gooey niceness and then making nasty comments as soon as the person is gone. It bugs me.

And I can’t do it.

Instead of learning to be fake, I would rather learn to appreciate the other person for whatever their strengths are.

And I would rather be true to who I am — dated marbled paper and all.

“The authentic self is the soul made visible.” Sarah Ban Breathnach

Is toil leam fìrinn.
Scottish Gaelic for “I like authenticity.”

I do NOT like aches and pains.

I’ve reached that age of joint pain and arthritis. Honestly, this is for the birds. I hate it.

My shoulder was bothering me a few weeks ago — a sharp stabbing pain when I stressed it in a certain way. I kind of like my shoulder. I especially like it when it’s pain-free.

So I called to see a health care provider in orthopedics about it. I just wanted someone to look at it and, “You’re fine,” or, “This is what’s going on.” My first appointment, which was scheduled two weeks out, was cancelled when the provider got COVID. The second appointment, scheduled two weeks after the first, was exactly what I had hoped for.

I had an x-ray. “You have a little arthritis,” she said, “but I would be surprised if you didn’t.” Advanced age and all that.

“Everything today looks fine,” she said. “Continue your usual activities.” These include swimming and climbing.

That was last week and I still have yet to do either, but I’m glad for the go-ahead.

Cha toil leam pian co-phàirteach.
Scottish Gaelic for “I do not like joint pain.”

How about you? What do you like that begins with A? What do you dislike?

A to Z Blogging Challenge · Hutchmoot · prayer

Liturgy

Sally1 Comment

On Mother’s Day, one of my children asked, “What’s something you like, Mom?”

“Ummm… I don’t know. I like you, ” I said. “I like my family.”

I kept thinking and started rattling things off. “I like pens. And I like paper. I like books. I like words.”

I definitely like words. So when I struggle to find words, I know that I am, in general, struggling.

When I first started blogging, words helped me to make sense of my mother’s slide into dementia. She was losing words. I was finding them and using them. A few years later, when my father followed my mother down the same road, the words didn’t come as easily. After he passed away, words slowed to a trickle. Occasionally I have enough to fill a post, but, obviously, not often, or at least not often enough to complete a blogging challenge.

But this is a post about words — specifically, liturgical words.

I wish I could say that Hutchmoot started me on my journey into liturgy as a spiritual practice, but I think it’s more like I met a bunch of companions who were traveling down the same road, and we’ve now traveled that way together for many years.

When I’m refer to liturgy, I’m talking about ritual, about scripted words, about reciting ancient prayers in unison — practices that we seem to have abandoned in many modern churches.

In 2013, my friend Alyssa — the one I met at Hutchmoot — gave me a “hijacked journal” for Christmas. It was a lovely journal with a rabbit on the front, and she had hijacked it by writing quotes from some of my favorite authors on many of the pages. I spent 2014 and 2015 filling those pages with prayers – a new one each week.

Most of the prayers in 2015 were ones I wrote myself. I wrote them and then I prayed them over and over. The pages are full of revisions as the praying helped me edit. Or, was it God?

At Hutchmoot 2015, on Sunday afternoon as part of our closing session, we joined together for “The Liturgy of Lost Rhyme,” written by Douglas McKelvey. When we walked into the sanctuary, we were handed a script and a slip of paper that told us the part we were to read.

We joined together reading old/new words, interspersed with songs, that told the story of our brokenness and our redemption.

In retrospect, I see how this was a prelude for one of the most important books to come out of the Rabbit Room — Every Moment Holy. (Rabbit Room is the “host” of Hutchmoot.)

Every Moment Holy, published in 2017, is a collection of liturgies written by Douglas McKelvey. It contains everything from table blessings that can be read by a group at a special dinner to a couple of prayers for before or after changing a diaper. He gives words of thanksgiving to God for the wonder of the first snow or arriving at the ocean, and prayers to offer when we hear sirens or find ourselves randomly thinking of another. Every moment truly is holy — and these are liturgies to remind us of that. They gives us words for moments when we don’t have words.

If I were to tell you to go to the Rabbit Room store and buy one book, it would be this book.

Every Moment Holy, Volume II: Death, Grief & Hope came out a month ago. It contains liturgies for when a person receives bad news, for caregivers in need of rest, for those who enduring lasting pain, for final hours. Having sat at both my parents’ bedsides when they passed away, I can tell you that words don’t come easily in those moments.

Back to struggling for words… This post has been in my draft folder for a full month. Hey, Doug — how about a liturgy for finishing an unfinished blog post?

A to Z Blogging Challenge · Hutchmoot

Kind (as in “It takes all kinds”)

Sally7 Comments

I’ve been touring colleges during April with my two youngest daughters — one at a time, of course. One daughter at a time, one college at a time.

Looking at colleges in the time of COVID is particularly challenging. Many colleges weren’t offering on-campus in-person tours until recently. Some colleges still aren’t. Some — like the college Laurel and I toured on Wednesday night — offer group events, but then break down the attendees into tiny groups of no more than four people per tour guide.

So we toured a college on Wednesday and were paired with the only people of color who attended the event. Their presence in our little pod made me painfully aware of the lack of people of color on that campus. I found myself looking with new eyes — and hurting a little for them.

I looked back over the few photographs I have from Hutchmoot’s past and my group of people there is decidedly homogenous.

Hutchmoot 2016

However, an unforgettable Hutchmoot moment came in 2016 when a gospel choir filled the sanctuary of the Church of the Redeemer with the most beautiful music.

photo credit: Mark Geil

In addition, one of the singers called us her jelly biscuits, and then had to educate us on the meaning of that compliment.

I grew up in a decidedly white town. I am slowly growing in my understanding of how other people’s experiences have been different from my own — and I am SO grateful for that.

In 2017, Hutchmoot changed location and more than doubled in size. It also grew in diversity.

Last year, Hutchmoot, like the rest of the world, went virtual and called itself Hutchmoot Homebound. That allowed an unlimited number of attendees so it grew exponentially. I forget the exact number, but it was in the thousands.

Again, it was more diverse. I was exposed to the rapper-spokenwordartist-poet Propaganda. Every time I watched it – and I watched it multiple times – “winsome” was the word that came to my mind to describe him. If someone had told me in 2011 that one of my all-time favorite sessions from Hutchmoot would be given by a black rapper, I wouldn’t have believed them.

It takes all kinds to make a Hutchmoot. I’ve met musicians, visual artists, sculptors, doctors, nurses, computer programmers, someone who works for the FBI, a US marshall, chefs, teachers, stay-at-home moms, writers, poets, photographers, a seamstress, quilters, office workers, pastors, people in transition from one career to another, people who have been at the same position for 40 years, married, unmarried, divorced.

Hutchmoot has no green room. At Hutchmoot, the speakers and performers sit on the same metal folding chairs and eat at the same tables in the same dining area as the rest of us – at the same time as us – sometimes across the table from us.

The playing field is as level as they can make it. This is a great kindness to those of us who feel clumsy, small, and insignificant.

They are working all the time to make that playing field even more level.

Because Hutchmoot is put on by the kindest kind of people. They are seeking to live in ways that honor Christ.

If you were looking for a continuation of my Jonathan story, I’m afraid you’ll have to wait. It’s still there, lurking in some murky area of my brain. I’m thinking “T” if I can get there. I’m 10 days late on “K” though, so who knows.

A to Z Blogging Challenge · Hutchmoot

Jonathan

Sally4 Comments

Before my first Hutchmoot in 2011, I received a recommended reading list that I took pretty seriously.

I read Bird by Bird by Ann Lamott

I read Acedia and Me by Kathleen Norris

I read some other writing book that talked about writing and used the word “moodling.” I don’t remember the name of the book, but I do remember moodling.

And then there was Flannery O’Connor’s Everything That Rises Must Converge. I had seen it on Audible and downloaded an audio version of the book. In the weeks before Hutchmoot, I was unexpectedly away from home with a family emergency. I listened to the audio book while I was driving.

The book was odd, to say the least. I had never read Flannery before, so I had no context and no pre-formed ideas about her work. In fact, I knew literally nothing. When the second “chapter” began, I met a whole new cast of characters. The third one, even more. The chapters were unsettling and everything felt unresolved.

I found a library and was fortunate to find the book on the shelf there. As it turned out, Everything That Rises is a collection of short stories. I ditched the audiobook and leafed through the hard copy, reading a couple more stories.

A few weeks later, I was sitting at Hutchmoot in a session given by Andrew Peterson and Jonathan Rogers called “Tales of the New Creation.” Jonathan started talking about Flannery O’Connor.

He mentioned a specific short story — I think it was the one where the woman gets gored by a bull. As he talked, I nodded my head. Yes, I had read that story.

Afterwards, he approached me. “Are you a Flannery O’Connor fan, too?” he asked.

“Absolutely not,” I said.

He stared at me in stunned silence.

It turns out that Jonathan Rogers is something of an expert on Flannery O’Connor. He wrote a book about her. He teaches classes about her. He references her frequently.

I felt awful.

Later that weekend, I tried to apologize, but I think I just put my foot in my mouth further.

This Flannery O’Connor discussion extended over years. I don’t know why I couldn’t follow the advice given to Thumper — “If you can’t say somethin’ nice, don’t say nothin’ at all.” Every interaction with Jonathan just dug the hole deeper.

It hit rock bottom at Laity Lodge, a retreat center in Texas, where I had gone to the first Rabbit Room retreat in 2014. Jonathan surprised me at the coffee urn the first morning there.

We made some small talk and he said something about Georgia. It turns out that he’s from Georgia.

I said, “I’ve never really spent any time in Georgia. When we drive through going to or from Florida, my kids always think it smells bad.” This is true. There is a stinky stretch on the interstate that goes through Georgia.

Jonathan looked at me in silence and finally said, “Do you lie awake at night trying to think of ways to insult me?”

Honestly, Jonathan, it just comes naturally.

I’m really sorry.

There’s more to this story, but I’ll have to continue it in my next post — Kindness. Because, despite my interactions with him, Jonathan Rogers is one of the kindest people anyone could ever meet.

Especially to people who don’t deserve it.

A to Z Blogging Challenge · Hutchmoot

Introvert

Sally2 Comments

For the first six years that I attended Hutchmoot it was held at the Church of the Redeemer in Nashville.

The Church of the Redeemer has a lovely building, the kind that has been added onto in stages, with ramps and hidden bathrooms, a living room with leather furniture, and two kitchens. Two separate sets of stairs lead to the dining room. Little off-shoot loops hold classrooms and nursery rooms. A playground, complete with a swing set, is ready and waiting outside.

As an introvert, I loved this building. It had havens of quiet both inside and out. It also felt like it held secrets that I could discover.

In 2017, when Hutchmoot was moved to Christ Community Church in Franklin and more than doubled in size, I was quite leery. The first day of Hutchmoot 2017, I sat in my car in the parking lot looking at the door I needed to go through. Signs clearly pointed the way in, but the long sidewalk looked intimidatingly like a gauntlet.

Honestly, I’ve never done well with change — and this was a big change in something I had come to look forward to each year. Where would I go when I needed space, and quiet, and a social respite?

My car was stuffy in the Tennessee heat. I did NOT want to sit in my car, yet there I was.

Finally, after a long mental pep talk, I got out and made my way up that gauntlet sidewalk and into the church.

It was crowded. Strike one.

I didn’t recognize the people at the registration table. Strike two.

I was beginning to mentally walk right back out that door.

I looked in the folder they handed me and found this map:

Mooter’s Map

It made me smile. I immediately recognized the artist — Jennifer Trafton — even though she hadn’t signed it anywhere.

Spying the literary references and the names of beloved authors helped me breathe. This was familiar. This was homey.

Then, I saw it — the Introvert hiding place. Yes, they had thought of everything.

It was still bigger. It was still a little intimidating. But Hutchmoot is a place that embraces the Introvert and thinks about their comfort even when making big changes.

A to Z Blogging Challenge · Hutchmoot

Healing

Sally5 Comments

Mary and I have been traveling this past week. We drove past a business last night called Auto Spa.

“Do you think they give your car a massage?” I asked.

“I know a massage is supposed to be nice,” she replied, “but the thought of a stranger touching me bothers me.”

I’m with her. I had a pedicure once and even that bothered me. It was actually the whole experience. This foreign woman kneeling at my feet subserviently just felt wrong. I know that she was trying to make the ugly beautiful, and that in itself is a beautiful thing, but for me — no.

I digress.

Kind of.

Hutchmoot is about creating beauty. In song. In written word. In visual art. In community.

And beauty is healing.

Being in the midst of beauty for a whole weekend is not unlike someone pumicing away some of the callouses that have built up — not on the feet, but on the heart.

It’s like relaxing into a warm bath with the most luxuriously scented bath salts — and feeling the whole experience take away the knots — not in weary muscles, but in a weary soul.

To go once a year and immerse myself in that has been a lifeline for me.

In 2013, we created something beautiful as a group.

Each person got a random square with some pre-drawn lines on it and a color palette for those lines. Some squares also asked the artist to write a word that had been meaningful to them that weekend. People creatively filled the square. Then, while we were in our last session, sharing and finally singing the Doxology, little elves were assembling those squares into a great picture.

Oh! The oohs and aahs when we walked out and saw it! We all signed the rabbit.

I had to scour Facebook to find a picture of the whole thing. I hope Jeremiah Lange doesn’t mind that I’m using this one that he posted.

Hutchmoot 2013 (Photo by Jeremiah Lange)

And that, my friends, is about the best representation of Hutchmoot that I can think of.

It is visually beautiful.

It was created by a community.

The act of creating it was healing.

A to Z Blogging Challenge · Hutchmoot

Good

Sally1 Comment

At Hutchmoot 2013, I took pages and pages of notes for the talks I attended.The notes have arrows pointing to other sections, and words written in the margins on the vertical axis, scribbles, and single word entries — like just a name with no further explanation, e.g. Poincàre.

Honestly, most of my notes are crap. Half the time, I have no idea what I was trying to say. I know why my notes look like that though. So much good stuff was being said that I was trying to write it all down, and, as a result, got very little written coherently.

One thing that was said, though, that has stuck with me for years in a talk by Nate Wilson. N.D. Wilson has written a bunch of books: The 100 Cupboard series, Ashtown Burial series, Outlaws of Time series, as well as Notes from a Tilt-a-Whirl and Hello, Ninja. He gave a talk called “The Case for Craft,” and I actually took notes I could read.

The first section of that talk was about technical value. Are we competent at what we’re doing? This part was life-changing for me:

It’s okay to be a widow and to give a widow’s mite.

It’s okay to be bad at something on the way to being good at it.

God gives everyone grace to create beauty with their life.

N. D. Wilson

Honestly, I wish I could write like John Steinbeck, but I never will because I’m not John Steinbeck.

I’d like to write like Annie Dillard and once even had a professor compare my writing to hers. But I’m not Annie Dillard.

I love Thomas Merton’s contemplative writing — but I’m not Thomas Merton either.

I can only write like me.

And that’s okay — as long as I continue to work at making my writing the best it can be.

It’s okay to be bad on the way to being good. I hope I’m on that path.

A to Z Blogging Challenge · Hutchmoot

Friendship

Sally5 Comments

What! You, too? I thought I was the only one.

C. S. Lewis

I daresay this is quoted every year at Hutchmoot.

Muppets from Space is also oft-referenced. That’s the movie where Gonzo (in a dream) is denied entrance to Noah’s Ark because he doesn’t have a partner of the same species but where he eventually (in real life) finds others just like him.

Some of my closest friends are people I met at Hutchmoot.

At my very first Hutchmoot, they had a storytelling evening. Honestly, it’s one of my favorite things ever that they have done. Great stories told by great storytellers. I’ve asked if we could do it again and the answer was something like, “I don’t think we could ever top that one.”

I think they would be surprised. It was amazing, but the world is full of amazing people who experience amazing things. The folks who attend Hutchmoot tend to be attuned to the amazing that’s all around them.

Apparently, before Hutchmoot 2011, they had run some sort of contest where people could submit stories and then they chose two to read that night. I still remember one — a tender story about two trees and about the writer’s grandmother. (“Two Trees” can be read here.)

The woman who wrote it stood up shyly afterwards to receive applause. I watched her and felt her discomfort right along with her. Also, I was in awe at the beauty of her words. Oh, I wished I could write like that!

The next year, she was there again, and she spoke to me. I’m 99% sure that I said something stupid.

I thought that was the end of that until, a few weeks after Hutchmoot, she reached out to me via Facebook. I’m 99.9% sure that I rebuffed her overture of friendship. I didn’t feel like I was in the same strata as her.

She called me out. She wrote back saying something like, “Who decides who I can and cannot be friends with?”

And, with that, we began a long correspondence.

I told her things I had never said aloud to anyone, but somehow, it felt okay to tell Alyssa.

We wrote back and forth, sometimes daily, sometimes weekly, but rarely letting much time pass without one of us checking in on the other.

We prayed for each other through challenging times. She’s been with me through three deaths in my family. I was with her through a foreign adoption and some health issues.

A few years later, I was at a retreat put on by the Rabbit Room (the same people who put on Hutchmoot) at Laity Lodge. In a Q&A session, the question was thrown out to the audience that was something like, what do you appreciate most about the Rabbit Room? Or, what is your best takeaway from the Rabbit Room.

I timidly raised my hand. I don’t usually like to speak, but I knew the answer to this one. “Alyssa,” I said. “The greatest gift of the Rabbit Room has been the gift of a close friendship of someone who truly understands me and loves me.”

Do you think I could find a picture of Alyssa for this post? Of course, not!

But this is Leah. We met at Hutchmoot and we traveled to Bosnia together. I love Leah! I could stories about how she has been a huge encouragement to me.

And this is Kim. We met at Hutchmoot. She is such an encourager! She came to a Zaengle wedding. We text frequently. We can’t wait until we can see each other again.

Speaking of seeing each other again — I got to see Alyssa last night. I’m traveling with one of my daughters to look at colleges and were not far from where she lives. It was such a treat to see her, to talk face to face, to laugh together and to share burdens.

Why didn’t I take a picture? Probably social distancing. And the fact that photos weren’t at the front of my thoughts. Just seeing her.

Friendship is the greatest gift of Hutchmoot. Truly.