Foolish, Trembling Rabbits; Or, What is a ‘Hutchmoot’?
Artist types are often running late, frequently tripping over neglected piles which need tidying, sometimes wearing comfy sweat pants with an oversized, artsy t-shirt (never mind the coffee stain on the bottom left corner) because it’s most comfortable and we don’t like to fuss. We’re introverts (much of the time), and that suits our art because art often requires solitude, deep focus, and hours of dedicated labor. We’re not the sort who come rapidly to mind when a party needs planning, an event needs managing, or a cause wants a champion. We’re far too disorganized for any of that, though we’ll happily show up and provide our own sort of flair.
I love the words of Paul in 1 Corinthians 1 where he describes the working of God on the worldwide scale: the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God… For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. Why is this? Why choose the unimpressive, poor, lowly, troubled, rejected, and foolish of this world to display His message of hope? Because that unexpected twist captures our attention, and it shames us for putting so much stock in strength, wealth, and wisdom.
That’s why sheep make a perfect metaphor for what it means to be a follower of Christ. But rabbits aren’t too far off the mark either. And I do get a chuckle out of the image of a warren of rabbits hopping out of their cozy dens, all a-tremble, in order to face a world bent on predation and consumerism. We’re weak and afraid. But we also may tremble because we see something others don’t—the mark of a magnificent God-man on every face, no matter how twisted with evil intent that face may be. Some of us hurry home to our burrows and are compelled to scrawl an picture, coin a phrase, etch a symbolic image. That strange dichotomy of holy and harrowed within humankind is inescapable.
And every once in awhile, artists do organize themselves.
I went to one such gathering in Franklin, TN a few weeks ago. Hutchmoot. A moot is a meeting, and the fun thing about the word is you can pretty much slap it onto anything. Tea moot, Paint moot, type moot, Mom moot, spooky moot. A moot means people of all sorts coming around a common topic of interest, bringing their various levels of knowledge and expertise, creating a hospitable atmosphere of sharing and companionship. Often, good food and drink, the right lighting and a companion or two, are enough balm to bind those bites and bruises we carry as we walk through a world at war with itself. We rabbits gather, all a-tremble, and marvel.
On the last day of Hutchmoot, Phillip Yancy offered a word of hope to an auditorium of singers, songwriters, painters, potters, poets, writers, readers, and ministers of Word. He said (my paraphrase), “Artists are subversives—in a good way— and we need them. Not subversives of God, but of the propaganda machine the church often becomes. The church as a whole tries to box God in and quantify him; of late the American church has become a business-savvy peddler of this boxed-in God. But when Jesus walked this earth, building the foundation of his kingdom, he was eating, drinking, washing feet. He was speaking in parables, stories. [Artists’] stories call back to His stories and change people’s experience of sacrament.”
Art inevitably involves self-sacrifice. When a Christian artist digs deep into the work, there often comes a point where we realize we are incapable, helpless even, to capture the thing we are trying to impart. The world is very confusing, our vision fuzzy, and words themselves wriggle about on the page, refusing to be cooperative. It’s this helplessness that leads us to God in the making of our art. We want it to be good. And only He can call it so. Something good from nothing. Something worthy from flawed humanity. As we say in the Anglican liturgy, all things come from You and of Your own have we given You.
So yes, I like the image of rabbits weak, rabbits mild, rabbits trembling in the wild—
“Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling,
for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work
for His good pleasure” (from Philippians 2)
