Speak, Friend, and Enter

This weekend marks my seventh Hutchmoot. It’s virtual this year, and I’ve been mourning off and on about it for months, even as I’ve fully agreed with the decision and appreciate the beauty the team is pouring into the online experience.

Today’s sonnet was my contribution to the 2016 scrapbook (my third year attending). That’s the year where Hutchmoot truly started feeling like home. Real friendships had blossomed over the previous few years, and all of the Hutchmoot “liturgies” that had developed over the last few years started feeling truly natural. I think the informal theme of that year for me was “feast,” and in fact I think I wrote this sonnet at the Saturday night dinner, across the table from Jen Yokel, one of my oldest friends from teh interwebz. So the “food forms poetry” line is somewhat literal.

One note: Hutchmoot relies heavily on story, so the slaves and kings line is just a general handwave at literature and history and the diversity of God’s kingdom. The Feechies are from Jonathan Rogers’ Wilderking books, and Fangs are from Andrew Peterson’s Wingfeather series.

Speak, Friend, and Enter

Originally written October 8, 2016

Speak, friend, and enter into fellowship
With slaves and kings and godly, foolish men.
Pick up your paint brush, or else, grab a pen
And join us on this wondrous, magic trip
Where Feechies wrestle dragons, men with Fangs,
Then join in song together with the birds;
Where food forms poetry made without words.
Such beauty here—yet not without its pangs.
For what is Hutchoot if not Heaven here?
But—just foretasting futures soon at hand—
A glimmering beauty we don’t understand—
A dim reflection of what will appear.
This beauty that is blossoming today
Will one day grow and never fade away.

Photo by Dan Burton on Unsplash