This weekend, I was sitting in the car on the way back to the hotel from the church where Hutchmoot was held, my heart so full I could barely contain it. I just felt so much gratitude.
Gratitude for a special weekend with like-minded people, gratitude for the new friends I’d met and for the artists I love caring enough to even do something like Hutchmoot. Gratitude for stories and the different roles they serve in our lives. Gratitude that there’s still enough softness in my heart to be so deeply moved.
It’s a funny thing, gratitude, because it tips the scales. It spurs one on towards wanting to do good things. It makes you hungry to give something good and worthwhile and meaningful to the world. That’s how I feel today after a weekend where my brain and heart were stuffed full. I want to dig a little deeper, give a little more.
Earlier this summer and even this weekend, I was talking to friends about the big event I coordinate (I’m sure you can guess what it is) and how I had lost my heart for it. I felt like I was going through the motions and I wondered if there was any point. As I recalled that conversation and the way I’m feeling today so peaceful and full of gratitude, I remembered why I had started it to begin with and what it meant to me at the time. It sprang from a place of gratitude in my heart.
Things have changed a lot since that time in my life, but remembering that has helped me refocus on what’s important in the things I do. I want to work out of gratitude.
As I’m letting the many conversations of the weekend sink in, the many things I heard and want to mull over and digest over the next few days, as I consider what it all means to the person I am ever striving to be, I want to return to the work I already do and take joy in being able to give something to the world and do the very best I can.
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I am still trying to process all the conversation that took place during the “moot”. One of the things that I keep on thinking about is “what is the story your (my) life is telling”.
I am so thankful that I listened to the urging of a person or two and signed up for Hutchmoot. Of all the things that was great about Hutchmoot, the one thing that stands out most to me was how God was blessing people through the “moot”.
Oh, I still cannot believe that Andrew sat down by me during lunch and we talk about WWII books and about living in Illinois.
Thomas
I’m glad you came, Thomas! You are just exactly as I imagined you to be.
Being outside of it all, I have to admit, every time you say hutchmoot, for some reason I think of ‘Watership Down’. Which is actually kind of an awesome image. Sort of like comic-con, excpet people speak lapine instead of Klingon, and you have people cosplaying rabbits…
But on a more serious note.
I’ve often wondered why society seems to argue against gratitude – why is it so hard for people to feel it, you know? I mean, people often feel a sort of gratitude that’s more akin to shame, the kind of gratitude that says I’m not worth all of the wonderful things I have in m y life, so I’d better huble myself and do my best to not be such an unworthy person. Which has its role, but isn’t quite the same. I don’t know…
That’s a good point. I think I feel that same sort of gratitude sometimes..the kind linked to shame. But this doesn’t feel like that….it feels like wanting to give because I’ve been given to, if that makes any sense whatsoever.