Twelve years ago I discovered The Rabbit Room, an online community created by singer-songwriter (and now author) Andrew Peterson and friends. I felt like I had opened a portal into a world full of light and beauty, and God used it in major ways to bring comfort and strength and meaning after the death of Kraig and my oldest daughter, Keren. The Rabbit Room blog posts and comments sections were a place of rich conversations, ranging from art to theology, humor and nerdiness to serious discussion. It was a community I didn’t know I needed. After all, it’s not like I was starving for friends or community. I was surrounded by a strong, loving family and friends who comforted us in our grief and gave us hope. I had friends I could trust and talk to about all sorts of things. Yet even with that, The Rabbit Room provided a touch of magic that made the world more vibrant.
Two years after that, my sister Carrie and I held our breath and took a plunge into the in-person Rabbit Room conference, Hutchmoot. Suddenly we were able to put flesh and bone on the names we had grown to appreciate, and we found more beauty and love. There was sorrow, too, and as time went on, we came alongside each other and grieved, and comforted. Time passed, and those I had seen as sitting on unattainable pedestals of glory became more human, not because they fell, but because I saw them more clearly. Their flesh and bone was like my own, a work in progress with strange kinks and creases, places God was massaging and molding. It was a beautiful thing to see. Friendships deepened and grew, not just because we had shared interests, but because we became more like family with a shared core and experiences.
My kids have grown up on my stories of Hutchmoot, and have known the artists and their various work for years now. Most of their formative years, really. Naturally they’ve wanted to attend Hutchmoot as well, so when our daughter Clare hit eighth grade we said we’d try to have her come the following year. That year was put off due to the costs of a kitchen remodel, but in March of 2020 we were gifted with two golden tickets. Ah March of 2020! That month that changed all of our lives…
Hutchmoot went virtual for Fall of 2020 and then 2021, and in true Rabbit Room form, the staff created an incredible online experience. But Clare and I still had our tickets, and last weekend we hopped in the car and pointed our noses north to Hutchmoot in-the-flesh.
I could go on and on about what an incredible reunion it was—the blend of reconnecting with old friends, meeting friends I’ve known a few years only online, and making brand new friends. I could elaborate on the refreshing sessions I attended, and the thoughts I came up against and had to ponder and evaluate. I could talk about how the core of The Rabbit Room is still solid, and how that gives me continued hope for this beautiful creation.
But it was Clare’s thoughts as we wrapped up the weekend that have stuck with me.
“It was good,” she said, “but it wasn’t as incredible as I thought it was going to be.”
Her words weren’t shocking. The poor kid ended up with a head cold just before we went that left her with a stuffed head and the ignominy of having to constantly blow her nose—never a great thing, but worse in this post-Covid world. I was immediately drawn into conversations, but she didn’t have folks she knew personally, and while I could include her a bit, she didn’t get a chance to really forge forward on her own till the second day of the conference. But as we talked about her feeling, we started to see that there was more to it than that.
Clare said, “I enjoyed it, but it wasn’t really new. I have a lot of friends back home who are into the same books and music I am, and they like a lot of Rabbit Room stuff.”
I realized that when I first found The Rabbit Room I was living in something of a desert. I didn’t have a community that inhabited the deep areas of beauty and art and suffering, all the while exploring how God works through these. I didn’t have books and music that fed that part of my soul. Clare, on the other hand, has been exposed to these resources for twelve years now. The Rabbit Room community has grown exponentially in that time, too, so its resources are more readily available. In the more nerdy communities of the world—and we happen to hang out in one of those—more people are likely to know about The Rabbit Room. Clare gets to experience something like Hutchmoot every time she goes to her youth group.
We chatted about this for a bit, and Clare’s eyes lit up as she realized she hadn’t missed something just because she hadn’t experienced the same thing I had with my first Hutchmoot. She has something already that goes deep.
I can’t wait to see how God illuminates Clare, and what her own experiences will be. She is not me, but that doesn’t mean there’s no magic for her. God’s bigger than that, will reveal it to her in the way that will give her life.
