What to do About Hutchmoot

    Consume consume consume, this is my story.  Great ideas, good food, wonderful fun with friends, marvelous music, fellowship, rhythm, dance, art, poetry.  I've been been feeling this way a great deal after hearing thoughts and different ideas at Hutchmoot 2012 in Nashville.
    I spent a 4 days hanging around artists and mothers and fathers, hoping that some of their brilliance would rub off on me. ND Wilson blew my mind away with his thoughts on Story and the Gospel. Don and Lori Chaffer along with Ben Shive and Ron Block gave me insight into musical collaboration.  Ron Block, someone whose thoughts have been instrumental in the shaping my 22 year old me, shared his thoughts with me on our Identity in Christ. I rocked out to Andrew Osenga's new album as he performed in his space suit. Andrew Peterson. The icing involved meeting some beautiful people from all over the country.
    It was a great weekend, and I was thoroughly inspired, inspired to write songs and poetry, to see and appreciate the stories playing out all around me in creation  However, I have been inspired before by awesome weekends, probably more so than by what happened at Hutchmoot.  I did not fellowship with as many people as I would have liked because I was extremely tired and physiologically unstable after sleepless night of driving.  Anyhow, all that leads my to this question which I am still asking myself: What does one do after an experience like Hutchmoot?  Along similar lines, "How have you changed?" was the challenge thrown out by Pete Peterson at the last session.
    Here is how I have changed: I want to do something.  I am tired of listening to sermons, music, art. I want to create! I need to create!
    I have found it so easy to listen to good sermons, read scriptures, listen to great stories, feel attracted to beautiful girls and do nothing, greatness going in and nothing coming out.  It is as I am a black hole to inspiring thoughts and ideas.  Well, If inspiring thoughts, stories and ideas don't lead to anything, they might as well be dead. I have had enough of endlessly consuming inspiring thoughts, stories, and ideas.  I hunger to be in an inspiring story,  to tread the path of a great thought,  to put to test a good idea. I must do something with these jewels God has thrown my way.
    Lately, my passion for action has been fed by the book of Luke with stories of people who do things . In chapter 8 a chronically-sick woman's faith leads her to do something.  As Jesus and his entourage goes by, she thinks "If only I touch his robe, I will be healed. She touches his robe and is miraculously healed.  She thinks and then does. Jesus tells us earlier that those who hear His words and do them are in his family. In the next chapter, Jesus sends his disciples out to do stuff, i.e. proclaim the gospel. True faith leads to somethin' gettin' done. I want to be a doer.
     I might note that doing something is different than not doing something. The idea that faith leads to a list of 'do nots' is sickening, yet this is what I have grown up hearing in the church.  Faith leads to holy action figures, not pious bores. It is much easier to not have sex before marriage, to not cuss, and to not get drunk than it is to love people. Is that not what Christ did while he trod this earth? He loved.
    No, it is more than a bunch of 'do nots' that I desire to put into practice.  It is action that I desire.  What action is it that Christ would ask of me?  "A new command I give you,  love as I have loved"  And he followed his own order like an honorable general, all the way to the worst death imaginable.
    Love. This is no feeling in the chest, this is an Active, Aggressive love. Hearts are on the line. Trumpets blare, battle lines form. The enemy stands across the field. War chants and drums. Ready the arrows! Sound the charge! My phone buzzes. Snooze. 9 minutes later it goes off again. I mozy out of bed on this thanksgiving's eve and ask, "What shall I do today?"