Bittersweet Farm

Bittersweet Farm

Ken

Things Impossible to Forget

Filed Under: Current Thoughts

Some things are impossible to forget. I learned one such lesson 20 years ago and it is seared indelibly into my memory.

He was on an Easter Sunday afternoon. I was hurriedly preparing to return to preach in the Sunday evening service. I wanted something to eat—something with a bit of protein—and noticed there were some hard-boiled eggs on the counter left over from the morning Easter festivities.

I peeled two or three of the eggs, put a bit of salt on them, then I got to thinking they might be tastier if I warmed them up in the microwave. I popped them in a bowl and warmed them up for a few seconds in the microwave.

I pulled the eggs out of the microwave. They looked great and that’s when things got really memorable. I put a little extra dash of salt on one and bit into it. That is when it exploded in my mouth burning my tongue and creating an unforgettable Easter memory.

So just this: Jesus is alive. Boil eggs. Color eggs. Hide eggs. Decorate eggs. Eat hard-boiled eggs, just don’t warm them up in a microwave and bite into them. That will create a memory you won’t be able to forget, even if you want to.

Happy Easter;
Ken

Letters to Garrison Keillor (April 23, 2019)

Filed Under: Current Thoughts

Good Morning Garrison.

Every day I listen to your rich voice with the soft piano playing under the words, “Be well. Do good work, and keep in touch.”

I’ve been well, and I’m doing my best work to the best of my ability. You mentioned you wanted me to keep in touch and I’m not sure you text, I guess I will keep in touch with you the way you keep in touch with me, by posting my writing publicly. I hope that works for you. Let me know if you would like me to correspond or communicate in a different way.

I want to report on a happy experience. A few months ago I realized that you were consistently blogging, creating fresh new material in the form of a brief personal essay/journal article every week. Paying attention, I began to realize it came into my in-box every Wednesday… Today I discovered that it is posted sometime on Tuesday, so I get up and find it and read it every Tuesday morning. It is a part of my routine as sure as listening to the podcast of the Writer’s Almanac on the way to my study at the church. The essay and The Writer’s Almanac are some consolation for not being able to listen to A Prairie Home Companion on the radio every Saturday night as I did for over thirty years.

The other night I was talking to my youngest son, Wesley. He has moved to Texas and he had a long drive ahead of him from Austin to Dallas on a Saturday night. Remembering his childhood, he looked up old recordings of the News from Lake Woebegone and listened to them on his dive. I laughed when he told me that because I have the same instinct. Often on Saturday nights I reach for the radio dial and then realize things are not now what they used to be and it takes some getting used to.

This week, when you reported on your moving experience of worship at church on Easter Sunday and your hope in the resurrection of the dead, I was heartened. I know you have moved away from the sect of your childhood, but I had always hoped that did not mean you threw the baby (Jesus) out with the bathwater (narrow sect claiming to be the only true understanding of the church). Apparently you have not, for which I am glad and my heart is warm.

Keeping in Touch;
Ken Pierpont

Bittersweet Farm Journal (Number 41) The Backstory

Filed Under: Bittersweet Farm

Easter. It’s dusk on Easter Day out on Bittersweet Farm. All the family have gone home and the house is quiet leaving us to our thoughts, and they are sweet tonight. Friday at Bethel the church was full of worshippers even with some in the balcony. Today the place was full to the ceiling, even the balcony was well-populated. We celebrated with food, brass, bells, songs, choir, dance (on Friday night), prayers, praise, accordion, and the preaching of the Word. The Bethel faithful invited hundreds of guests. I’m sure it is a day I will remember for the rest of my life. We are so blessed to serve here.

Finding Bittersweet.Every day I’m getting reports from people who are reading Finding Bittersweet. My heart is full for how it is being used to encourage people. When I was writing the book I knew it would be of interest to our friends, but I was not sure how it would be received by those who do not know us well. The testimonies that are coming back are from some who are going through deep waters and the Finding Bittersweet story is helping them cling to the promises of God.

A Story Behind the Writing of the Finding Bittersweet Story

This evening I am in my writing corner and the sun has set on Easter and I’m tired. I’m tired in a peaceful way. I’m about to climb up into our wonderful bed and rest. Tonight I will rest with a smile in my heart. I have a beautiful copy of my new book Finding Bittersweet lying on my desk under the light beside me. I keep looking over at it with satisfaction. I pick it up and fan through it. I re-read snatches of it. It makes me smile. It makes me want to cry. I give thanks to God.

To the author a book like Finding Bittersweet is an accomplishment, it is a treasure, it is the culmination of decades of living and reading and writing and crafting words and conversations and stories and listening. There are are stories and stories behind stories revealed in the book and there are stores behind the stories of the book that will probably never be printed.

So the book is really the product of primary grade teachers drilling basic facts into a hyper little blonde boy. It’s the product of bus rides and reading groups and book clubs and trips to the Principal’s office. It’s the product of my parents faithful discipleship and discipline, their love and encouragement. There are dead-ends and there are misunderstandings. There are false starts and scraps of ideas that never came to anything. There were hurts and injustices. There were my own many sins and mistakes.

When I wrote the heart of the book it was in the deep winter. We had a snow day and it was imprudent to try to get the church office open. We stayed home and enjoyed the luxury of a snow day with the calendar page wiped clean. I wrote that day. All day. Coffee and writing. Little else. Sitting by the window in the dead of winter writing about spring drives through the mountains it seemed at times if I opened the window the air would bear the fragrance of spring.

My faithful little Jeep sat out in the yard as if shivering in the snow and icy wind. The furnace purred. I napped, rose refreshed, brewed more coffee, wrapped myself is a fleece-lined flannel shirt jacket and kept writing. I wrote on into the night and that day the heart of the book was done.

There would be many, many, more hours of writing, editing, re-writing, listening to others, but I was well on my way after that winter day.

A now spring has come and the book is on the desk beside me and a season of my life has ended, but the lessons are sealed in this book. Now I look forward to new and fresh stories. There will always be more stories. Life pulses with them.

Ken Pierpont
Bittersweet Farm
Easter Sunday, April 21, 2019

Below I have gathered some photos of many of the family today.


Our son Pastor Kyle, his wife Elizabeth and the boys.


Kyle, Oliver, and Leland


Our oldest daughter Holly, her husband Jesse with Aiden Redemption and Bella Allene


Our son Pastor Chuk, his wife CC and children Aspen and Gunnison

Our Daughter Heidi


Our daughter Hannah and her husband Dale


Our son Deputy Dan Pierpont, his wife Katelynn and their son Waylon (another on the way)

Wes and Dylan


Our newest granddaughter, Halie Marie Pierpont, born to our son Wes and his wife Dylan.


Hope America and her friend Tim

And this is Lois, who avoids pictures a lot but needed to be on this page… without whom, no one would be here.

On Seeing A Man Walking

Filed Under: Current Thoughts

I saw a man walking on a county road yesterday. He was wearing a yellow cap, using a walking stick. The birds have returned. The daffodils are nodding in the cool, spring breeze. The trees are about to open into bud and there he was; a man on a backcountry road pausing to peer down into a stream on a spring morning.

To show my regard for walking people I slowed my car and gave him lots of room. He waved a thank you back my way without looking away from the stream.

I’m suffering from an attack of gout and for the last two weeks walking across the room has been a painful ordeal. The sight of the walking man moved me to tears.

By God’s grace in a few weeks I will be able to walk again. I will be the walking man and I will savor every single blessed step.

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