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
