Bittersweet Farm

The road running west from Bittersweet Farm rises and falls through gentle woods and farmland toward the next crossroads. Tonight I walked toward the sunset in the company of Hazard. I drive through those hills every day but to walk them with a dog on a cool autumn evening at sunset is to experience them in a deeper way.

Late this week the final days of October will fall away like the last of the leaves blowing from the yellow Maples and November will arrive.

By the end of the first week of November the rest of the leaves we so longed to meet in May will be raked and blown and mowed into the fields around us or into the rocky fencerow. As I blow them across the yard I remember early spring days when I so longed for the trees to begin to bud. The leaves would not appear until May in our part of the world. At first a faint translucent green and then by mid-May the full dark green they will display so beautifully until September. Now they have turned to red and orange, rust, brown, and around Bittersweet mostly yellow. They blow down in a prolonged and graceful dance. I could watch them for hours always with the sense the the time to enjoy them is so short.

After my walk Lois and Hope and I took a drive through the countryside at dusk. Geese passed overhead, the sun set red in the west, the trees glowed, the deer lifted their heads from their grazing to watch us and sun set on the last of the autumn Sundays out on Bittersweet.

Enough About Me

Let me be open with you about something God has been showing me. The best way I know to do that is with a story.

A few years ago I was attending a conference some of with our sons. The lady at the registration table looked up with joyful surprise when I said my name.

“Oh, my. Ken Pierpont. I read your blog and watch your messages. I’m so glad you are here. It’s so nice to meet you. I love to read your stories and look at your family web sites.”

“Thank you,” I said. “A couple of my sons are here with me, maybe you can meet them.”

“O, I would love that. I will watch for you.”

Later we bumped into her again and I introduced her to our oldest son, Klye. She said the same things to him about my blog and my preaching and the family. She also mentioned that she loved to look at Lois’s photography blog. She said; “My husband takes pictures, too.”

Kyle interrupted her warm compliments by saying; “What kind of pictures does your husband take?”

It was a simple question but my reaction to it made me think for a long time. When he interrupted her talking about us and encouraged her to talk about herself and her husband, I wanted to stop him and say; “Kyle, she wants to talk about us.”

Reflecting on it a realized with embarrassment and humility the selfishness of it. I was eager for her to heap compliments on me and did not even think of turning the conversation back to her and to her interests.

Lately I have been trying to tell myself silently over and over again. “Enough about me, what about you?”

A few years ago a young man named Garret Brink said something along the same line that I have never forgotten. He said; “There are two ways you can enter a room. You can enter saying, ‘Here I am!’ Or you can enter saying “THERE you are!”

I want to be a There-you-are guy not a Here-I-am guy. I want to be an enough-about-me-what-about-you guy. I’m not yet, but I want to be.

Next week I begin a new year of life. This will be one of my goals for the new year.

Years ago I went to a conference. At the end of the conference they passed out little buttons that said PBPWMGINFWMY… As you probably know the letters stood for Please be patient with me, God is not finished with me yet.”

But enough about me. What about you?

Bittersweet Farm
October 28, 2019

Day off on Bittersweet. No appointments. None. The sky is gray but the woods around Bittersweet are wearing the bright yellow of late October. Oats and coffee this morning. Back to my writing desk. The house is quiet. Hope is at work. Lois is on an errand for a few hours. Hazard is curled up in Hope’s room. A car passes occasionally. The silence returns. I putter among my books plotting what to read next, weighing my work today. I have some writing to do but those books are always calling to me.

This is the view from my the corner of the little farmhouse on Bittersweet where I write. The house is quiet, warm, secure, peaceful today. I’m enjoying the luxury of an autumn day without appointments or meetings. I’m working at home on my day off, doing some writing, but always tempted to stop and read. I’m only a few feet away from a collection of hundreds of books by my favorite authors on the landing library.

It is on days like this that I am most grateful and thoughtful about how God has given us the desire of our hearts to be a village parson and live in a place surrounded by creation, birds and trees, sky and stars and moon, wild animals and woods, grass and growing things. Wide fields and woods around us to explore.

I want to stop and read Great Possessionsby David Kline, the autumn parts again.

I think about stopping to read Wendell Berry, stories of the “Membership” call to me.

I’m tempted to indulge in a Eugene Peterson’s Kingfishers or The Contemplative Pastor.

There are a whole collection of books by John McPhee who can make anything interesting. (I want to preach like he writes)

Of course, I am eager to read Andrew Peterson’s latest which arrived out on Bittersweet by mail this week: Adorning the Dark. I heard on a podcast interview yesterday that he was inspired by Wendell Berry to buy a country place, so I doubt I will make it through the weekend without reading that.

I have two books by Bethel peeps. One written by a sister now with the Lord who has two children still at Bethel another by one of our men–Chili and Cheese for the Soul.

Just yesterday I picked up a beautifully-bound copy of Fredrick Buechner’s Yale Lectures on Preaching, Telling Secrets, which are calling to me.

There is a new Jerrod Wilson book on the Gospel-Centered Church which I have moved high on my reading stack.

I want to finish Rural Parish by Anna Gebhard, a narrative of her ministry in a small rural charge in Minnesota.

I’m enjoying Madeleine L’Engle’s Two-Part Invention-the Story of a Marriage.

There is Lila by Marilynne Robinson unfinished buy beckoning.

I want to savor Roy Peter Clark’s Writing Tools and William Zinsser’s Writing Places.

I’ve started A Year in the Maine Woods… all of them tug on me from their shelves, while another force pulls me back to the glowing screen and the artful fonts on my Ulysses writing software…

I have a little commonplace book from Baron Fig where I try to record my reading.

It’s a little chilly and I’m tempted to bump up the heat but I keep a buffalo plaid, fleece-lined shirt jacket near at hand for times like this. Maybe I’ll just put on my shirt-jacket go downstairs and brew some coffee and decide how to spend the rest of this quiet window of time when I return to my peaceful little corner of the house.

[I returned to my quiet corner of the house to write and ended up reading Andrew Peterson’s Adorning the Dark. The phone rang. One of our beloved parishioners is in the hospital. I’m a writer. I’m a reader, but most of all, I’m a Village Parson].

Bittersweet Farm
October 25, 2019