Ken Pierpont's Blog, page 145

Does Grace Still Amaze You?

Date: September 16, 2012 AM

Title: Does Grace Still Amaze You?

Speaker: Ken Pierpont

Series: Matthew’s Gospel

Text: Matthew 20:1-16

The Fulfillment and Reward of Joining Jesus’ Mission

Date: September 9, 2012 AM

Title: The Fulfillment and Reward of Joining Jesus’ Mission

Speaker: Ken Pierpont

Series: Matthew’s Gospel

Text: Matthew 19:16-30

Ada Covered Bridge

This evening I went for a walk in a delightful place. Lois was attending a photographer’s workshop so I went exploring. I stumbled into this little covered bridge at dusk on the edge of the village of Ada. It was a great place for a half-hour stroll. I made a mental note to return and enjoy the Bike Shop, Farmer’s Market, Bake Shop and the eateries.

As I walked I heard laugher that sounded like it was coming from the sky and thought, “This is a unique village indeed.” Upon investigation I discovered that the laughter and happy conversation were wafting down from the second-story outdoor deck of the Schnitz East Deli. It smelled and sounded good. Next visit, I may get a taste of it. Let me know if you beat me to it.

A Free Weight-Management Tool

If you don’t own an iPhone, buy one so you can run this app! It is a powerful tool to help you moderate your eating and measure your exercise.

Lois like this one

They are both great apps.

Enjoy your walks and your salad and your new waistline. Enjoy your new clothes. Let us know how it goes.

Wreath of Bittersweet

This year the autumnal equinox in the Northern Hemisphere is September 22. That will be the first day of fall for scientists, but for us who are poets, the first day of autumn is the first day of September. On the poet’s calendar, Winter is December, January and February; Spring is March, April and May; Summer is June, July, and August; and Autumn, the most glorious season of all, is the golden crown of the year; September, October and November.

I’m longing for a wreath of bittersweet to remind me of the lazy drives along the back roads of Knox County a couple decades ago, the taste of cider and a tart apple, the crunch of the leaves and the glory of Autumn color. I’ll be writing about it for at least a couple months before we turn our attention to Thanksgiving, the celebration of our Savior’s Birth, and a New Year.

Dance While You Can

It was a hot summer in Michigan from late May through the first week of August. For this reason we had some misgivings about taking our vacation in Kentucky in mid-August.

Mid-August in Kentucky is often hot and usually humid. But when we arrived in Kentucky it was as fresh as autumn in Michigan, especially at night. It was delightful for porch-sitting and neighboring. It was perfect for hiking in the mountains. It was just right for a slow, winding drive through the Red River Gorge. It was great sleeping weather, especially for the night we slept out in the Natural Bridge Park. The hot tub and the starlight were wonderful when the temperature is a little cool. It was ideal for the Pizza Picnic we enjoyed with all the Dunbar clan outside Little Caesars, after church on Sunday in Stanton and it was the most beautiful Hoedown Island weather I ever remember.

Hoedown Island might be the main attraction for a Pierpont vacation in Eastern Kentucky.

Friday and Saturday nights the whole bunch went to Hoedown Island for a bit of folk-dancing, square dancing, line-dancing, clogging and other body moments I’m not even going to attempt to describe.

Hoedown is a little noisy and frenetic, but late in the evening towards closing time they play a quiet song with a three-beat and lovers waltz.

What happened next has never happened before in my lifetime. In thirty-three years of marriage Lois has never once asked me to dance with her. She has never even hinted at an interest in dancing. Not once. But when the music began she walked out and turned to be with her shining brown eyes and smiled and said; “Dance with me, Ken.”

I wanted to dance with her, but my feet wouldn’t move. They couldn’t.

“O, Honey. I can’t.”

“Come on, Ken. Dance with me.”

“I’m sorry. I just can’t.”

Chuk and Wes said, “Go Dad. Dance with her. She’s out there alone. Go.”

I tried but I couldn’t move. Not a step.

When I was a boy. My parents would write me a note so I could be excused from square-dancing in school. We just plain didn’t dance. It was taboo. It was forbidden. I had no experience dancing and until about five years ago I had no desire.

Then one summer afternoon the girls were getting ready for Hoedown and they were learning the Texas Ten-Step. It looked fun. It was wholesome and it was happy and everything inside me wanted to learn. They started to teach me, but I got distracted and never got back around to it. I never mastered the Texas Ten-Step and I had not ever tried to Waltz.

“Ken. Dance with me. Please.”

Chuk said; “Dad. Get out there. She’s alone.”

And then seeing I couldn’t move he ran out to dance with his mother. He was only a little better than I and the dance instructor took him away from Lois for a private lesson. Lois was alone again.

She looked at me and pleaded, “Ken. Come out here. Dance with me.”

Wes said, “Dad. She’s alone. Go out there.”

I froze. He went out to dance with his mother. The song faded and the couple walked off and my moment of opportunity slipped away.

I have regrets in life. Most of them you will never know. This is one painful mistake I intend to correct. The next time my beautiful, happy, fun-loving wife needs someone to dance with her I am going to be ready. I’m going to be all practiced up so that I won’t embarrass her or hurt her and I am going to be ready. You will see. I will not die with this dark regret on my heart. When the time comes I will dance.

There are times when it is wrong to dance and there are times it is wrong not to dance. I don’t want to be guilty of either.

Ken Pierpont

Granville Cottage

Riverview, Michigan

September 7, 2012

Real Tomatoes

Classic re-post from 2008

My cousin Di has Facebook now. When we were kids we saw each other regularly. We have our own families now and our own lives so we only see each other when someone dies, which is very sad. It was good to connect on Facebook. I scrolled through her pictures. We look a lot alike. We could pass for brother and sister. I read her interests. One of them made me smile. She has always been a bright girl, quick-witted and verbal. Even as a child she would commonly read an entire book in one day. She is a neo-natal nurse practitioner so she is a competent professional, but she still has a very simple, common interest that she inherited from our grandparents like our sharp, pointed noses – she likes growing tomatoes.

Growing tomatoes has always been a big deal in our family. My grandparents survived the Great Depression and they were devoted gardeners. They grew bell peppers that grandpa always called “mangoes.” They grew wagon-loads of seet corn. They grew wonderful green beans and cucumbers – (They always called them pickles, even though I don’t remember them pickling many of them). But the memory I cherish most is the memory of garden-ripe tomatoes. They were just plain champion tomato growers. The kitchen window was always lined with big, juicy, beautiful, red tomatoes.

Grandpa would grab a salt shaker and sit down for lunch and eat tomatoes like apples. Our part of Ohio was perfect for perfect tomatoes. They were so common and abundant when I was growing up that I had no idea how rare and wonderful they were at the time. I long for real tomatoes to come into season.

If you bite into something that looks like a tomato and juice doesn’t run down your arm, it’s probably synthetic. It’s not a real tomato. Real tomatoes are grown by real people in real places with real dirt and real water and real sunshine and real care and they are real good – real, real good. There really is no substitute for real tomatoes.

Zach, a man in our church, has an impressive truck-patch garden on a few acres behind his home. He and his family are very diligent people. Our son Daniel has worked for them this summer. One of the wonderful fringe benefits of his job and been occasional produce from Zach’s farm. This week he came home with a beautiful basket of real, red, ripe, perfect tomatoes. Saturday we had bacon, lettuce and TOMATO sandwiches.

When I pull a burger off the grill on a warm summer evening I don’t want to ruin it with a slice of insincere tomato-like product. I want a real, honest-to-goodness slice of red, ripe, juicy ‘tomatoness’ on that thing.

Have you noticed that there are “Christians” and then there are Christians. Sometimes you meet professing Christians who have that same “real tomato” quality of sincerity about them. You immediately get the feeling that you are with an honest, genuine, open follower of Jesus Christ. They look you in the eye. Their smile is real. Their words are sincere. They do what they say. They’re honest. I hope people find me to be a “real-tomato” kind of Christian. The real thing, not some “hot-house variety” type of Chrisitan. I don’t want to be slick and professional and distant with people. I don’t want to be plastic and produced. I don’t want to be “canned” and full of hollow talk and clichés. I want to be the real dirt, real sun, real rain, home-grown, down-to-earth and rooted in Christ kind of Christian that only the Spirit of God can produce over time.

Cousin Di

P.S. Holly wanted me to tell you that she made the BLT’s. (There were good)

Ken Pierpont

Granville Cottage

Riverview, Michigan

September 22, 2008

Jim May, Storyteller (A Bell for Shorty)

I’ve always loved this story. I told a version of it for years. I first head it on a tape I borrowed from the Mt. Vernon Library in Ohio when the children were small. I never paid attention to who told it our gave proper attribution.

One evening many years later at a Storytelling Festival in Flint, Michigan I was listening to Storyteller Jim May and realized he was the man who told this wonderful story.

I talked with Jim and he forgave me for telling his story over and over again without proper attribution. He was kind and forgiving. I purchased a copy of his book; The Farm at Nippersink Creek. He inscribed it for me, “Keep ringing the bell.”

I thought you would enjoy the story. For best results listen slow and easy clear to the end.

What Gets You Out of Bed in the Morning?

Found this on the web. Thought it was cool. This Pierpont is our first-born. The photo is of Kyle

I am Kyle Pierpont. Here are some things that make me get out of bed every morning.

preaching, photography, backpacking, canoeing, fixed-gear bikes, fly-fishing, coffee, snowboarding, body surfing, skim-boarding, ultra-light spin fishing, beach-combing, cliff-jumping, reading, push ups, crunches, trail running, sanctification, wrestling with sons, hibernation days with my family, kayak surfing in the Atlantic, my Creator, cuddling on the couch with my wife, ohio state football, graph paper, sunday night football, my mbp, playing my parkwood guitar, ping-pong, tennis with my wife, driving through the night, the Psalms, podcasts, storytelling, days off, catching pan-fish with my sons off the dock of my in-laws cottage in northern Michigan, the corner store, coffee via the pour-over method, american pickers, an occasional herbal tea, uni-ball micro ball point pens, Lake Michigan, just a little sun burn, campfires, original languages, listening to my sons laugh, dates with my girlfriend, wood-working, roller-coasters, coffee roasting, northwest Michigan, flannel shirts, communion, autumn, the feeling of a fish on, the common loon, eagles, trails in the woods, fruit and vegetable juice, the speckled back of a trout, the call of a wild turkey, rainy days, saturday mornings, occasional big breakfasts, autumn and not in this particular order…

Treat Them Like I Treated You

Date: August 26, 2012 AM

Series: Matthew’s Gospel; The Stories and Teachings of Jesus Christ

Title: Treat Them Like I Treated You

Speaker: Ken Pierpont

Text: Matthew 18:21-35