Ben Palpant grew up in Kenya, Africa as the son of a missionary doctor. At the age of 10, his family moved to the Pacific Northwest where he fell in love with his high school sweetheart. They have five children.
He faced a health crisis in his mid-thirties. A Small Cup of Light, Palpant's spiritual memoir, recounts his journey with God through that valley of suffering. The late J.I. Packer called it, "haunting, deeply pondered, and beautifully written." Carolyn Weber, author of Surprised by Oxford, called it "One of the best books I have ever read."
His first book of poetry, Sojourner Songs, is an intensely personal and intimate exploration of what it means to be human. Many of the poems are modern renderings of ancient scriptural passages that speak compassionately, honestly, and bracingly about our pilgrimage.
His second book of poetry, The Stranger: Meditations on The Christ, is an attempt to answer the question, "Where has God gone?" by exploring God's divine intrustion into our world in the person of Jesus Christ. It is one man's attempt to rise and meet the stranger.
His latest book published, Letters From The Mountain, published by Rabbit Room Press, Ben Palpant unpacks a lifetime of wisdom gained through the long, hard work of learning to write and to live well. Delivered as a series of letters from father to daughter, he patiently and gracefully paints a vision of what it means to enter into one’s creative work as an act of generative obedience—an act that blesses the writer, the work itself, and the world that receives it. Palpant reveals the creative process not only as an act of love and attentive artisanship, but as the work of shaping a life and a heart that points toward the coming of a Kingdom and the renewal of Creation itself.