Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms. If anyone speaks, they should do so as one who speaks the very words of God. If anyone serves, they should do so with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. To him be the glory and the power for ever and ever. Amen. – 1 Peter 4:8-11

Sometimes what my soul needs is a beautiful fall day, no drama, and great food in the company of good people. But then reality is summed up in the immortal words of Meatloaf who pointed out that “Two out of three ain’t bad.”

Drama of course is a staple of life, and – like yesterday’s phone call telling me that a broken pipe was spraying out water under our Wake Forest house – seldom predictable. And, given that drama is ubiquitous, what matters most is not so much what happens as how we respond.

Meanwhile here in Tarboro we still enjoyed our spectacularly beautiful fall day, we dealt with the drama, and then we walked down the street for amazing food at On the Square.

When the town meets On the Square

I love dinner out with Rebekah when it is quiet and intimate. But I also love an evening when almost every table in the restaurant features people we know and love – plus new people we are introduced to – and when almost every time the front door opens there is someone else to greet and to hug. I think that the evening was equal parts date night and social, private and public, just the two or us at our table and on our feet working the room.

But Tarboro is that kind of a town. There is an intimacy to public life here that is generous and openhearted. I know this is still our first year, and I understand that we are still in a sense honeymooning as newcomers… but there is a genuineness to the spirit of community here that you can’t make up.

I have heard of people moving to a small town and still feeling like outsiders twenty, thirty years later. Our experience has been quite the opposite. What this town has said to us, consistently and emphatically, is “Welcome Home.”

It is October 31 and our eleventh month is complete. Keep coming back and reading to see what November brings.

Peace and love, always – DEREK

pics: Great food and fall scenes