The Sunday Letter | Blessed South

Last Sunday I confessed that October had mostly gotten past me in the hurry, and that I figured I had missed more of it than I would ever know. I made the month a quiet promise after that, and this week I kept it. One afternoon Misti and I took ourselves down to Naples with no errands, no list, and no particular place to be, and we gave the evening to the downtown streets at an easy stroll. There is a kind of walking where getting somewhere is not the point, where the company is the point and the street is the entertainment. That is the kind we did, while the finest fall weather of the year so far did its level best to show off.

Somewhere along the way we came upon a great little restaurant with seating outside, and we took an early supper right out in the middle of that weather. We ordered pasta, and it was delicious. I would be glad to go on about it, except that the food was not the best thing on the table. The best thing on the table was the company. The sun had started its slow drop across the sky, in no hurry at all, and for once neither were we. I sat there across from Misti and felt the kind of joy that does not need a single thing added to it. Thirty-one years of suppers we have shared now. I am not sure many have been better than this one.

Somewhere in the middle of that supper, the evening reached back and handed us a memory. We got to talking about the first time we ever visited this city, years ago, on vacation from a much colder climate, back when an evening like this was something we had to travel to. And there we sat, all this time later, calling this part of the South our permanent home. We said to each other what we both already knew, that we are grateful for it past our ability to say so, that we feel blessed beyond measure to have landed here for good. If you have ever wondered why this publication is called what it is called, that is the feeling underneath it.

And here is the part I did not see coming, the part that made the evening more than just ours. We were not out there alone. The sidewalks and the tables around us were full of folks who had come out for the same reason we had, to be in that weather while it lasted, and the whole street carried the hum of a town enjoying its own evening. We found ourselves listening to it, not eavesdropping exactly, just letting it wash over us. Near us a group of friends was deep in their plans, the trips they meant to take and the things they meant to do, the future getting passed around the table like a basket of rolls. A little farther on, a bigger party had turned out to celebrate one man’s birthday, and the glad sound of it kept drifting over to our table all through supper.

Here is what got me. Not one bit of that evening belonged to us except the little table we were sitting at, and somehow all of it did. The plans were not our plans. The birthday was not our birthday. Nobody out there knew us from Adam. And still, every bit of their gladness made ours bigger, the way more voices make a hymn fuller without anybody having to sing louder. Joy is curious that way. It may be the only thing I know of that you can take a full portion of without leaving one bit less for the folks it belongs to.

I have come to believe you can hear whether a town is well, about the same way a doctor listens to a chest. You will not find it in the traffic counts or the building permits. You find it of an evening, when the weather turns kind and the tables go outside. A well town sounds like what we heard this week: chairs scraping, friends making plans out loud, a birthday being made over, laughter drifting up from tables you cannot see. The South did not invent the common evening, but I believe we have held on to it better than most, and I would put it high on the list of the finest things we have.

So here is what I would put to you this week, while this weather holds. Go lend your two chairs to your town’s evening. Take somebody you love downtown with no list and no place to be, find the outside table, and order the early supper. You do not have to say a word to a soul beyond ordering, if you do not care to. Just sit in the sound of the place a while and let some of it land on you. And remember while you are out there that somebody nearby may be listening the way we were. Your perfectly ordinary glad evening might be the very proof they needed that gladness is still general in the world.

Take a minute with that today. Then go find your table.

That’s the week. See you next Sunday.

The South, Shared.

Porch Light

A brief Sunday reflection from Blessed South

I keep coming back to that birthday party down the way. We did not know the man. We never learned his name, and he will never know that two strangers a few tables over went home gladder because of him. His people had turned out for him, and their joy was not private property. Some of the shine of it fell on us free of charge, and it has had me sitting with the shortest job description Scripture ever wrote for loving people.

“Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.” — Romans 12:15

Down here we have the second half of that verse nearly perfected. Let trouble land on a family anywhere in the county and the casseroles are moving by suppertime. We know how to show up for the weeping, and I thank God for it. It is the first half I wonder about. Rejoicing with those who rejoice sounds like the easy assignment, and it is not. Somebody else’s weeping asks for your strength, but somebody else’s rejoicing asks for something that comes harder. It asks you to be glad, all the way down, about a good thing that landed at somebody else’s address: the promotion, the engagement, the good report, the prayer answered for them that is still sitting unanswered for you. Envy can slip into a celebration quieter than any sin I know, smiling and carrying a gift. Maybe that is why Paul listed the rejoicing first, like a man who knew which half of it we would need the practice at.

And when we do manage it, we are never more like our Father. Because God is not a chaperone at his children’s joy, standing off in the corner tolerating the noise. Listen to how the prophet describes him.

“The LORD your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.” — Zephaniah 3:17

Loud singing. Over us. Of all the pictures of God in the Bible, that may be the easiest one to forget: the Lord of hosts right in the middle of the party, glad over his people, leading the singing himself. So when we wade into joy that is not ours and add our voice to it, owning none of it and expecting nothing back, we are not just being nice. We are wearing the family resemblance.

I will own my part plainly. I am better built for the casserole than for the toast. Hand me a sorrow and I know my job, but hand me somebody else’s good news and I have caught myself running it past my own scorecard before I ever got around to being glad. I am not proud of that. I am asking the Lord to make me quicker to the rejoicing, seeing as how it is his own favorite thing to do.

So here is a small assignment to carry alongside the letter’s. Find somebody’s rejoicing this week and get all the way into it, the way that party got into that man’s birthday: the engagement, the ballgame, the good report, the table two over from yours. And if your week has you closer to the weeping end of the verse, take heart, because the same God who sings is the one who quiets you by his love, and both halves get kept. A porch light has never once asked whether you were coming home laughing or crying before it agreed to burn. It is on tonight, and it is on for you.

And if this brought you something today, share it with someone who’d enjoy it too.