Back Home from Pat Conroy’s Lowcountry:

I sent Jeremiah his prize from Beaufort, South Carolina: A Lowcountry Heart. It’s a book of reflections by Pat Conroy and others collected after his death in 2016. Jeremiah won the prize by properly identifying that Beaufort picture I sent you, as the house in The Great Santini.

Towards the end of A Lowcountry Heart we read “A Letter to My Grandson on Sportsmanship and Basketball.”  It’s basketball that connects Jeremiah to Conroy from The Great Santini to My Losing Season. “The Citadel,” Conroy says addressing the graduating class of 2001, “gave me one of the greatest gifts of my life—it allowed me to be a college basketball player, to represent my college from the hills of West Virginia to the banks of the Mississippi to the night lights of New Orleans.” That’s pretty much our road trip with the Sjodahls.

Conroy’s kind of sentimentalism is expressed in the title “A Lowcountry Heart”. He has a big heart for the lowcountry and for its people. During our road trip we viewed the tidal marshes of South Carolina that filled him with wonder, awe and love—love for the land and love for the many sorted people he engaged there. That’s the stuff of great stories—especially bible stories like the story of Judah and Tamar: “It happened at that time that Judah went down from his brothers and settled near a certain Adulamite whose name was Hirah.” The “it” that “happened” when Judah “settled” in a certain place, is deeply tangled, troubled and problematic. It ends with a surprise: “She is more righteous than I.” Conroy’s stories are like that. All good stories are like that.

Yet, the Gospel Story is more than sentiment. It’s the story about God’s big troubling yet glorious decision about us. It’s the story about what happened when “Jesus set his face to go to Jerusalem” (Lk 9:51). Calvary moves us to love people—to have a big heart towards people and places.