The Lowcountry, a geographical place with mysteries seeping toward consciousness, beckons you.
A thread runs through this land and its people like a young live oak reaching, swaying and bending but unbroken against time and storm and man’s onward march. This place speaks not to the ear, but to the soul. Its wind is laden with the pungent whiff of decay from pluff mud washed by tidal marshes and broad creeks.
Lowcountry people are immune to time. They tolerate it but pay no attention to it. Their rhythm is the eternal tide. They are the keepers of timelessness held in silence and heart. Here, one is touched by an ancient past and eternal future as the tides ebb and flood indifferent to man’s will.
The Lowcountry taught me devotion and assurance. From it, I learned faith and rest and patience. I learned peace from mind and progress and its intrusive noise and pain.
If the mountaintop awakens perspective, the Lowcountry draws you into it. A person cannot live here and live apart. The people, the land, the wind and tides don’t allow it. There are no strangers in the Lowcountry, only people who have yet to be enveloped by the truth living here. It is a truth unacquired by effort or osmosis, only humility.
The gain comes as its rhythm and spirit find you unaware, and then suddenly, one day you know and understand its mystery when before you did not. This place slows you against your will. It imparts and permeates and bathes you with its own desire.
There are shadows in the Lowcountry, secrets awaiting one’s coming of age, telling tales and truths harvested from land and time, passed down through generations. The shadows speak to the wise, the patient, the thoughtful and the watchful. One does not discover with intention here, one stumbles, listens and surrenders.
The Lowcountry allows its children to leave but cajoles them to return if not in permanence or respite, in mind and memory and spirit. It demands rectitude from its emissaries, a sort of evangelical chord grounded not in word but assured through deed, beckoning their obedience.
This place and its people withstand description and capture, but a cliché comes close. It says, “Those who think they know everything…”- well, you can finish it.
The Lowcountry never yields everything. It observes. It embraces. It imbues. It perseveres until we are ready and ready is a matter for the heart and God and God’s time.
This thread is the same thread weaving through the Gospel. The one searching for the wise, the patient, the thoughtful and the watchful, reaching and swaying in time and storm unbending against inhumanity’s march. The one whose truth withstands the wind and shoulders with love our stumble and surrender. It imparts and bathes us with its own desire.
It is a mystery, revealing God, beckoning our attention and obedience and humility.
“Those who have ears to hear, let them hear” (Matthew 11:15).