A Call to Commune

What a rich, heart-nourishing thing it is to commune; to experience intimacy by sharing thoughts, feelings, and desires. To commune is the essence of what the Christian tradition calls Communion which invites intimacy between believing people and their Savior, King, and Friend. Happily, the joys that flow from communing are not limited to such sacramental acts. For example, friends can experience intimacy as they share their thoughts, feelings, and desires – or, commune – over a cup of coffee.

There is even a sense in which we humans can commune with inanimate objects, like a work of art and with the created world/nature. That’s because in both cases, a creator/Creator with thoughts, feelings, and desires stands behind such works.

But to commune requires time, quietness, and attention from the parties communing. That’s probably why, in our frenetic, noisy, distraction-prone culture, communing is so difficult and rare. Despite our clamor, such works of art, even creation itself, continue to call us to commune with them. There they sit, quietly inviting us: “Come and commune with me. Hear my creator’s/Creator’s thoughts, feelings, and desires expressed in line, form, color, texture, composition, and more. As you do, please share your thoughts, feelings, and desires”

To help us heed this gentle call to commune, I offer an except from Treason’s Harbor, page fifty-four in the ninth of twenty-one books in Patrick O’Brien’s wonderful series, Master and Commander. In this scene, Captain Jack Aubrey, a decorated British Naval Officer, is about to reunite with his old friend, Admiral Hartley (emphasis added).

He was led up dim stairs and shown into a splendid room… turned toward the fireplace [and] found himself looking straight at the likeness of his former captain at the age of thirty-five or forty, a brilliant portrait, wonderfully fresh and clear. He contemplated it, standing there with his hands behind his back; and the minutes dropped by in the silence. He did not know the artist: it was not Beechey, nor Lawrence, nor Abbott, nor any of the usual painters of the Navy; probably not an Englishman at all. But a very able fellow in any case: he had caught Hartley’s strong, masterful, dominating air exactly, and his energy; but, reflected Jack after a long communing with the portrait, he had certainly not liked his sitter. There was a cold hardness in that painted face, and although the portrait was truthful enough in its way it took no account of Harley’s good nature – rarely expressed, to be sure, but real enough upon occasion. The picture was not unlike a statement made by an enemy: and Jack remembered how a brother-officer had said that even Hartley’s undoubted courage had a grasping quality about it, that he attacked the enemy in a state of furious indignation and personal hatred, as though the other side were trying to do him out of some advantage – prize-money, praise, employment.

By the way, the thumbnail for this blog is taken from the film adaptation of O’Brien’s book series - Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World - which I would heartily recommend as a worthy artistic partner for communing thanks to the filmmaker’s faithfulness to their source material, and their very competent attention to cinematic beauty (soundtrack, costumes, production design, sound design, character development, lighting, script, acting, effects, and more).