Commune with Me
Come commune with me. I don’t mean COMmune as a place where people live together, but comMUNE (verb) as in being in deep, intimate communication. I hope my writing allows my readers to relate, giving them a sense of communing with me. Gazing out at a rough ocean last evening the term “commune with nature” came to me.
Yet I couldn’t help but think of communing as so much more. This place, my beloved Flagler Beach, floods my mind with memories. I’ve been coming here from about the age of 14, and I’m about to be 70 so that gives you some perspective. My long-gone Mama and Daddy, family vacations, school’s out trips to Daytona with friends and boyfriends, a honeymoon to Bike Week, trips with brothers and my sister with our young children, the cousins iconic summer play, my own children, and now my grandchildren.
The closeness I feel to my late husband and our son gone too soon at the age of 28 are ever present. Both spent many happy times here and now their physical remains call this place home. It’s taken me over 50 years but now it’s home for me too. I see myself as a much younger, thinner, more energetic teenager, young woman, mother, and wife. I see my boys in the surf as babies, toddlers, little boys, and young men. I feel close to others now gone too. I see my Mama on the porch with her book. I see my Daddy with cigarette in hand. I see my older brother Mike young and healthy before the ravages of agent orange took over his body.
Moving my circle of communion outward I think of others who have trod these sands: a Native American picking up a shell fragment that would make a good tool, young men sloshing ashore in an unknown land praying for a bright future, young wives, mothers, children, wilting in the heat and longing for their homelands across the sea, dark-skinned people chained together, hacking at the palmetto scrub to clear fields. All these souls share community here. This communing is so much more than simply appreciating nature.
I do plenty of communing with nature in its most common sense too. The everchanging ocean; some days calm as a lake, others with waves bashing angrily onto mounds of quicksand-like slushy muck. White froth like ruffles of frilly tulle on a wedding gown. A clear skim of mirror like water gliding over the sparking coquina- the pretty crushed shell sand in pastel and coral colors that sticks to the skin. The clean smell of salt with only an occasional day of stinky seaweed. The constant roar of waves and cawing of birds. Quite often I am the lone soul on this stretch of sand but there are occasional shouts of glee from visiting children.
And finally, at the ultimate level I commune with God. How can anyone question the existence of God while looking at an ocean? There are not enough superlatives to describe the sea. Vast, magnificent, infinite, omnipotent. I cannot begin to fathom a God who can create such a thing. Roll into that the fact that this same God knows me, all those other souls with whom I have communed, all the creatures on this earth and in this ocean, and every person that lives or has ever lived or will ever live! It is beyond comprehension.
Have you ever felt you communed with someone or someplace? With an author through their writing? A musician or artist through their work? Have you communed with nature? With God? Perhaps you’ve communed with someone who has passed on? I would love to hear about your experiences. Please scroll down and leave your responses in a comment.
Listen to this beautiful music. See if it leads you to commune with God as it did for me.