“What we’ve got here is failure to communicate.” Now I know where that phrase comes from. I’m embarrassed to say that while I know the quote well, mainly because it is the opening of a Guns N’ Roses song I used to know by heart, I never saw the film Cool Hand Lukeuntil recently. I knew of it, that it was a popular Paul Newman movie, but that was about all I knew. As soon as I heard “the Captain” start that line, I knew the whole, brief monologue. It’s much more meaningful now that I have the context, too. I’ve since learned that the American Film Institute ranks this particular quote at #11 of all-time movie quotes. I felt a little redeemed when I looked up the list and realized that I know most of the top twenty. I still have some classic movies I need to see, but I can now cross off Cool Hand Luke.

This famous line has been used for all sorts of things over the decades since it was uttered on the big screen. The irony is that the non-conformist Cool Hand Luke wasn’t demonstrating a true lack of communication, but rather the reality of speaking different languages. As is often the case, in the movies and in real life, force, pain, and violence are a universal language; one that transcends dialects, vocabularies, and culture. I don’t care what your native tongue is, if someone hits you upside the head or points a gun at you, it translates pretty quickly.

But that’s not the only thing that transcends language. So do love and compassion. This is the other universal truth that drives cinema and life experience, too. Sometimes the love comes from unexpected places, which makes it easier or harder to interpret, depending on the situation. Sometimes we can see it and feel it and other times we’re oblivious. This is all worked into Cool Hand Luke,in subtle ways, of course, but it’s in there nonetheless. I’ll admit I was surprised at the Christian references built into the screenwriting and the story. I thought I knew a lot about movies with spiritual connotations, but I’ve never heard about Cool Hand Lukein a Bible story or a sermon.

I do think it’s there, however. Quite clearly. I know I’m not crazy because I got on the internet to see if I was crazy and learned that if I am, at least I’m not alone. There are a lot of sites that reference some of the same things I saw and wondered about. Like Luke’s prisoner number.  He’s #37. Luke 1:37 reads, “I can do all things through him who strengthens me.” Is that a spiritual grounding for Luke’s relentless pursuit of the impossible with his fight with Dragline?  The egg eating feat? The attempts at escape? Perhaps. If it is, it’s ironic. Luke’s character pretends not to believe in God, after all.

Which is why I found his conversation with “the old man” in the chapel so interesting and so moving. Luke’s life had been so full of external controls and punishments that he naturally assumed God was that way, too, I suppose. He was not able to conceive of a God who offered him freedom in love, so he assumed that his bar luck and hard times were punishment from God, not unlike the Captain’s smack when Luke mouthed off. Luke was running from God, just as he ran from the men who corralled him. Perhaps he figured it out when he echoed the Captain’s own line, “What we’ve got here is failure to communicate.” I don’t suppose we’ll know. What I did find especially interesting is that as Luke is driven off, shot and supposedly dying, he smiles. Perhaps he found the freedom he had sought in that moment, realizing what the unmistakable love of God can feel like even when he hadn’t been able to understand it previously.

I haven’t had time to do a lot of research on Cool Hand Luke, so I could be way off the mark.  But I loved the movie and it’s one I can’t wait to watch again. Maybe it will strike me differently the next time around. Regardless, I think that a lot of our issues with God are about “failure to communicate.” Fortunately, most of us can figure that out in ways that aren’t nearly as final or as painful. For that I give thanks.

Tom+

O GOD, who sparest when we deserve punishment, and in thy wrath rememberest mercy; We humbly beseech thee, of thy goodness to comfort and succour all those who are under reproach and misery in the house of bondage; correct them not in thine anger, neither chasten them in thy sore displeasure. Give them a right understanding of themselves, and of thy threats and promises; that they may neither cast away their confidence in thee, nor place it any where but in thee. Relieve the distressed, protect the innocent, and awaken the guilty: and forasmuch as thou alone bringest light out of darkness, and good out of evil, grant that the pains and punishments which these thy servants endure, through their bodily confinement, may tend to setting free their souls from the chains of sin; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.                      Book of Common Prayer, 1789