Today it was abundantly clear that the local neighborhood ants got an early start (surely even before dawn?) — for their handiwork was evident along many sidewalk crevices.
I’ve been thinking a lot about detachment, since reading and reflecting on Meister Eckhart’s writings. I ponder detachment, that is, when I’m not thinking obsessively about clay … and planning when I can possibly get back to the studio. But it strikes me now that the two words, detachment and clay, are intimately related.
Does this marriage ceremony quote ring a bell? “…A man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh?” It’s the King James English translation of Matthew’s gospel, where Jesus, rebuking the arguments of the Pharisees, quotes directly from one the creation stories in Genesis. I just love the poetic image, “leave and cleave.”
We usually use the word cleave to mean “to split, part, or divide by force” (from the Old English cleofan… Etymology Online). But here the same English word means “to stick, cling, adhere” (from the Middle English cleven, and the German kleben “to stick, cling, adhere,” from PIE *gloi- “to stick”). Well, *gloi is also the root of the Old English claeg “stiff, sticky earth; clay” (Etymology Online) — thus sources see a common PIE root meaning for “clay” and “stick together, or cling.” Clay and cling come from the same common root word.
So the image from today’s walk, speaks to me of “clay” and “cling” and, by extension, “leaving and cleaving.” In the close up of the ant mound, those fine grains of sand are not simply stacked on top of each other, you can see by their arrangement that they are actually clinging to each other — much the way damp ocean sand clings to your ankles and toes, long after you’ve left the beach. Ask a high school chemistry student and she’ll tell you this is an example of intermolecular attraction (in this case, “hydrogen bonding”). It’s all about attraction! Clinging is attraction; the positive end of one particle for the negative end of the other. Each sand particle clings to its neighboring particles and likewise they to it. They hold each other in a mutual embrace.
That is the funny thing about cling: it is mutual. Like love.
Contrast “cling” with the word “attach,” (“to fasten, affix, connect”). Attach is one-directional. It’s not mutual. I tie up my laces; I bind up a wound. I attach myself to my well groomed self-image. My self-image does not attach himself to me, because he, as image, has no substance. There’s nothing there! Nobody home!
Here is how Eckhart counsels those who are able to take even the smallest step towards detachment. (Substitute the word “God” with “Life” or “Mystery” if it helps.).
If we cling to God, then God and all virtues cling to us. And what once you were seeking now seeks you; what once you hunted after now hunts you; and what you once wished to shun now avoids you.”
Counsel 5
I wonder what I might find seeking me today!
tgholt.net 