I didn’t have to walk far this drizzly overcast morning before my eye was drawn to a glorious pale violet bloom bearing an intense yellow throat and bejeweled with water droplets — today’s early morning work of an iris rooted in the NC Piedmont red clay.
My wife and I have been discussing the concept of “clinging” (as in “leave and cleave”) for the past couple of days. These conversations led us to consider the hidden bonds in relationships, even in relationships with passing strangers.
And we were both struck by how clinging is a mutual attraction, it goes both ways — the damp sand clings to your skin, and your skin to the sand. Key to this attraction is water — the sand and ankle need to have some bit of dampness in order to cling. The medium is water; it’s the dance floor for this molecular clinging.
The miracle of the early morning water droplets resting on the iris is an example of water molecules preferentially clinging to other water molecules. Rather than cling to the flower petal in one uniform coating, the water molecules prefer each others embrace — the positive end of one molecule for the negative ends of all of her neighbors — forming, by the sheer strength of their embrace, the raised transparent orb. It’s a strong bond — in fact, the strongest of intermolecular bonds. But it’s not a static embrace, it’s a holding and letting go, a holding and letting go, over and over in a molecular dance. This ebb and flow; breathing in, breathing out; is another aspect I’m coming to appreciate about the word “cling.” My relationship with my wife, my children, friends, yes, the Divine, all have this universal ebb and flow nature.
“And what once you were seeking now seeks you; what once you hunted after now hunts you; and who you once wished to shun now avoids you.”
Meister Eckhart, Counsel 5
What struck me about Meister Eckhart words I quoted earlier this week, is that, in as much as I can live detached from my own self-constructed self (Merton’s term is “false self”), and in as much as I can find myself clinging to all that is good (in a word, the Divine) — to that extent, what I wish to shun naturally avoids me. Avoids me on its own accord! It’s just as the water molecules shun the flower petal molecules, clinging preferentially to each other, and the petal molecules naturally, then, avoid the water.
Or if you like, consider old and water. Having no positive and negative ends, no polarity, oil molecules have little attraction for each other, much less water. So, in the molecular dance, water molecules cling to and dance with each other on the dance floor, holding and letting go, holding and letting go, while the oil molecules sit on rental folding chairs, avoiding the water molecules — from which they have been shunned.
The key is that it is all miraculously natural. It’s based on clinging, not avoiding. The avoiding happens because of the clinging.
My soul brother Mike has been known to say at times, “You know, Tom, that’s just the water they swim in!” I love that metaphor, and I often ponder it when seeking to understand why some people behave as they do. But at a deeper level, in a relationship we’re all in the pool, holding each other at times, letting go, then holding again, in the Divine dance.
Shall we?
