Cleave

Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.  - Genesis 2:24 (NASB)

I just read Little Bee.  We is thinkin it be bout goodies and baddies.

There is a horrific scene of g*ng r*pe. This isn't a spoiler because as soon as you start the book, an ominous valance of doom hangs over you.  Like a cloud which lovely fullness turns gray at the horizon.  It's just a matter of how and when the story unfolds.

Cleave isn't a word you hear much these days.  Except on the Food Network for cutting meat. Isn't it odd that a word would have a meaning and it's opposite? The word that means

to adhere closely; stick; cling.  to remain faithful.

also means

to split or divide by or as if by a cutting blow, especially along a natural line of division, as the grain of wood.

It made me wonder why r*pe is so traumatic.  Such a deep, primal wound that seems to even overshadow beatings.  Why children, who are barely aware of their body parts are almost irreparably damaged by it.  Not just the physical pain and physical trauma but there seems to result in a knowledge of deep betrayal.  A knowing.  

She also gave some to her husband....and he ate it.  Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings.  - Genesis 3:6b - 8 (NASB)

When sin entered, why did Adam and Eve know they were naked, of all things?  How did they think to cover their loins of all things?  Could it be that their cleaving physically represented their cleaving psychologically, emotionally...primally?  And that something deep, at their very core, had been irreparably broken?

God is a poet.  God is Poetry.  Would He create us with this Cleaving which does not reference His own Cleaving to His trinity?  I cannot help but think that for  us to Cleave is to see a little glimpse of the Trinity.  Separate but Whole and Equal.  At His earthly end, it was not hanging by nails through his body, cleaving his sinews.  It was the agony of the cleft between Himself and The Father.

Perhaps the r*pe, the forcing, the tearing, perhaps it is essential humanity cleft to the core.  Left broken and shattered down the primal human grain.