Teilhard de Chardin once wrote, “Love is the most universal, the most tremendous and the most mysterious of the cosmic forces.”[1] In their book Teilhard de Chardin on Love: Evolving Human Relationships, Louis Savary and Patricia Berne note that “According to Teilhard, God has implanted a divine spark of love in everything created, down to every last subatomic particle and photon of light.” I wonder if Kate McGarrigle of the McGarrigle Sisters folk music singer-songwriter duo ever read anything by Teilhard. Maybe not, but whenever I hear her song NaCl, I smile and think of Teilhard.

Here are the lyrics:

NaCl

Just a little atom of chlorine
Valence minus one
Swimming through the sea, digging the scene
Just having fun
She’s not worried about the shape or size
Of her outside shell
It’s fun to ionize
Just a little atom of cl
With an unfilled shell

But somewhere in that sea lurks
Handsome sodium
With enough electrons on his outside shell
Plus that extra one
Somewhere in this deep blue sea
There’s a negative
For my extra energy yes
Somewhere in this foam
My positive will find a home

Then unsuspecting chlorine
Felt a magnetic pull
She looked down and her outside
Shell was full
Sodium cried “what a gas be my bride and
I’ll change your name from chlorine to chloride

“Now the sea evaporates to make the clouds
For the rain and snow
Leaving her chemical compounds in the absence
Of H2O
But the crystals that wash upon the shore
Are happy ones
So if you never thought before
Think of the love that you eat
When you salt your meat

Source: LyricFind

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[1] Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Human Energy, trans. J. M. Cohen (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich: 1969), 32.