Ash Wednesday, Dustification and the End of the World

Ash Wednesday, Dustification and the End of the World
Dustification of the Creation


By PROFESSOR ANTON MEEMANA

Ash Wednesday, the first day of the Lent, is not a day for misery and self-pity, but a day for
deep repentance and radical conversion. Ash Wednesday is ready to take away our ashen
faces. Ash Wednesday is a day of aspiration, assistance, assurance and ascent towards
spiritual magnanimity.

Humans are earthly creatures through and through and our destiny is organically and
necessarily tied up with the health and happiness of the earth. We are not flying creatures
such as eagles, crows, hawks, parrots and mocking birds. This fantasy about space travels
and colonizing other planets is a very comforting illusion and can at best become an escape
from our earthly, clayish, ashy, soily, dusty and fleshy reality. 

Even if we develop the technological capability to settle down in another planet, what guarantee would we have that we are not going to destroy it the way we have plundered, raped and devastated the mother earth?

What is fundamentally and very urgently required of us is transformation of our
consciousness and our daily lifestyles, not so much space exploration for exploitative
enterprises. Earth is our second skin without which human life is absolutely impossible. 

Our malnourished and anorexic perspective on dust is gathering dust and it is high time to dust it
off. The one who cherishes the earth cherishes the universe entire. By the same token, the one
who destroys the earth destroys the universe entire. The enemies of the earth are the enemies
of God and the friends of the earth are friends of God too.