Ash Wednesday, Dustification and the End of the World
Ash Wednesday and Cosmology
PROFESSOR ANTON MEEMANA
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The rich symbolism of Ash Wednesday liturgy facilitates our spiritual and moral transformation and transcendence, our constant going beyond, our endless revolutionary continuity; that is, personal transformation through existential breakthroughs, spiritual outbursts and intellectual paradigm shifts. Ash Wednesday is the liturgical reenactment of cosmology. Every good liturgy has a cosmic dimension and a cosmological meaning.
Spirituality is never a flight from earth but an authentic celebration of our earthiness, our organic connection to the earth, our bio-chemical-psycho-spiritual connectivity to the earth. In that sense, the real term for spirituality is earthuality (Thomas Berry).
Spirit is the very depth, the very interiority of matter, of dust, of soil, of clay and of ashes. Escape from dust is escape from God and equally escape from earth is escape from our true destiny. Eternal life is facilitated in and through earthly realities.
There is no creativity without earthly connectivity. Sacred dust, holy soil, divine ashes, and mysterious clay are our family members.
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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.
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