Embracing Dustness

September 30, 2014
Brandi Friesen Thorpe |

I've been thinking a lot about what I've been studying in the last year, including a biography of Gandhi. It has left me with some interesting reflections on dust, truth and humility.

Gandhi leaves imprints on time, through his time is long past. Though he was crushed beneath the feet of angry people in his final day, he instructs us that we must be humbler than the dust. He says that the world crushes the dust under its feet, but a seeker of truth should be so humble that even the dust could crush him or her. What does this embody for our own selves? What vulnerable state need our own humility be in, that we might live in truth?

Humility bears with it a semblance of innocence. Its innocence bears a reminder to a heed of Christ, that we must be like the children.

As an adult it asks that there is reversal of ways, a back tracking or returning to something that is less evolved. It requires a mature dependence and innocent resolution to adhere firmly to truthfulness.

Some pay others to remove the dust that settles. This poses a dilemma for one who is seeking to be humbler than the dust, to be crushed. Perhaps we need not to remove every reminder of dust – perhaps we need the reminders.

Perhaps we need to be crushed by things that settle.

Bothered by the need to remove the reminder that time passes and things settle. Botherned by complacency. By norm. By false truth.

Perhaps dust is the reminder we all need, in order to pursue truth, lest we all be crushed by dust. Perhaps this is the beginning of a larger conversation. 

 

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