<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The older I get, the more naturally I return to my roots. Bible verses often surface\u2014texts I have carried with me in the golden little box in my heart for as long as I can remember. Now that I have left behind the phase of resisting the strictly Christian God of my youth, I can listen to them with a sense of wonder. The words reach me differently. I pick them up, look at them anew, blow the dust off, and explore what they mean to me now. It feels almost familiar\u2014engaging in exegesis, just as I learned more than sixty years ago during my theology studies. And then it can suddenly happen that an old word opens itself to me in a completely new way<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI want to show how this unfolds by using a text that is often spoken at Christian funerals, a text that used to make me even sadder than I already was.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/em> Dust you are, and to dust you shall return.<\/em>… (Genesis 3 vers 19)<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe word that is translated here as \u2018dust\u2019,\u201d \u05e2\u05b8\u05e4\u05b8\u05e8<\/strong>, \u02bfafar<\/em>has so much more meaning than simply \u2018dust.\u2019 It is a soft, granular word, like soil slipping through your fingers, and it refers both to everything that is fine and perishable, and to the primordial matter from which human beings are made.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n In this word a circular movement becomes visible: what arises from the earth returns to it. \u02bfAfar <\/em>is the dust of life itself\u2014perishable and yet rooted, a tiny grain and at the same time cosmic. It stands for the subtle boundary, which is no boundary at all, between form and formlessness. Form is emptiness, emptiness is form.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When I connect\u02bfafar <\/em>with the metaphor of The Flower, I see the movement between the heart and the petals, between exhaling and inhaling, between silence and form, between what is and what crumbles. The heart is the space that is neither born nor dies, the breathless depth of presence. The petals are the movements of life: thinking, feeling, acting, desiring, joy, pain. They are precious, changeable, fragile. They are the unique expression of my essence in this world. When I look through this lens, there appears\u201d \u02bfafar <\/em>as the material of the petals themselves: the perishable body-mind, the patterns that form and dissolve again. It is precisely these forms that eventually return to the substance from which they emerged. <\/p>\n\n\n\n And the heart\u2014the silent core of The Flower\u2014returns nowhere and disintegrates nowhere. It is the imperishable element that breathes through all layers. In the language of Genesis, it is \u2018the breath of life\u2019 that is breathed into dust. \u02bfafar <\/em>In the language of The Flower, it is the silent, boundless love that takes form. This is the endless paradox of non-duality\u2014neither one nor two\u2014beyond our comprehension: the petals are perishable, and that which animates them is not. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Zo belichaamt \u02bfafar<\/em> Thus \u02bfafar embodies the memory of my origin. Every pattern that appears\u2014a thought, an emotion, an action\u2014is made of the same material as the mountains, the fields, the stardust. Everything is a form of the same source without a source, inexhaustible beyond any form. In this awareness, I can see the end of my life as a return into a movement that has always been greater than I am\u2014greater in the past, in the present, and in what is yet to come. Yes, I am dust, and to dust I shall return\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hoe ouder ik word, hoe vanzelfsprekender ik terugkeer naar mijn roots. Zo komen er vaak bijbelteksten boven die ik al zo lang als ik mij kan herinneren in het gouden doosje in mijn hart met me meedraag. Nu ik de fase van verzet tegen de streng christelijke god uit mijn jeugd achter mij heb gelaten, […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":3826,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/evawolf.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3825","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/evawolf.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/evawolf.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/evawolf.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/evawolf.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3825"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/evawolf.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3825\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3827,"href":"https:\/\/evawolf.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3825\/revisions\/3827"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/evawolf.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/evawolf.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/evawolf.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/evawolf.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
The timeless paradox becomes visible in this. In everyday life \u02bfafar<\/em> stands for something small and unassuming: the dust under your feet, the dry earth that rises in the wind. And in the larger scheme, it is the substance from which humans are formed and to which they return. Everything that turns to dust disintegrates and crumbles. This points to the fragility of human existence. And at the same time, that disintegration is not disappearance. It is a movement back into the raw material of life\u02bfAfar<\/em> is perishable and imperishable\u2014it is a continuous movement that never ceases. Beginning and end touch each other. One could say that\u02bfafar <\/em>is a boundary word. It refers both to what perishes and to what carries the perishable. In this simple word, the entire rhythm of life and death is contained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n