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We’ve all heard the phrase ‘ashes to ashes, dust to dust,’ but what does this mean?
As one of the many euphemisms for death, it’s not always clear how this phrase applies to humanity and our ever-present mortality. In reality, this phrase highlights what happens to all bodies during burial ceremonies. Whether your body is cremated or buried within this earth, you will return to ashes and dust. This might sound scary and intimidating at times, especially when coupled with the question of why we die.
In reality, the phrase ‘ashes to ashes’ carries a lot of beautiful symbolism. Returning to ‘ashes’ and ‘dust’ isn’t something to fear. It’s a phrase with a biblical origin dating back to the creation of man, and it honors the cycle of life as the meaning behind everything we hold close. Let’s take a step back through time, literature, and popular culture to discover the real meaning behind ‘ashes to ashes, dust to dust’ and how it applies today. On the surface, ‘ashes to ashes, dust to dust’ paints a bleak picture. The words ‘ash’ and ‘dust’ have negative connotations, but don’t get the diction twisted.
In simple terms, this phrase reminds us that we all began as dust, and we will return to dust again when our time finally comes. While it sounds remarkable, humans are—at their essence—dust. We’re made of the same stuff as stars, nearly every element in the human body being made in stars and supernovas. It sounds like the stuff of science fiction, but it’s the true reality we live in. Our bodily elements (hydrogen, carbon, calcium, etc.) date back to the beginning of the universe over 13 billion years ago. Though you might feel young, your body’s elements are as ancient as time itself.
With that in mind, eventually, when we die, our bodies return to these basic elements within the earth. No matter whether you choose a natural burial, embalming, cremation, or so on, your body returns to ‘ash’ and ‘dust’ all the same to enter the cycle of nature yet again. Perhaps, centuries from now, your same elements will find themselves a new home within other organisms, mountains, or even a star in a galaxy far, far away.
Origin of ‘Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust’
The infamous ‘ashes to ashes, dust to dust” originates from Genasis. Located within King James Bible in the scene when Adam and Eve are finally cast from the Garden of Eden.
The phrase reads:
“In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread,
Till though return unto the ground;
For out of it wast thou taken:
For dust thou art,
And unto dust shalt thou return”
“By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.” (Gen 3:19)
Origin And Application:
In the Burial section of the first English Book of Common Prayer completed in 1548 is this line: “Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” This phrase does not come directly from the Bible, though it is derived from it. Genesis 2:7 “And the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” God’s Purpose in Creating Man | Genesis 2:7 King James Version (KJV)
In funerals where burial is practiced, bodies are buried in the ground because this is where we come from according to the Bible. God created Adam from dust. When Adam and Eve ate the fruit from the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil which God forbade, God banished them from the Garden of Eden. Since then, people could no longer enjoy the free fruit in the garden but now need to work hard in search of food. This is what God said to Adam, “By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.” (Gen 3:19)
Many times science contradicts religion and many times global governments spread faulty science to the masses about God’s creation due in part to their atheism and satanic beliefs . Life on planet earth has been around billions of years but God gave man the gift of discernment in our daily life. Discernment is, in the words to discover God’s will, “this means that the best route to determine God’s will is not to go out into the world and search, but to borrow deep inside yourself and listen to God’s will. Mark Thibodeaux calls it “God’s voice within.” Hearing it requires a lot of practice and patience.
In his book God’s Voice within, Thibodeaux writes:
St. Ignatius was a keen student of human nature, a beloved spiritual master, and a superb decision maker. Through his own experiences (both in his daily life and in his prayer), he came to understand the importance of truth. God desires us to make good decisions and will help us do so. All we need to do, besides having a good intention, is not only, rely on our (literally) God-given reason, but also, pay attention to the movement of our heart, which was also given to us by God.
Many of us do not trust our own thoughts, feelings, and desires when it comes to discerning God’s will. Instead we look outside ourselves to determine what God wants from and for us. In God’s Voice Within, spiritual director Mark E. Thibodeaux, SJ, shows us how to use Ignatian discernment to access our own spiritual intuition and understand that the most trustworthy wisdom of all comes not from outside sources, but from God working through us.
God’s Voice Within is intended for people who know that there is more to the spiritual life than they are currently experiencing and are ready to take the next step in their walk of faith by making effective discernment—specifically Ignatian discernment—a daily practice. Ultimately, God’s Voice Within teaches us to discern what is at the root of our actions and emotions, which in turn allows us to respond to God’s promptings inside us rather than unconsciously reacting to life around us.
(AP Photo/Tsafrir Abayov)
Why haven’t we found civilizations older than 7 – 8 thousand years when homo sapiens evolved around 200 000 years ago? originally appeared on Quora: the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world.
Answer by Adam Wu, Evolutionary neurosurgeon, on Quora:
To start a civilization you need to have a large food surplus, which frees
up the majority of your people to specialize in doing things other than food production. To get this kind of food surplus by hunting and gathering you would need a kind of edenic environment that does not exist on planet earth. The only other known way of obtaining such food surpluses is by farming. But even with early farming you can only produce the needed levels of food surplus in a very narrow range of favorable environmental conditions.
You also need a certain minimum population density, or you simply do not have enough people on the ground to run a civilization.
When our species first appeared 200,000 years ago, the earth was in the middle of the last glaciation of the last ice age. As far as we know, there were very few places on the planet, if any at all, that could have supported civilization-supporting farming during that period. The harsh environmental conditions (even well away from the glaciers, the world was much drier than it is today, because so much freshwater is locked into the ice sheets) also meant that human populations remained very small, and grew only slowly, if at all, and the needed population densities that would support a civilization probably were not reached. Indeed, with low population densities, hunter gathering is likely a superior way of life on a per person basis than early farming-based civilization.
Fossil evidence shows us that late neolithic hunter gatherers were on average taller, stronger, healthier and lived longer lives than the early farmers of the first known civilizations. What we know of the political systems employed in hunter gatherer societies suggests that individual hunter gatherers also on average had more freedom and autonomy, and greater overall equality between individuals, than the societies of the first civilizations. There would have been little incentive for individuals to choose to adopt civilization over hunter gathering, when population density is low.
There is also the great genetic bottleneck event about 70,000 years ago, possibly linked to the eruption of the Toba super volcano, during which the human population dropped to maybe just a few thousand people worldwide.
It would have taken some time for populations to recover from that event.
Only after the Ice Age ended and the current Interglacial began, about 20,000 to 12,000 years ago, the environmental conditions arose that would allow for the type of farming that can support civilizations. And only after the Interglacial began, with its milder conditions, could human populations grow to the point where hunter-gathering starts to become insufficient at providing enough food for the increased number of mouths, and the consequences of population pressure (famine, territorial conflict, etc.) start making early farming and civilization a more appealing option for some previously hunter-gathering societies to think about adopting.
This question originally appeared on Quora. the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand
the world. You can follow Quora on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
More questions:
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Human Evolution: What is the most bizarre example of natural selection adaptation in humans?
Human lifespans have not been constant for the last 2000 years – john hawks weblog
The Oldest Human Ancestor Uncovered | First Human | Timeline – Bing video
Human Life Has Only been around 2000 years – Bing
In all Actuality it took a Higher being to create a human being.
The Living Body – Our Extraordinary Life – YouTube
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Inside the Human Body – First to Last – Bing video
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The 8 Ways God Talks to US:
By Pastor Paula White-Cain
Pt 1: Prophecy … Pt 2: Tongues … Pt 3: Still Small Voice …
Pt 4: Audible Voice … Pt 5: Angels … Pt 6: Visions …
Pt 7: Dreams … Pt 8: Holy Spirit
Seven Ways God Speaks To Us :
By Pastor Benny Hinn,
1. God speaks through His Word. :Pastor Benny Hinn, Devotional, + Pdf (iusefaith.com)
2.God speaks through dreams and visions :. Pastor Benny Hinn, Devotional (iusefaith.com)
3. God speaks through circumstances :. Pastor Benny Hinn, Devotional, + Pdf (iusefaith.com)
4. God speaks through gifts of the Spirit :. Pastor Benny Hinn, Devotional, + Pdf (iusefaith.com)
5. God speaks through an audible voice :. Pastor Benny Hinn, Devotional (iusefaith.com)
6. God speaks through similitudes. :Pastor Benny Hinn, Devotional (iusefaith.com)
7. God speaks through peace within. :Pastor Benny Hinn, Devotional, + Pdf (iusefaith.com)
Decline of Earth’s plant life threatens human life (peoplesworld.org)
If humans have been around for about 200,000 years, why is it that we record our years only in 2000? And at what turning point did we become conscious of our more advanced selves?
As long as “humans have been around” we have had some method of measuring the passage of time. Often it was simply, “the third year in the reign of King so-and-so” or, “seven harvests after the flood that destroyed the crops.” We recorded years long before the year 2000.
As to the second question on a different topic, what does it even mean, “when did we become aware of our more advanced selves.” What “advanced selves” would that be? Are you talking about a smug sense of superiority over other living creatures? I suspect that is a fairly recent phenomena because before the common era, people generally lived in harmony with the world about them.
Recording information symbolically—such as with writing and mathematics has only come about roughly in the last 10000 years or so. Our western calendar is the product of early Christianity. There are numerous other calendars Jewish & Islamic in play around the world, but for international commerce it seems the western model is in play for the sake of convenience and uniform standards of timekeeping.
Our hunter/gatherer ancestors did quite well in interpreting natural time such as seasons and observing the star locations. However, once agriculture started up in earnest and people settled down into fixed communities, the need for specific math deliberation and agreed upon writing symbols was a necessity for inventory and communication over time.
Sentience probably started with advanced utilization of tools such as weapons, fire, and agreed upon language patterns. When? Probably slowly over the last million years and with our non-Homo sapiens cousins that preceded us.
Related Questions:
Modern humans appeared 200,000; civilization 10,000; and advanced technology 500 years ago. Why no advancement for something like 190,000 years?
How does the present human compare to, let’s say, a human 1000 years ago?
How did humans exist for 200,000 years but it took all the way until the final 10,000 year for real progress?
Did anyone think it’s suspicious how humans advanced technologically more in the last 150 years than compared to the millions of years of human life?
What was life like for humans that lived 200,000 years ago?
Why did the human race advance significantly in the last 200 years compared to the last 10,000 years?
If modern humans have been around for 200,000 years but civilization only 6,000, then what were we doing for the other 194,000?
What is the reason that in less than 100 years humans made a great scientific leap more than 10 000 years ago?
What happened that suddenly after thousands of years, only humans have become modern in the last 200 years?
How would the world be different if the average human life span were 200 years?
If humans have been around for 130,000 years and we scientifically have come this far in the last hundred years, then what were we doing the 120,000 years before that?
Why has the human race progressed so much in the last 150 years vs. the previous 5,000 years?
Why did humans advance so quickly in the past 100 years?
What would the lifespan of humans be 2000 years ago?
Why has mankind advanced more in the last 150 years than in the previous 10,000 years?