A Quote by Joan D. Chittister
Humility is authenticity. It comes from the Latin word humus, meaning "earth." As the church has taught, we're made of dust, and unto dust we shall return.
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The Latin words humus, soil/earth, and homo, human being, have a common derivation, from which we also get our word 'humble.' This is the Genesis origin of who we are: dust - dust that the Lord God used to make us a human being. If we cultivate a lively sense of our origin and nurture a sense of continuity with it, who knows, we may also acquire humility.
Remember the root word of humble and human is the same: humus: earth. We are dust. We are created; it is God who made us and not we ourselves. But we were made to be co-creators with our maker.
Gather out of star-dust, Earth-dust, Cloud-dust, Storm-dust, And splinters of hail, One handful of dream-dust, Not for sale.
Shadow and dust shall be reclaimed, earth sealing the tomb from which you came. Dust to dust, ashes to ashes, warrior return, breathe your last. Air, earth, fire, water, hear my voice, obey my order, thrice around your grave do bound, evil sink into the ground. I now invoke the law of three, this is my will, so mote it be.
Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. We are nothing, but dust and to dust we shall return. Amen.
The dust to which this flesh shall return, it is the ancient dreaming dust of God.
Cursed be the ground for our sake. Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for us. For out of the ground we were taken, for the dust we are and to the dust we shall return.
The word humility (also human) is derived from the Latin humus, meaning the soil. Perhaps this is not simply because it entails stooping and returning to earthly origins, but also because, as we are rooted in this earth of everyday life, we find in it all the vitality and fertility unnoticed by people who merely tramp on across the surface, drawn by distant landscapes.
Time is a lot of the things people say that God is. There's always preexisting, and having no end. There's the notion of being all powerful-because nothing can stand against time, can it? Not mountains, not armies. And time is, of course, all-healing. Give anything enough time, and everything is taken care of: all pain encompassed, all hardship erased, all loss subsumed. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Remember, man, that thou art dust; and unto dust thou shalt return. And if time is anything akin to God, I suppose that memory must be the devil.
When my mouth shall be filled with dust, and the worm shall feed, and feed sweetly upon me, when the ambitious man shall have no satisfaction if the poorest alive tread upon him, nor the poorest receive any contentment in being made equal to princes, for they shall be equal but in dust.
In the sweat of thy face thou shalt eat bread,
Till thou return unto the ground; for thou
Out of the ground wast taken; know thy birth,
For dust thou art, and shalt to dust return.
It is true that we are made of dust. And the world is also made of dust. But the dust has motes rising.
We are all made from star dust and we will all return to star dust, like a cosmic palindrome.
But something cannot be made out of nothing. Dust rose in the air, caught the rays of the sun for a brief moment and sparkled, and then returned to the earth as mere dust.
And when a whirl-winde hath blowne the dust of the Churchyard into the Church, and man sweeps out the dust of the Church into the Church-yard, who will undertake to sift those dusts again, and to pronounce, This is the Patrician, this is the noble flower, and this the yeomanly, this the Plebian bran.
There is a lovely root to the word humiliation - from the latin word humus, meaning soil or ground. When we are humiliated, we are in effect returning to the ground of our being.
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