Dust and Breath
By Emily Nelson

This city of San Francisco, of which I live, intimidates me. Walking down Market Street near the Financial District, the black suits and the black heels intimidate me. These are men and women with hard fought careers that have landed them in glass towers. Successful. Powerful. Connected. They are the Strivers and Pushers and they have deadlines and quotas they must meet. So unlike me.

And there are those in jeans with hip glasses and backpacks that intimidate me. They are the Creatives and Young Geniuses and Techies who sit in lofted spaces with ping-pong tables and have made their first Million before their 29th birthday. So unlike me.

I’m intimidated by the ones that attend the Folsom Street Fair who are costumed in black. They have spiked collars around their necks and leather chaps on their legs with butt-cheeks exposed. They are the Kinky and Lewd and they publicly display their affections. So very unlike me.

Walking towards Mid-Market another group of people intimidates me. They are not walking tall and in quick-step. They linger, shuffle and scuffle, holding a cup or a sign encouraging you to drop your coins. Their mouths and eyes don’t smile. Life is hard. Has been for a while. You see it breaking them down in the hunch of their shoulders. If you stop and ask they will tell you their story. A bad decision here; an unfortunate tragedy there. And without good guidance, love and support…and money, they end up on the streets of a city near you. They are the Homeless and Down-On-Their-Luckers. So unlike me.

And finally there are the mentally ill that intimidate me. Most are loud and wild and easy fodder for tourists with video cameras. Overuse of drugs or mental illness, I can’t decipher, but I know they probably didn’t have a parent pay their way through Rehab to save their life. Or they chose not to take the medication that would bring them to alignment. They usually don’t ask for a handout. They are the Roamers and Wanderers, vacantly living life in a haze of unclarity. So unlike me.

When I first moved here I thought of these people as Categories. The CEO’s. The Entrepreneurs. The Kinkies. The Homeless. The Druggies. But grace teaches me to look at them as…equal humans. Redeemed. Just like me.

And I imagined, what if we stripped off the Categories. Like the Halloweenish scene in Raider’s of the Lost Ark when the bad guys have their flesh blown from their bodies as they are turned into Skeletons. What if that mighty, raw wind stripped us bare? What if it tore our Designer and Goodwill clothes off our bodies? What if our accessories were wrenched from our grasp- the watches—Apple, Rolex and Timex–the briefcases, the begging cups, the bands of gold, the leather, the chains, the Gucci and the Target, and the needles and the tech gadgets that keep us high? And what if our dyed and fake hair was whipped away along with our make-up, colored contacts and eye lash extensions? Then we would be truly naked. But the gale force would continue blowing and our faces and tummies would become untucked and our augmentations would implode and our scars would burst apart. And it would rip into our flesh and the soft parts; the organs, the brains and the heart. And our judgments and biases and bigotries would be blown away. Our comparisons and preconceived notions and intimidations would melt into nothingness. Then we would be back to our original humanness. But the blast wouldn’t stop there. It would gust, weathering us down, grinding our bones to…dust. And there we would be, all the Rich and Powerful, all the Down and Outers and everyone in between, there we would all be on the ground, millions of specks of dust, and no one would be able to tell us apart.

What if?

That scene reminds me about the beginning. The Genesis of us all. When we were all nothing but…dust. In the Scriptures the Hebrew word for dust is aphar: which means “dry earth, dust, powder ashes, earth, ground, mortar, rubbish.” In the beginning, God picked up the dust, the aphar, and He shaped it and formed it like a Master Potter, fashioning a spectacular, valuable work of art called…Human. And the image was His very own. But then God did something more incredible; He breathed into the form. He breathed into human the breath of Heaven. He redeemed the dust and made something…good. Valuable. A soul was born. And the Human was living and breathing. Holy and human. God had taken what was worthless…dust, and made it worthy by breathing into us His very Spirit.

And I realized…

None of us is made from gold that we should worship and
None of us is made from excrement that we should disregard.
We are all made from the same
God-designed,
God-breathed…dust.

This knowledge transforms me. It transforms how I see, how I perceive. None of us is above the other. None of us is below the other. There is no need to live in intimidation when each unique person is viewed as the Image of God. We are all restored.

Today as I walk the crowded streets of San Francisco, I’m learning to see people not as Categories, but as Masterpieces of God…equal humans, made from dust. Made Worthy. Valued. Cherished by the Father. Just like me.