The Importance of Sneezing

Spiritual revelations come most often when one least expects

them. Taking time to remain on the varnished, wooden toilet seat in our bathroom that was added on to the 1879 house probably in 1915, when indoor plumbing came to Glendora, I became fascinated with particles of dust floating in the streaming sunlight. Each particle reflected a tiny photon collection of sunlight, those photons having already traveled about 93,000,000 miles to our bathroom at about 186,000 miles per second. Eight minutes ago the photons I’m seeing reflected from the dust were leaving our star that makes life and color possible, the Sun.

“From dust you came and to dust you shall return.” That is what the priest says as he or she puts ashes on one’s forehead on Ash Wednesday. I’ve said it to several hundreds of people on various Ash Wednesdays. Along with that wise and humbling pronouncement is the theory or fact that dust always comes from once living matter. One might find exceptions to this, but especially the dust that is light enough to float almost suspended in the air is not the dust that comes from pulverized dirt. Dust from dirt, the dust that one sees in the rear view mirror while bumping along a washboard road in the California desert, is relatively heavy compared to that dust one sees in the streaming sunlight while sitting on the toilet.

So, I attentively watch these particles in the light beam. If I blow ever so gently in their direction, my draft causes them to move suddenly in new paths, sometimes swirling in dizzying orbits, violently changing course for a new destiny. Remembering that dust comes from once living matter, such as human beings who have dried up and arrived at their smallest subdivisions, I sense reverence for this ballet in the sky of my bathroom. I’m affecting the remains of someone’s body and watching it suspend, dive, rise, swirl, and eventually land where only the vacuum cleaner will redeem them. I’m also impressed with another bit of trivia about dust. I’ve learned that each dust particle carries upon it a world of dust mites, microscopic “creatures” that have the potential of finding a new, friendly host, and propagating a new life, perhaps enough to bring illness or even death. In this way, I’m watching aliens enter where we live, bringing a whole new dimension of life, mites. Dust particles are, therefore, space ships transporting aliens. I reflect on the rhyme, “I wish I may. I wish I might....” changing it to “I wish I mite.” At this point, I’m gathering my senses. My legs are going to sleep sitting on the commode. Perhaps my musings are carrying me into another reality. I’m being swept away by attending to floating dust particles, the remains of living matter, some the remains of human beings. The climax of this revelation has to do with ghosts. If I think in the terms of holographic theory, understanding that each particle has the essence of the whole structure within it. In a sense, when I breathe in a dust particle, I’m taking into myself the whole source person. We’re constantly being invaded by nearly invisible particles, carrying less visible mites, and we are breathing in some of these in random amounts, and, our inner worlds of cells and systems are having to cope with these “ghosts” and their passengers in usually effective ways. But, eventually, one mite will get us. A good sneeze can save your life.

God bless you!

The telephone just rang. It was a woman wanting to sell me long-term care insurance. She is very sure I’m going to need this level of care. I wonder what dust she’s been inhaling.

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