I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
~T.S. Eliot in “Burial of the Dead” from “The Wasteland”

We do not want to think of ourselves as the dust we were and the dust we will become.  There is too much of us living right now; we cast shadows before and behind us depending on the time of day and time of life.  We are substance with our shadows only ephemeral reflections of our presence on earth.

Yet the dust we were and the dust we become is a fearful thing.
Nothing but dust…
until the Creator lifts us up in the palm of His hand, and blows on us.  Now we breathe and pulse and weep and bleed.

We become something different than mere shadow.

We become His, awed,  to the last grain of fearful dust with which we are made.  We become so much more.  So much more.