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No Throwaways - Only Conversion
\Sigma dm/dt = 0
Energy and matter cannot be destroyed, only converted.
When you throw something away, you merely displace it. It isn't gone. Something happens to it. Toxins, viruses - they are not destroyable, only disposable.
Well, the matter comprising them is not. The forms of them, though, are. The arrangements of atoms and molecules is malleable. Interestingly, though, such alteration requires energy - or more aptly, energy (or at least many forms of it) is the arrangement of the atoms and molecules.
Even the metaphor of fire - cleansing fire - is one of conversion. Fire converts fuel into ash and smoke, and in the process, unlocks the light within something. The form is utterly destroyed - the material is utterly unrecognizable - but the material is still there, now ready to be returned to other converting processes, reforming the raw material.
It's worth meditating on this. If we work towards the conversion of someone or something, we necessarially start with something. Even what we consider "building anew" is building with existing materials. When we are given a blank slate, we are still given slate - not raw potentiality itself. The fullness of that freedom belongs only to God Himself.
The refiner of metal burns off the dross - but does not burn off the pure metal itself.
Thomas Cahill in his excellent How The Irish Saved Civilization writes that Saint Patrick "had transmuted their pagan virtues of loyalty, courage, and generosity into the Christian equivalents of faith, hope, and charity." There is a transformation, not a wholesale discarding. We should expect to see some of the old in new, converted things.