“We are stardust
We are golden,
and we’ve got to get ourselves
Back to the garden.”
If you grew up when I did, this chorus of Woodstock, by Joni Mitchell, will forever bring a smile to your face. While I always smiled and sang along, it would be quite a few years before I understood the theology behind it — and certainly not any of the science. It is only recently that I’ve begun to see the possibility of Stardust’s being more than simply a Metaphor. As I pond building communities of Peace, I wonder what role might Stardust play?
Sometime in the 1980s, the astronomer Carl Sagan said this: “We are a way for the universe to know itself. Some part of our being knows this is where we came from. We long to return. And we can, because the cosmos is also within us. We’re made of star stuff.” It wasn’t until I had written and celebrated countless memorials that I realized how greatly “Dust to dust” fell significantly short of the deep possibilities of “From Stardust you came, to Stardust you shall return.” We shine with the light of stars! What a wondrous thing.
Simply put, the atoms of which we are comprised are the same atoms that have been in our earth and atmosphere since those stars smashed together eons ago. Fragments of those stars were scattered all over this wild universe. This widespread dispersal of stardust makes us related to creatures “in a galaxy far, far away” as well as to mountains, trees, and rivers right here on Earth. You and I are related — because we have within us molecules of the same elements —all the other beings are made up of those elements as well.
It was only last week that I realized that most of what we think of as inherent to our planet like rocks, are layers of the remains of earlier beings. Therefore, our mountains, plains and deserts are, or should be, our Honored Ancestors. The configuration of our molecules may be different, but they are the same molecules, composed of that stardust. I find great Peace in the notions that the molecules of my many deceased Beloved abide here with me.
The molecules of which you are comprised are similar to the molecules of which I am comprised. Not only in death, but also in Life, and perhaps even in other galaxies, Life or NonLife, we are related to the stars and all things throughout the universe and universes. If they’d taught me about how the molecules of hydrogen acted in chemistry class, I may have continued studying Science, simply to be Awed by this miraculous natural world! How much sooner I would have realized that sharing Stardust links us into sacred connections with one another. If only we all acknowledged that our shared Stardust unites us into one Peaceful community!
What inspired Joni Mitchell? Had some scientists whispered about star molecules in her ear? And if so, did she connect that to an invitation for all to come back to the garden… or for all of us to make a garden where everyone could dwell in Peace? It makes me wonder why we look for Peace outside ourselves when it is within us…in you, in the stranger, in my neighbor? Over and over, we hear that we have much more in common than that which divides us — we may even say it aloud. Why, then, are we afraid to live into that? To build communities based on that? To live in accordance with the planet which provides for us in so many ways?
In the three Abrahamic religious traditions, the expulsion from the Garden of Eden is the first story to explain why humans are no longer living together Peacefully in sacred community. These passages hint of our longing to be reunited and reconciled. If you listen to our politicians, we are led to believe that the chasms between us are too deep for reconciliation. And yet, time after time, our stardust calls us together. The Stardust in each of us reaches out a helping hand in natural disasters, school shootings, and other tragedies. All around the world, politics notwithstanding, our stardust… all the shared elements of our humanity… call us to come together, and we do. Joni Mitchell wasn’t wrong; we’ve got to get back to the garden.
All around us, old enmities are flaring up and we have choices to make. We can use our molecules to rebuild communities of Peace — and discourage governments from splitting those elements apart.
In this deep Midwinter when we talk so much of Peace on Earth, lights outside and candles in our homes replicate the starlight of the skies and fend off the darkness. How about we recognize the stardust within each of us, the essential elements that unite us. That’s how we find our way back to that garden, that community of Peace and Goodwill.
Salaam, Shalom, Peace, Blessed Be.