The stars may be light years away from us and apparently wholly distinct from us — and yet we’re deeply connected with them. They create the material out of which we’re made. They’re our ancestors. And we’re their children. Star children.
Stars shine for millions, even billions, of years, but they’re not eternal. They’re mortal. When they’ve used up their supply of fuel, they collapse in a cloud of gas and dust out of which new stars and other heavenly bodies form. In the universe as a whole, tens of thousands of stars come and go every second. In every moment, the world of stars is created anew. The process of creation proceeds.
In the end, we owe our existence to the stars — and to the fact that they don’t hold fast to their “starriness” but, instead, sooner or later, give themselves into the cosmos. The greatest part of the atoms and molecules in our bodies derives from the innermost parts of extinguished stars. The elements were created in them that are required for our life: Iron for our blood, oxygen for our lungs, carbon for the fabric of our bodies, and calcium for our bones.
We’re made of ashes from at least three generations of stars. We are, literally, stardust. The stars are nearer to us than our jugular vein. With its often dramatic history and its constant back-and-forth of generation and corruption, the universe is present in our very bodies.
“Wir träumen von Reisen durch das Weltall,” wrote the German Romantic poet Novalis (1772-1801). “Ist denn das Weltall nicht in uns?” (“We dream of traveling through the cosmos. But is the cosmos not in us?”)
(The above is a paraphrastic translation of Lorenz Marti, Eine Hand voll Sternenstaub: Was das Universum über das Glück des Daseins erzählt [Freiburg, Basel, and Vienna: Verlag Herder, 2014]: 139-141.)
“I am a child of Earth and starry Heaven, but my race is of Heaven [alone].” (From a 4th-3rd-century Orphic gold plate found at Petelia, in southern Italy)
Well I came upon a child of God; he was walking along the road.
And I asked him, “Tell me, where are you going?” This he told me:
Said, “I’m going down to Yasgur’s farm, going to join in a rock and roll band.
Got to get back to the land, and set my soul free.”
We are stardust, we are golden, we are billion-year-old carbon,
And we got to get ourselves back to the garden.
“Well, then can I walk beside you? I have come to lose the smog.
And I feel myself a cog in something turning.
And maybe it’s the time of year, yes and maybe it’s the time of man.
And I don’t know who I am, but life is for learning.”
We are stardust, we are golden, we are billion-year-old carbon,
And we got to get ourselves back to the garden.
We are stardust, we are golden, we are billion-year-old carbon,
And we got to get ourselves back to the garden.
By the time we got to Woodstock, we were half a million strong,
And everywhere was a song and a celebration.
And I dreamed I saw the bomber jet planes riding shotgun in the sky,
Turning into butterflies above our nation.
We are stardust, we are golden, we are caught in the devil’s bargain,
And we got to get ourselves back to the garden.
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