Through the window of my bedroom I see Orion’s belt move across the sky on the last day of summer, the every evening reminder of our inheritance and our legacy – we are stardust.
The constant evolution from the big bang in our bodies is aching to transform our hearts and minds too. It is a story so big we can barely contain it, yet our body’s contain it and all of creation, past and to come is passing through us, pulsating in our veins and echoing in the dynamic dance of all living things. The rocks and stones themselves shout out Alleluia, and who hasn’t looked to the skies and seen beauty or to a wilderness landscape and taken a deep breath and let it out with a satisfied sigh?
What if we always acted from this knowledge that we are stardust, how would we live differently? The children’s author Elin Kelsey invites us to blow kisses so we can spread pollen and to notice we shed our hair seasonally just like the leaves on the trees. She invites us to deepen our knowledge and connection with all of nature. Joni Mitchell was right we are stardust, we are carbon, we got to get ourselves back to the garden. She was on her way to a farm to sing, dance and play in what become an acclaimed act of resistance party with the elements of rain, sweat, blood and more than a few tears between the riffs and beating drums. What party are you going too? Are you turning bombers into butterflies? I saw Banksy has opened a hotel on the West Bank and his images are doing just that turning Palestine considered by some including Banksy, the world’s largest open prison.
The hotel is in Bethlehem and I wonder how long it will take for there to be no room at the inn? There was a star in that story too. We are stardust is a poetic metaphor. We are stardust is truth from physics. We are breathing in and out the past and the future, whether we are complicit or understand, this act of creation goes on without our consent and mostly without our knowledge, but what if we did know, understand … remember?
Knowing we are stardust is a reminder of our common start in the sky and our common destination while we travel on our common planet. We do need to get back to the garden, to find ways of beautifying walls with messages of love and alternate ways of being, and to find ways of not building the walls in the first place.
Banky’s Bethlehem images are alternative futures, glimpses into what might be possible from little girls frisking soldiers and pillow fights instead of guns drawn. From the place where a star hovered over head to bring news of salvation to a people occupied, so too does a new inn offer possibilities.
We are stardust and the stars are all around us, twinkling and glowing in the bodies we connect with, in the nature we are refreshed by, in the crashing of tectonic plates under the sea, in the cacophony of the pink galahs arriving for their evening conference, in my heart beat and the salty tears that are as salty as the ocean
My promise to tomorrow is to sing more of stardust, to notice more golden moments and to find myself in the garden more often. There is always more stardust to celebrate and be found in every breath. I will blow more kisses as my sacred stardust duty.
We are Stardust – created by children at Adelaide Writers Week 4 March 2017
Woodstock
by Joni Mitchell
I came upon a child of God
He was walking along the road
And I asked him where are you going
And this he told me
I’m going on down to Yasgur’s farm
I’m going to join in a rock ‘n’ roll band
I’m going to camp out on the land
I’m going to try an’ get my soul free
We are stardust
We are golden
And we’ve got to get ourselves
Back to the garden
Then can I walk beside you
I have come here to lose the smog
And I feel to be a cog in something turning
Well maybe it is just the time of year
Or maybe it’s the time of man
I don’t know who I am
But you know life is for learning
We are stardust
We are golden
And we’ve got to get ourselves
Back to the garden
By the time we got to Woodstock
We were half a million strong
And everywhere there was song and celebration
And I dreamed I saw the bombers
Riding shotgun in the sky
And they were turning into butterflies
Above our nation
We are stardust
Billion year old carbon
We are golden
Caught in the devil’s bargain
And we’ve got to get ourselves
back to the garden
© Siquomb Publishing Company
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