Star Stuff

I’ve been thinking of star stuff today. Yup, star stuff. Specifically, the bits and pieces of stars that are in you and me. You know how that happened, don’t you? A star exploded somewhere in the universe, and bits of it, stardust if you will, happened to find our Earth, carried on the solar winds maybe, or picked up by a comet, then left behind as it eroded away while passing near us. And some of those bits landed, in the oceans, or on the land, eventually being incorporated into a plant, or a fish, or a mollusk, or maybe even a cow, which you (and I) ate. Then it became something to fuel us, or perhaps it became a building block in the body. One way or another, we have stardust in us (and dog poop too, if you think about it, but let’s not right now).

Thich Nhat Hanh says that one can look at a piece of paper and see the tree it was made from. And then one can see the seed the tree grew from, and the soil that fed that tree, and the animals and plants that died and became the soil. All these things are really there in that piece of paper. It is an endless cycle, the beauty of which makes me catch my breath in wonder. I wonder at the thought that I might have, in this very body, atoms that may have been part of a woman of ancient, ancient times, or a fern not seen in many millions of years or, of course, a star.

I could almost call this a kind of reincarnation. Matter used over and over again, becoming stars and planets and trees and snails and people. It fuels a question: what (and where) have I been, and what will I, all my bits, become next? And it speaks to the utter and never-ending connection between all things, large and small, animate and inanimate.

I have handled fossils that might be millions of years old. I’ve seen (and touched, but don’t tell the museum docents) meteorites that have been in parts of our galaxy, maybe even the universe, places I can’t even imagine. Then, touching a meteorite, I thought I might be touching star stuff. Now I understand that I was, but in every moment, as I type on my keyboard, or twine my fingers together while I think, and even as I breathe, I’m still touching stardust.