"Remember You Are (Star)Dust, And Unto (Star)Dust You Shall Return"

What a dramatic shift it is from Mardi Gras revelry (however limited this year) to the lovely, liminal, reflective hours of Ash Wednesday as we ponder the reality that “we are dust and unto dust we shall return.”

Astrophysicist Alan Lightman uses remarkable and glorious detail to explain how it is that the “dust” we are made of is actually stardust. He tells us —

“When the Universe was young, it was all hydrogen and helium. Then various clumps of gas gradually contracted and collapsed under their own weight and formed stars.

Finally, some of those stars exploded and spewed their atoms into space, from where they coalesced to make planets, from which single-celled organisms formed in the primeval seas. From which, from which, from which, on and on and on.

It is astonishing but true, that if I could attach a small tag to each one of the atoms of my body and travel with them backward in time, I would find that those atoms of my body originated in particular stars in the sky. Those exact atoms.”

Those exact atoms!

Let us marvel then, at the wonder of this beautiful dust from which we are created and to which we shall return, this magnificent stardust that is in everyone of us, and is everywhere we turn, always and forever.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

About the photo: It is an amazing (indoor!) Clivia plant that offers up gorgeous blooms like this one every mid-February :)

* Alan Lightman is author of Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine

* I am indebted to Christianne Squires of A Contemplative Light for her inspirational creation of the word (star)dust.