We are Stardust - and also Silly Geese

The image included with this blog post is my most recent digital art piece, which I titled “Goldblood”. I attempted to capture the wonder and mystery I feel when I think about the star stuff that we are made of. I think (and am too lazy to fact check) that it was Carl Sagan who coined that phrase, “star stuff”. It’s truly fascinating to study and reflect on our place in the grand web of the created universe. And yet -

We can take ourselves too seriously sometimes, when we start waxing poetic about the nature of things. I have been trying to navigate the balance between a deep desire to live a mystical, spiritual, devotional life, and the reality that I live in a capitalist hellscape wherein I have to manage a budget and figure out how to feed myself on a daily basis. We are about as complex as houseplants in that a little sun, and hydration will have us feeling much better, despite our own best efforts to stay stuck in a doomscrolling fog.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I am struggling - not in a negative way, though - to reconcile my inner spiritual landscape and my external physical reality, in a day and age where things are seeming increasingly dire. I find solace in my spiritual practices, especially as I’ve expanded my understanding of who the Divine is in the last year and a half or so. But I also feel immense guilt when I sit in front of my altar space, lighting my candles, while children are being bombed by artillery paid for and provided by my own elected leaders. Or think about the growing climate crisis and the ongoing ways I contribute to it out of convenience to myself. Or remember my trans friends and colleagues who are targeted regularly by nasty, hateful rhetoric and often worse, in the name of God, no less. What good are my prayers and devotional practices in the face of all that?

I don’t pretend to have the answers, but my therapist and I have been working on reframing lately, and perhaps the reframe here is that those things help sustain me to continue showing up to do the work, in my own little corner of things. I may not be able to save the world, but I can put more love into the world than I take out of it. And so examining what helps me show up to do that work - be it laughing during a Dungeons & Dragons session with friends, or spending time in front of my little altar, or sitting in the back of the sanctuary during Communion and watching the community I serve partake together, or reading a book on the Divine Feminine, or leaning into the flow state I find when I make art - those things are holy and good, and worthy of my time and attention, too.

“It can be overwhelming to witness/experience/take in all the injustices of the moment; the good news is that they’re all connected. So if your little corner of work involves pulling at one of the threads, you’re helping to unravel the whole damn cloth.” - Ursula Wolfe-Rocca