Ritual
Tradition
Embedded
You, my star.
To quote The Cosmos*:
“There is a fundamental reason why we look at the sky with wonder and longing—for the same reason that we stand, hour after hour, gazing at the distant swell of the open ocean. There is something like an ancient wisdom, encoded and tucked away in our DNA, that knows its point of origin as surely as a salmon knows its creek. Intellectually, we may not want to return there, but the genes know, and long for their origins—their home in the salty depths. But if the seas are our immediate source, the penultimate source is certainly the heavens…
The spectacular truth is—and this is something that your DNA has known all along—the very atoms of your body—were initially forged in long-dead stars.
In supernovas, the blazing death of a giant star.
They condense like raindrops from giant clouds of gas and dust.
They get so hot that the nuclei of the atoms fuse together deep within them to make the oxygen we breathe, the carbon in our muscles, the calcium in our bones, the iron in our blood, all of it was cooked in the fiery hearts of long-vanished stars.
You, me, everyone, we are made of star stuff.”
I look to the water and the sky and know we are all connected.
Connected to all the women who have submerged, who have lost, and who have overcome before me, after me, and with me.
Connected through generations and light years.
In the stellar circle of life, your light will shine through us, around us, and beyond us.
*Neil DeGrasse Tyson of the TV series, “The Cosmos”.
