Saved by Stardust

© 2010, Revs. Bill and Barbara Hamilton-Holway

Today, Easter Sunday, we celebrate that in the midst of tragedies and loss, “the tides of life are flowing fresh, manifold and free.” We sing praises for death and life, for the mystery and miracle of the universe.

We celebrate what is true of you and me and all of humanity: We were born of powerful stardust and we have a deep yearning at the heart of our being that makes us hopeful – even in the deepest of despair – that creativity can help us find a way to new life.

During the short three years of his ministry, Jesus taught and lived a mob-dispersing, peace-producing, compassion inspiring life.

Compassion is elemental in us humans and Jesus called it forth.

You can be going along… living your life… work and family… the daily routine and then receive a phone call that turns your life around. Maybe it’s a diagnosis and you face all the questions illness stirs. You confront what’s in you. Word spreads. And people show up. Love comes in cards, casseroles, and caring presence.

Thankfully things turn around for you and return pretty much to normal.

Then one day you are driving along on I-80 and somebody cuts you off. You are about to lay on the horn and blast them when you remember what you’ve experienced--human compassion.

You are grateful for life, just to be in traffic, or anywhere at all, is a blessing.

You’ve faced death and by God, you are alive! You happen on that e.e. cummings poem you’ve heard so many times, and this time you feel the words intensely, tenderly.

i thank You God for most this amazing day…
(i who have died am alive again today…
now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened).

Tears stream down your face. You’ve made it through this dark night of your soul, this valley of the shadow of death. Dawn breaks. Light shines forth. It’s Easter morning.

At the young age of 33, Jesus died. When he died, the stories tell us, darkness came over all the land. The earth shook and rocks split apart. Tombs opened.
Then the earth quaked, and light descended from heaven.

A new power was released in Jesus’ followers: compassion for all people. It brought forth thousands of new followers.

Out of his death came energy and a new way of life.

Out of the deepest of despair, creativity helps us to find a way to new life.

Life out of death, it’s an old story, really old.

Take a trip to outer space.

Feel like you are flying.

Watch the sun rising over the Golden Gate Bridge and then lift off into space and back, back into the farthest reaches of time.

Witness the darkest and longest of nights, followed by a great quaking and shaking. See radiance descending like lightning in an awesome splitting and a blazing like the most brilliant dawn.

Like stones rolling away from tombs, like a great booming flash, primordial energy ripples out in every direction. Out of death comes life. Out of the dark, cosmic skies opens up the beginning of time.

Primordial energy dissolves into a great scattering. A billion years of uninterrupted night transfigures into one hundred billion galaxies. Each brings forth billions upon billions of stars.

Stars burn up spewing stellar materials…stars live and die young…new stars form…richer in potentiality, more complex. Stars, more than we can see, burn and die, releasing all the elements of the universe.

The star Tiamat emerges in our spiral galaxy, wonders knit-together in its fiery belly, and then it sacrifices itself, releasing new elemental power in all directions, giving birth to ten thousand new stars. A floating cloud of elements brings forth our own star, the sun.

The sun blasts off, spinning elements into matter out of which rises Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto and the Earth.

Out of the deepest darkness, creativity finds a way to new life.

Out of the death of stars, rises the Earth.
The image from space of our precious, beautiful home, the Earth, touches our souls.
U.S. astronaut Edgar Mitchell described it. “Suddenly, from behind the rim of the moon, in long, slow-motion moments of immense majesty, emerges a sparkling blue and white jewel, a light, delicate sky-blue sphere laced with slowly swirling veils of white, rising gradually like a small pearl in a thick sea of black mystery… this is Earth... home... My view of our planet was a glimpse of divinity.”
Chinese and U.S. astronaut Taylor Wang said, “I could not help but love and cherish her.”
Russian astronaut Aleksis Leonov said, “The Earth was small, light blue, and so touchingly alone, our home that must be defended like a holy relic.”
On Earth, elements from the stars, solid, liquid and gas, become an incessantly creative chemical womb from which the first living cell rises four billion years ago.
Atom is attracted to atom, the dancing of life, surging and pulsing, energy connecting. Compassionate connection, love generating life. One plus one equals three.
This is our story, out of the stars have we come. Life up from sea, life upon earth rose to love.
Thomas Berry and Brian Swimme tell it as The Universe Story.
Six hundred million years ago, multi-cellular organisms rise…corals, worms… Worms learn to wiggle then sprout wings, invent teeth. Ocean waves leave sea plants stranded on the hot rocks; they learn to stand up straight as trees and then to cover entire continents with life. Animals follow plants onto the land, amphibians and reptiles and the great dinosaurs.

Sixty-seven million years ago astronomical collisions change Earth’s atmosphere, nearly all forms of animal life have to reinvent themselves or perish. Mass extinctions mean many animals follow the dinosaurs into their graves. Their deaths open up new possibilities of birds and mammals.

Mammals rise on Earth two hundred million years ago, developing emotional sensitivity. Through the beauty and terror of the world, the brilliance of the birds’ plumage, the intoxicating display of the flowers, the lusciousness of the fruits, the frights of the forest, through it all grew the mother-infant bond.

Four million years ago humans rise up on two limbs and by two million years ago we use our hands to shape Earth’s materials into tools, and to hold one another. Around thirty-five thousand years ago, humans celebrate cave painting, fill the nights with festivals and music-making, shape ceremonies around the passing of friends and seasons.

Scientist Brian Swimme says, “You take hydrogen gas and you leave it alone, and it turns into rosebushes, giraffes, and humans…If humans are spiritual, then hydrogen’s spiritual”

Out of the stars, rose great teachers, including Jesus—teaching compassion for all human beings, loving beyond your kin, beyond your religion, to loving all people. Everyone has their wounds, their dark nights of the soul, their valleys of the shadow of death.
Everyone aches for compassionate, caring connection.

Out of the death of stars, you rise.
Out of the deepest despair, you rise.
You are part of the mystery of the universe.
You are its miracle.
Look about you.
Everything came from the stars.
Behold it with awe, wonder, gratitude, reverence.
You are one with the immensity and grandeur.

All life formed out of transubstantiation, transformation of hydrogen gas! Everything rose from the stars. Divine creative energy incarnated everything that is. Our human consciousness evolves. Our understanding of God expands. The immense variety of creatures, the diversity of the universe, are manifestations of the divine.

And we all participate in the dance of on-going creativity and evolution.
We now know the earth is not the center of the universe.
Everything does not revolve around us.

We know everything comes from the same source.
All matter is spiritual. Everything is sacred.
All beings are essential.

Chief Seattle said that if the animals were not here, we would die of loneliness.

The Communion to celebrate is our oneness with all beings.

Our Easter moment is to awaken to compassion for all species and to rise to live in what Thomas Berry terms “mutually enhancing human-Earth relations,” caring about all species…what he calls “comprehensive compassion.”

Compassion brings new life, a new perspective.

We are not the center of the universe, but we are significant, spiritual participants at the leading edge of evolution.

We are key characters in the grand story of the Universe.

This moment of grace is our human ability to reflect on the universe consciously. If we think humans are at the top of a huge pyramid, we use what’s beneath us as we want… if we wake up to another understanding of our place in the universe, we can save our world from our sins of war and waste. We can save our planet from apocalypse, from extinction.

The next rising, the next great awakening, the next resurrection is this growing, expanding consciousness of humans, growing beyond caring for all people, to have compassion for all life, for all existence.

We participate in this resurrection by reinventing how we live.
We must rise to attain ends with minimum means.
We must rise to our better natures.
We are called to wake up to what some call the Buddha nature, or Christ consciousness, living the compassion within us.

We celebrate Easter because it is our story. Out of the devastation of earthquakes, the desolation of genocide, the despair of poverty, we humans rise again.

Out of the deepest darkness, creativity finds a way to new life.

This is our story: we have hope, we have faith we can rise to this moment. Out of the stars have we come.

It is true that all that is born will die, like stars, spewing out elements and energy.

But, if you go to your death, filled with gratitude and compassion, you will have truly lived.

Yes, you and I will stop, and others will go on in their fashion.

New life, new understanding, new consciousness will rise.

Now while you are alive, “out of your heart, cry wonder:
sing that we live.”

I thank You God for most this amazing universe.