a star nursery

Every moment of life is lost – it dissolves, and is never repeated. Every moment in our lives and in the entire history of Gaia-Universe is never repeated – it is lost. That means it is also ever-new. That is the mystery – it is lost, but it is ever-new. The Beloved One descends: it may be a Journey to Wisdom. We may join Demeter the Mother in Her sorrow, and await the unfolding of the Mysterious, Wyrdly Creative Cosmos. There is a place on that Edge – of the grief and the joy, where the Universe hums in balance – spins and expands: a creative tension.

Herewith some words from Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry about an early “moment” in the story of the Universe, which I find to reflect the poetic sense of the Season of Autumn Equinox, as we descend to increasing dark, to the darkest quarter of the year, yet may hold the vision of renewal:

If the atoms in the prestellar cloud had been given language and the power to reflect upon inner experience, so that they could ponder the significance of the density waves sweeping through them and the rush of atoms ramming up against them, they would even then not have been able to speak in clear terms about the star they were destined to become. … The beauty of the star gripped the atoms in some primordial manner; the beauty of the new flowering of Earth’s realities likewise grips us and is in many ways the central significance of all our experiences of obstacle, disappointment, dismay, and despair. … We cannot know with certainty … what is required of us now. We will find our way only with a deep and prolonged process of groping – considering with care a great variety of interpretations, weighing evidence from a spectrum of perspectives, attending with great patience to the inchoate, barely discernable glimmers that visit us in our more contemplative moments.[1]

We may take courage from the Gaia-Universe Story: it is our story – personal and collective.

Glenys Livingstone 2016.

NOTES:

[1] Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry, The Universe Story, p.58.