Recycling: What Life is All About

We are stardust.
Billion year old carbon.
We are golden..
Caught in the devil's bargain
And we've got to get ourselves back to the garden.
-Joni Mitchell, Woodstock

It's you. It's me. It's that rock or water molecule.

Nothing is, that wasn't once stardust.

The very stuff of the universe.

Such a profound wandering and roaming by simply (?) cleaning out files and boxes.

Pounds and pounds of paper to be shredded.
Boxes and boxes to the used book store.
Bags and bags to the Salvation Army Resale Shop.
Junk and what once wasn't junk in the trash.

Recycling.... Life.

As I have pursued this vocation over the past month or so Joni Mitchel/CSNY's song came running around my thoughts.

Stardust - Carbon - recycling of life, the basic stuff of life, the building blocks of life-

taken and reused countless, infinite times over the millennia of millennia.

Pondering that has made the task a little easier. And actually a little more logical. What remains somewhat illogical is our human attempts to hold on to what's only temporary. Perhaps that is the Garden we need to get back to- a recognition of the temporary permanence of the stardust that has made us who we are.

Yes, it is hard. It requires quite a few mental jumps toward seeing this task as more rational and acceptable.

Ooops. There's that Recovery Word- Acceptance. I can fight it- and make it worse. Or I can accept the process and see how I fit into the eons-old pattern of recycling from stardust to stardust. Billion year old carbon remade anew into the things of today and whatever might come next.

I have so often seen this process ignored as people age- and fight against the dying. It doesn't work- and as I have said before- it becomes unfair to those who follow us. It doesn't make it easier, but as I work through this latest downsizing, I am learning more about me- and how I fit into the great scheme of things.

I am stardust,
I am billion-year old carbon
I am golden
I am caught in the devil's bargain
And I got to get back to the Garden.