Quick.  What do Carl Sagan and Confederate jasmine have in common?

Confederate or Star Jasmine.

The answer takes you through a magical doorway of perception, even more lovely than this archway covered with blooming Confederate jasmine.  Things on the other side, ordinary things, even your very own body, may look more sacred.  The banal, the everyday transcend their usual identities… and are revealed as sublime.

Let’s cross the threshold together.

“We are made of star stuff. For the most part, atoms heavier than hydrogen were created in the interiors of stars and then expelled into space to be incorporated into later stars.”

So said Carl Sagan in his award-winning series Cosmos, which I remember watching in awe as a child when it came out on PBS in 1980.  F. and I watched the entire series this winter, and I was in awe and in love all over again.

We really do live in an amazing universe.  The facts of it inspire wonder in my heart, and at times during the series I had tears in my eyes as I considered what a miracle it is to be alive, to breathe, to share this space with other beings, to witness Beauty, to learn new things, to love.

It’s so thrilling when poetry and science meet and realize they are not only friends, but lovers.

Just think of it.  You are made of recycled stars.  How could you not be wonderful, unique, beautiful?

Whenever you next doubt yourself, or question your worthiness in any way, I hope you remember that.  I hope I do, too.

Maybe the universe knew I needed the reminder.  Today when I walked through this sweetly-scented portal, tendrils of flowering vine reached out to brush the top of my head.  It felt enough like a caress that I stopped on the threshold, between two garden rooms.

There was a bee there, busy at her banquet among the star-shaped flowers.  It was just me and her, and it was very quiet.  So quiet I could hear it when she settled down on the brim of a creamy blossom to drink, and her tiny buzzing wings stilled.

I stared at her a while.  She pretty much ignored me.

That’s when I realized she was drinking stars, which is exactly what Dom Perignon is reputed to have said when he tasted champagne for the first time.  Each chalice was star-shaped, and I’d recently learned from a fellow blogger* that this vine is also known as star jasmine.

But then I paused and thought about it for a moment.  The “drinking stars” concept was bigger than that.  I remembered Carl Sagan, explaining the origin of the particles that make up our beautiful Earth.

There was a glass of water with a squeeze of lemon in it now gently sweating in my car’s cupholder as the ice cubes melted away.  The whole thing, including the glass — star stuff.  Everything you and I eat and drink:  stars.

The very atoms we breathe were born in the stars.

I looked up.

More stars.

But not just the flowers.  The wood, the growing green leaves, even the fallen pinestraw.  All star stuff.

And what about the eyes to see it all, the neck to bend and let me see beyond the narrow range of my height?  What about the nose to sniff that seductive scent?  Wasn’t the very fragrance, itself, made of those same star-birthed atoms?

Ever more recycled stars, everywhere I looked.  They were even underfoot.

I’d trodden on stars just to get to this point.  You have, too, you know.  We all stand upon this firm earth, not realizing that we walk on a bedrock of former stars.

It really does alter one’s perspective; doesn’t it?

I often end my posts by saying “Namasté, y’all,” and I’ve never before mentioned what I mean by that.  Of course, some of you will already have applied your own meanings, which is fine.  The Sanskrit phrase “namasté” has been wildly reinterpreted over the years, and the two English translations I learned are:  “I honor the spirit in you which is also in me,” and “I recognize the divine within you.”

If we were live and in person, I’d try to stare into your eyes when I said it — and mean it.  The divine spark is almost always visible in the eyes, if I pay attention.

When I worked in a mall, silent “Namastés” were sometimes all that got me calm and sane through a shift during Christmas season.  A customer could be absolutely frantic or nasty, needy or rude.  They might request an item that I knew was at the very back of the stockroom, on the highest shelf, nearly impossible to reach even with the help of a ladder.  They might try to steal things that weren’t tied to the store’s superstructure.  They might insult me or start a screaming fight over who was next in line.

They might ignore their small daughter’s request for attention while she peed on the floor, and then order me in the haughtiest possible voice to clean it up.  (Sigh.)

So it was absolutely necessary to remember who these people really were, deep down under all that.  If I could only meet their eyes, I could still recognize many of them — okay, not all of them — and send them that recognition, even if it was not said aloud.  Thus, this phrase became habitual with me, although I rarely speak the words.

A star-strewn path.

Now when our eyes meet, I’m sure to see not just the divine spark, but the very stars.

Namasté, y’all.

*This post dedicated to Jess over at Children of the Corm, who recently taught me via a stellar (get it?) blog post that Star Jasmine is an appropriate common name for this vine, which I’d always known only as Confederate Jasmine.  I’m getting used to calling it that, slowly but surely, and I definitely prefer the name Star Jasmine.  Although the Botanical Garden here seems to back up my ignorance of the alternative popular name…

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