I’ve read Madeline L’Engle’s A Wrinkle In Time at least a dozen times since I was eight years old. One passage in particular has always stuck with me:

Suddenly there was a great burst of light through the Darkness. The light spread out and where it touched the Darkness, the Darkness disappeared. The light spread until the patch of Dark Thing had vanished, and there was only a gentle shining, and through the shining came the stars, clear and pure. Then, slowly, the shining dwindled until it too was gone, and there was nothing but stars and starlight. No shadows. No fear. Only the stars and the clear darkness of space, quite different from the fearful darkness of the Thing.

“You see!” the Medium cried, smiling happily. “It can be overcome! It is being overcome all the time!”

Mrs. Whatsit sighed, a sigh so sad that Meg wanted to put her arms around her and comfort her.

“Tell us exactly what happened, then, please,” Charles Wallace said in a small voice.

“It was a star,” Mrs. Whatsit said sadly. “A star giving up its life in battle with the Thing. It won, oh, yes, my children, it won. But it lost its life in the winning.”

Mrs. Which spoke again. Her voice sounded tired, and they knew that speaking was a tremendous effort for her. “Itt wass nnott sso llongg aggo fforr yyou, wwass itt?” she asked gently.

Mrs. Whatsit shook her head.

Charles Wallace went up to Mrs. Whatsit. “I see. Now I understand. You were a star, once, weren’t you?”

Mrs. Whatsit covered her face with her hands as though she were embarrassed, and nodded.

“And you did– you did what that star just did?”

With her face still covered, Mrs. Whatsit nodded again.

Charles Wallace looked at her, very solemnly. “I should like to kiss you.”

Mrs. Whatsit took her hands down from her face and pulled Charles Wallace to her in a quick embrace. He put his arms about her neck, pressed his cheek against hers, and then kissed her.

….

“I didn’t mean to tell you,” Mrs. Whatsit faltered. “I didn’t mean ever to let you know. But, oh, my dears, I did so love being a star!”

As a kid who was getting more and more interested in astronomy, I was captivated by the idea of being a star. Well, it just so happens I am a star- several of them. So are you. This is probably my favorite thing that I have ever learned.

Our universe is made up of one simple element: hydrogen (one proton, one electron). The insides of huge stars are the only places in the universe where hydrogen atoms can be fused together into bigger elements like oxygen and iron. When those massive stars run out of fuel to burn, they explode into supernovae, scattering their own ashes for thousands of light years in all directions.

The ashes contain most of the elements in the periodic table. Those elements eventually clump together with elements ejected by other supernovae to form new stars, planets, and other neat things- like you and me. Carl Sagan put it this way:

“All the elements of the Earth, except hydrogen and some helium, have been cooked by a kind of stellar alchemy billions of years ago in stars, some of which are today inconspicuous white dwarfs on the other side of the Milky Way galaxy. The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our  teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of star-stuff.”

Many Mrs. Whatsits sacrificed themselves against the darkness, and the end result is us. You and I might even share atoms that came from the same ancient star, millions of light-years distant in space and time.

Blood ancestry connects us to other humans. Star ancestry connects us to the universe: animals, flora, mountains, oceans, planets, asteroids, even our star-cousins forming in distant nebulae right now.