Online Video Viewing
Adult and Children's Curricula
Dramatic Scripts and Songs
Experiential Processes and Rituals

Click for in-depth webpage on the underlying science details


    Stardust Curriculum for Kids

Connie Barlow has posted a 76-page pdf on this website from which you can print (for free) any or all of the components of an 8 to 12 session curriculum for religious educators, private school teachers, and homeschooling parents to use with their elementary-age students. This curriculum is based on 5 years of Connie's experience, bringing the wonders of cosmic science to kids in a variety of settings.


 

   

  

Evolutionary Parable and Script

Connie Barlow has written a parable, "Startull: The Story of an Average Yellow Star," that celebrates the role that stars play: red giants creating carbon; blue stars for other complex atoms; average yellow stars for burning steadily enough to make life possible. Values include finding one's own gifts, trusting in the ways of the universe, learning that death is natural and important even for stars. The parable is in script form, intended for ADULTS or KIDS to act: 4 characters. (posted June 2006)



Guidance for Stardust Rituals

   PERHAPS THE DEEPEST SPIRITUAL CONNECTION to the vast Universe that science has given us is an awareness that ancestral stars are part of our genealogy. We can now know and feel our connection to the heavens, for stars are among our ancestors. Every atom in our bodies, other than hydrogen, was forged in the fiery belly of a star who lived and died before our own star, the Sun, was born.


LEFT: Symphony of Science music video celebrates "We Are Stardust" and featuring Neil deGrasse Tyson

Birth of the elements in the bellies of stars readily lends itself to creative experiential processes and rituals.

  • Click here for the COSMIC COMMUNION (glitter) RITUAL.
  • Click here for several versions of MEDITATIVE STARDUST RITUALS that offer adults opportunities to experience their stellar heritage in an inward way.
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    ♦ Click here for more EXUBERANT, PLAYFUL Stardust Rituals appropriate for adults or kids.

    ♦ Click here for detailed guidance that Connie uses in instructing KIDS on stardust, culminating in a "cosmic communion" glitter ritual.

    ♦ Click here to learn how to celebrate BIRTHDAY and ANNIVERSARY STARS, a fun and moving exercise for adults as well as kids.

    ♦ Click here for an 8-part STARDUST PRELUDE that can be used before a ritual or to dramatically accompany a lesson, workshop, or sermon on the stardust theme.

    ♦ Click here for instructions for celebrating a WINTER SOLSTICE STARDUST PROGRAM (based on an actual program we brought to the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Clemson, SC, for Sunday morning service on December 21, 2003).

    ♦ Click here for "The Star Within: An Ash Wednesday Service", which is everything you need for duplicating in your church the Ash Wednesday service conducted in 2004 at Plymouth Congregational Church in Minneapolis. Congregants are offered an opportunity to pledge to do something for Earth as well as the traditional opportunity to pledge to give something up during Lent. A short version of the Cosmic Creation Story is told, with an emphasis on how we were shaped from stardust. Thus in the ritual itself, congregants have a choice of having either glitter or ash placed upon their foreheads. Created and conducted by Rev. Dr. Paula Lehman and Rev. Sarah Griffith.

    ♦ Click here for "Swirling Chaos, Dancing Stars: An Intergenerational Service for the New Year", which is a pdf of the text used for a special Sunday service on the stardust theme, written and conducted by Rev. Ruth Gibson, of First Universalist Church of Denver.

    ♦ Click here for SONGS relevant to the stardust theme.

    Click here for HIGH RESOLUTION PHOTOGRAPHS OF STARDUST CHARTS


     

       

      

    Connie Barlow has written a new parable, "Startull: The Story of an Average Yellow Star," that celebrates the role that stars play: red giants creating carbon; blue stars for other complex atoms; average yellow stars for burning steadily enough to make life possible. Values include finding one's own gifts, trusting in the ways of the universe, learning that death is natural and important even for stars. The parable is in script form, intended for ADULTS or KIDS to act: 4 characters. (posted June 2006)


    NOTE: It is crucial for process or ritual facilitators to learn the background science of how the chemical elements are created in stars, and which kinds of stars. This is wondrous material, and easy to learn by consulting our Stardust Background file on this website. The web file includes links to colorful charts that you can download for reproducing as large posterboards for teaching. You may also wish to purchase a book or posters (www.nasa.gov) of Hubble Space Telescope photographs, especially of Red Giant emissions and of the atom-rich remnants of supernova explosions.

      

    Click to go to "A Leaf of Grass" for a moving, great story parable that connects Walt Whitman's famous line, "A leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars," with our new scientific understanding that all atoms except hydrogren were forged inside stars that lived and died before our own Sun was born (stellar nucleosynthesis) Written by Connie Barlow.

    Click to go to "The Buddha Bowl" for an enigmatic great story parable in the Zen tradition, which explores the stardust theme. Written by Paula Hirschboeck.

    Click to go to "Who Am I?" for a short evolutionary parable that explores the stardust theme and personal identification with the Universe. Written by Connie Barlow.

      


      Tribute to the Hubble Deep Field

    Moving animation of the Hubble Telescope legacy, and how it shifts our sense of who we are in the Universe.

         Carl Sagan Music Videos

    Software enables Carl Sagan to sing his celebration of our birth in the Universe, as stardust learning its own story

        8-minute YouTube video of Neil deGrasse Tyson
    (today's dynamic astrophysicist and science popularizer)
    speaking enthusiastically of his peak spiritual experiences
    in doing science — including "we are made of stardust!"
             

        The Hubble Ultra Deep Field
    4-minute YouTube video on how this
    deepest/oldest space photo was taken
            Sing-Along Music Video: "Silent Night"
    3-minute YouTube video with some lyrics rewritten
    to celebrate the science of stardust


         

         


        Singalong: We Are the Cosmos
    4-minute YouTube music video on stardust
    with printed lyrics (great to dance to!)
            Planet and Stars in Scale (1.5 min Video)

    Planet and Stars in Scale (2.5 min Video)


    ABOVE: Click the image above for the wikipedia site where you can learn about it.


      



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