And "star stuff" can change into human beings, as Carl Sagan famously said. The carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen atoms in our bodies were created in generations of stars over 4.5 billion years ago.
Yet change terrifies human beings more than anything else. We fight change in our lives, often avoid it at all costs. But, we were born to change, and change often, not just physically but spiritually. We were born, each of us, to discover who we each really are, to truly become ourselves. And that requires change, choices to grow. "We must make the choices that enable us to fulfill the deepest capacities of our real selves," says Thomas Merton.
Winston Churchill said "To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often." Change can mean leaving an abusive marriage. Going back to school. Changing jobs. Choosing, as a single woman, to give birth to a child. Revealing one's sexual orientation. Putting in the discipline it takes to be a musician, dancer, artist, poet. Working on changing one's attitude towards a spouse to save a marriage. Quitting an addiction. Leaving introversion behind to speak out for an important cause. Coming back to God and going back to Church.
All of it, every single moment, of change is a risk, a death to the person we were. We choose to change in hope and trust in who we can become - which is more of who we really are.
God wants us to change - constantly. God knew us before we were born, knew who we could become to reflect His Image most perfectly. God is the One Who gives us the wisdom, power, and love to change and to grow: God says "Behold, I make all things new." (Revelation 21: 5) Another Scriptural image speaks of God throwing and re-throwing us on the potter's wheel, fashioning and re-fashioning us into an ever more perfect piece of sacred art. (Jeremiah 18: 1-6.)
The medium, the architect of truly good change is always love - loving ourselves, our neighbor, our God, at deeper and deeper levels. Even through the changes of suffering and death. God did not bring suffering and death into the world. Man did, through sin. But God can use our suffering and death as other scraps of clay to refashion and mold us into someone even stronger, more beautiful, more who we really are. Suffering pares away everything unimportant in life, forces us to face our areas of immaturity, challenges us to choose new, better priorities.
Change means, most deeply, facing the illusions we have about ourselves, realizing that our energies are moving in the wrong direction, that what we value is meaningless. Once we focus on God, everything can slowly, surely, fall into place. We discover where we are meant to be headed. We discover that, hidden in the "star stuff" of our bodies is the eternal treasure of our own souls.