Chris wrote me an email last September from her hospital bed where, unable to sleep, she had been watching a BBC documentary Seven Ages of Starlight on iPlayer.
red giants are alchemists!
gold ejected into the cosmos
so we are stardust after all
In the last few months of her life, Chris became fascinated with cosmology. In her later writing and artful practice, she explored the idea of a “cosmic self” coming from and returning to something greater: a unity, a oneness, a universal whole.
She meant this both literally (the incarnation and disincarnation of our physical substance) and metaphorically (the re-framing of our place and purpose in the cosmos). She tried to give form to her thoughts in words and diagrams. Here’s a page that she wrote/drew at that time, trying to piece it all together:
It’s fascinating, complex stuff and I have several of her notebooks yet to read to delve under the surface, though I suspect that some of her insights will be beyond my current understanding.
What I love most about the page is the note she has added at the top: “welcome home stardust.” It comforts me to know that Chris faced her own death with a sense of homecoming.
Coming Home to Story 
Beautiful… and what an extraordinary path Chris was walking on that last part of this life’s journey. Your post reminds of the Five Realms model that Judith and Jutta are bringing forward in a new CSC training this year. Take a look at the diagram on this page – http://www.thecsc.net/training/category/realms/ – you’ll see that they call that cosmic self ‘Source’. Much love, Ali xx
Geoff, I really do believe that the new discoveries and interpretations of cosmology can take those of us in the west beyond the stale old arguments about life after death. There is something so beautiful in the notion of ‘coming from and returning to something greater: a unity, a oneness, a universal whole”. And I think she was spot on in knowing that this had to be approached artfully and well as intellectually. Thank you for this lovely blog. Px
These writings are so precious.