re: do we see dust as "terror" or profound mystery and beauty....I'm writing a book about the astronomer who discovered that we're stardust, Paul Merrill. He was a colleague of Edwin Hubble's at the Mount Wilson Observatory. Merrill's story is that of the fundamentalist religious person who chose to receive truth with his eyes rather than received wisdom in books, and in doing so launched a revolution in our understanding of our cosmic origins. What's interesting re: university is that for both his mentors, astronomers George Hale and William Wallace, leaving home for university was the first opportunity they had to hear their own inner voices and truths...both had grown-up in fundamentalist homes and only when in their freshman years had the emotional and intellectual space to feel through what they deeply believed, and realized that Biblical literalism tied them to a world-view that denied truth, rather than sought it.