Community of Excellence - Marcus and Me on What Passes

We pass our strengths and weaknesses along, but never perfectly. This scattering of the seeds is the poetry of Nature. My father's passing brought his nine children together to organize the celebration of his life and the affect he had on all he met. This situation gave me a rare chance to consider us brothers and sisters as a family and as the individual persons we have become. I was as impressed with our individuality as much as comforted by our unity.

The physical attributes that identify one's heritage come in so varied a package and proceed to so disparate iterations throughout life can we truly only associate them with but one heritage? No two of us is the same size. Facial resemblances are obvious but each of us has our own unique element. Human physical resemblances abound beyond the shade of one's family tree in equal parts to the differences. Each of the nine of us given a different recipe of attributes to carry forward.

Our mental sensitivity shares this variance. Not about one being smarter than another but more about one thinking differently than another. How different the depths and widths of one heir's curiosities can offer expansion to the intellectual content of each of the others and through them to different corners of Nature.

The emotional intensities and foci one leaves behind offer a symphonic mixture of ups and downs, priorities and dismissals, accomplishments and surrenders, and then reemergence. Our human weather patterns - which allowed each of us moments of both weakness and strength - and then our togetherness allowed us to share as only a family can.

But what of the soul? What characteristics does one's spiritual vestige take on? How extensive are the spiritual differences that show up in the next generation?

None.

For it is the soul that connects us all. It is the permanent element of Nature - its consistency and its substance. It permeates all human nationalities, cultures, and religions. It does not age as one's body does, so it cannot die. It has been, it is now, and it will always be.

Marcus - Often think of the rapidity with which things pass by and disappear. For substance is like a river in a continual flow, and the activities of things are in constant change, and the causes work in infinite varieties.; and there is hardly anything that stands still. And consider this which is near to thee, this boundless abyss of the Past and of the Future in which all things disappear. How then is he not a fool who is plagued about them, for they vex him only for a time - and a short time.