I cannot know if or what a soul is or may be. But it is my living sense, and the sense of my heart, mind and experience that it is in some way like a constellation of related flowings, tributaries, if you will, with which we emerge into and are shaped by experience. And, in turn, shape the world and universe (largely at our scale or near it).

One might imagine silvery streams, as an example. One of these flows into two parents, and is thus unified and embodied, but within the child the flows of both, and indeed almost endless parents exists as well. Flows from the world, animals, plants, places…moments. But when we are deeply relating with some being, the nature of our soul, the shape and character of it, are modulated by their relationships with activities such as communication or listening.

At the same time, we may establish tributaries within one another, and I think this the natural outcome of close relation, whether momentary or prolonged. When the subject of a tributary departs, the stream in us remains somehow active, even at their death. And although it may no longer contain the form of relation-content and connection it once transported, something yet remains. Something alive, and vital, and dynamic.

For we call each other into being, and in this sense are married, changed within forever, in structure and even purpose. Such, in part, is the beauty of souls incarnate.