These are two of the people who are responsible for me being here, John and Rosie Ringleben. Rosie's full name is reported to be Katrina (or Kathrina) Rosina Magdalena Von Hohenstein. They immigrated from Germany in the 1840's and they are my great-great-great-grandparents on my maternal grandmother's side of the family.
My brother views genealogy as a pastime for people who are stuck in the past. I think that the more you know about your past, the better you will understand your present. It is just a tool to gain insight. The past fascinates me, but I don't choose to live there.
We believed that we could change ourselves
The past could be undone
But we carry on our backs the burden
Time always reveals
The lonely light of morning
The wound that would not heal
Sarah McLachlan
I like the analogy of our bodies as clothes we shed from one life to the next. I think we know more about our past "wardrobe" when we are children, but as we age/mature, we lose or suppress the memory. Sometimes it's difficult to articulate the feeling of it all for fear of sounding like a nut. I have been working on the family genealogy for many years (off and on), so I have been feeling very "connected" to the past while living in the present and raising the future (so to speak). I feel there is a life thread that connects all souls. I guess my analogy would be that souls are energy (like electricity), and they run like current through a universal grid. Instead of being strictly linear, the grid is dimensional with time and form dimensions. The forms would be dead, alive, human, not human, ghost. I don't know any of this to be true, but it is how I sense that the universe works. It is the personal lens I choose to see through.
