I am a coastal dweller; my spirit rests between the mountains and the sky, the sea and the sand. This is my home, my dwelling place. Although my people have not been here even 200 years, yet my spirit rests here, I know no other home. I wonder through the great dividing rages, the costal plains, the great rivers and the seemingly endless beaches where the eternal images of sea and sky meet together to form this place of the in between.

And that is what I am, a dweller in the in between. Caught in this state of existence where I am but temporal visitors. One soul who comes and goes like the tides of the sea. Like the tide, I restlessly arrive pushing forward till I reach a mark, and then unwilling begin to fall back to the place from which I start. I exist between Birth and Death in the place of the in between.

I stop and ponder on the spiritual, the physical, the mental, the emotional, the political and the social worlds as a citizen of the in between. My people call me to be controlled and rational, to be driven by productivity and efficiency. Yet as the mountains reach for sky and the sands lose it self to the sea, so I too reach out to the heavens and seek to be part of the eternal living waters. But will I ever be one with the? Or am I bound to this place of in between?

Who are the gatekeepers, the watchmen and women of the winds that blow and rains that fall, of the rivers that flow and the stars in the sky? We are but humans, caught in this place of the in between. Are we so wise to know, to make complete sense of the mystery of our existence? I don’t know. The stories of old, of our traditions and faith reflect this ancient and ever new quest. As we seek to know the unknowable in this place of the in between.

Bowra 2003