Welcome to the magazine

From time to time I write contributions to In-Between or elsewhere, and on each occasion I have to wonder whether I would have done better to keep quiet. We are already drowning in a flood of writing. Why add to the cacophony? Can it possibly be worthwhile?

I believe it can, but only if I make an effort to allow something to be communicated through my words which is not just ‘me’ – not just my opinions, loves, hates, fears and hopes, not just my desire to be heard, or to persuade you to agree with me. Otherwise, my words can only reach the same parts of you. You may like or dislike what I write, you may agree or disagree with it. But there is a deeper part of each of us which remains untouched and dormant.

On the other hand, if I tried to exclude all those aspects of myself from my writing, there would be nothing to say. If I managed to write anything at all, it would be lifeless, meaningless and valueless.

Somewhere in each of us, there is a possibility to be free of the loves, hates, hopes and fears which make up our lives. Not to suppress them or to replace them with something ‘better’, but just to be free. If I can allow that other life to be active as I write, so that the act of writing is witnessed without any kind of judgement for or against, then perhaps something of that life can communicate itself to the same possibility in you.

It would be as though the words were infused with something wordless, like a subtle, barely audible, melody. The language of that other, deeper, life. The life of ‘I’.

These two lives belong to different worlds. An experience which includes both at the same time, rejecting neither, brings a new kind of inner questioning.

We welcome new contributions which can be sent to the editors@in-between.org.uk.

See also Our Search for Meaning