friend of poets who speaks without saying a word, who sings as loud as a train, and whispers as soft as a stream. There he was. The ocean. Everywhere. This seemed to be his territory. I had stepped into his world, into his cave and he seemed to be curious about the new arrival.
It definitely takes some getting used to the kind of environment that most people have a hard time imagining, a kind of surreal world surrounded by water, where everywhere you look there is ocean. And many are truly afraid of this kind of setting. But the same ocean that could scare some people fascinates others. Perhaps I am part of this last group. Besides, just as the Marshallese have learned over the centuries they’ve been in this remote spot of our planet, this ocean is a wealth of life. The riches of the Marshall Islands are really in the ocean that surrounds them. It is full of life. In many ways it is more fertile than a good field. So if you live on an island like this, the ocean is your best friend. He is the provider that Heaven has given you to survive. He is what makes you who you are and because of him you live the way you do. Nobody can control it, but the Marshallese have mastered it. They have indeed become masters of the sea and at the same time slaves to it. They depend on it like the Ri-Belle (foreigner; lit. white person, regardless of skin color) of the west depends on petroleum and stocks. So there he was, and there, precisely there, was I...
...I did not realize how breathtakingly beautiful my view was until the next morning, when a very bright sun peaked in to say good morning. I opened my eyes and saw, right through my window, a gorgeous sunrise over a mighty sea. A sea, I might add, that was no farther than thirty feet. It was then, amidst the colors of the sky and under the spell of the sea, that I began to realize where the Lord had taken me. It was paradise. And this scene would repeat itself without being the same, every single morning. Every time a little bit different. Some times a rainbow would show its face; other times there would be the shape of rain in the horizon. It is easier to say a prayer in such a time, in such a place, because it is easier to say a prayer when you are in God’s sanctuary. That is His temple. And He measures it with His fingers.
At a later time, while looking over the ocean as the sun went to sleep, one of my best friends asked me what God did for a living. What an odd question, I thought, as I looked into the endless horizon. The more I thought the more colorful the canvas of the sky and the waters became. Minute by minute, oranges and pinks mixed together in a beautifully haunting dance. I had no good answer. And even after having been in the islands for a few years I have no better reply than the one I gave him then. All I know is that, as I told him there sitting by the soothing waves, in His spare time, He paints.
Masters of the Sea - Excerpt
As soon as I stepped out of the plane unto the top of the platform of stairs I could feel the water in the air. As soon as I got down the stairs and touched Marshallese cement I could see the water everywhere. There he was. Right and left, the majestic, old, calm and brutal sea; that