I looked down upon the land where storms blew up, swept over and continued moving forward, crossing borders, spreading outwards. The land wept. Europe, Africa, America, China and further afield were ravaged. The world seen, was flat. And I was given a choice.

I couldn’t make the choice. No one country was worth more than the other. Each and everyone - American, Jew, Russian, Australian, all the peoples of the earth were worth the same, each man, each country was precious and the choice could not rest with me, for I knew that the choice rested within each and everyone of us.

I could only watch what was eventuating; look down upon it all and weep for all. Within myself I felt a warmth, a love reach-out. I felt myself embraced and I asked “why”? Surely, what I was seeing could be different, surely what will happen in the future could be stopped? Surely miracles still took place?

And then I stood upon the grave, the grave of the man, Rabin, who was assassinated by one of his own and he stood beside me and he too asked me why? The ground was sodden with his tears that spread outwards, and a voice said, “one man can easily make peace and another can easily destroy, but it was all who had the choice, because all are involved”.

And he screamed and his scream re-echoed and re-echoed across the land and I walked away and he called me back but I said “no, walk with me” and we walked together. He cried for his people, for their lack of understanding. We came upon two children, one Jew and one Arab. Each was dying and he could only save one. He went to the Jewish child and he held his hand against the pouring blood and then he turned to the Arab child and he told me that he had no choice that only one could survive and what choice did he really have? And I turned from him and walked away over the ravaged land and I heard his sobbing. Again he was with me and he told me that both children had died and although he helped the Jewish child both had died.

He asked why God had deserted him and his people and I turned towards him and felt great pity. “Why do we suffer?” he asked. “Why us?” and I showed him the suffering of all, not only that of his people. “God has not deserted you, you have deserted God” but these words were not my own. He looked at me and asked, “What do you know, you are not one of us?” I stood with him and said “No, I am a part of all, like you, like this earth”. He gave me his hand and I looked upon his eyes and saw his pain and the pain of his people and their suffering and I felt great pity for I knew that one could not survive without the other and then he faded from me and I walked alone.

I saw myself, old, placing a stone upon his grave alone yet surrounded by Jew and Arab alike and I walked through their land and across all the lands that make this Earth and others joined me. For some I cried, for others I groaned in great pain as I watched and saw their learning and then I reached the shores of my homeland and ghostly figures were upon the shoreline and I walked through them until I saw my son.

He smiled at me as I him and he said, “We did it Mum” and I wept for my son and all those who stood around me. He walked with me awhile and he said, “It was never worth it, Mum, war is death” and then he said, “we did what had to be done, we gave what had to be given and we have learned what had to be learnt” and he faded from me.

Again I walked alone and stood upon the hill where the blood flowed so fiercely and so strongly. The blood given, the blood that my son told me was necessary and a young Aborigine stood beside me. I felt the beat of the land, his land, my land, and I then knew and understood that he was of the oldest race of earth, but we did not yet know it. He told me the stories of his people and all the peoples of the earth as we sat and watched the land pull itself back together and the darkness came and still we sat and as the sun rose, its beams spread from this land across to other lands. Across the ravaged earth to light the darkness and he smiled at me and we walked together and we came to a place and I asked if this was where I laid and he said no, you will not be buried and I didn’t understand ...