Reading the article, I felt and odd transformation overtaking me. Deep in my mind, something shifted as if an enormously heavy door slid open in the dark pit of my consciousness. Within lay a host of primitive sensations and perceptions. Under the words images flood forward. What is seen, the knowledge gained is so fundamentally illogical that I resist it, fighting hard to repress the pictures that surge forward. The Americans have reason to be concerned.

I can only tell you of the perils of what was shown and yes, as we walked he spoke of the seeds of hatred and death, ingratitude, discouragement, despair and anger. ” I listened to his voice, it had a strange accent, a beautiful simplicity and a power within it, it held a radiance of truth. He spoke of lessons to be learned that currently bear directly upon our time and our society. He did not wish anything or judge anything it was just shown to me as we trod the three paths, which lead to life, death and peace. I saw the destiny of ourselves raised upon these paths. I watched the suffering, the agony and the iniquities that lie ahead in the tissues of mankind’s history. I asked him the question “to what purpose do you show me this” and he replied “so many centuries lead to this. I know whence I come and I know where I go as you will do”. The path currently being trod portrayed the coming war. I heard the cries, the groaning of humanity and felt the agony. Real force and real action will not lay the foundation for peace but create an illusion built on an edifice of sand. We are passing through a time of grave crisis, a time we cannot escape for we have already selected our path.

What was seen was only visible to myself. Do I take what was seen as an act of faith? There is no way that I can prove what happened to me. I grasped something invisible. I feel my description is miserable. There are things which cannot be fully expressed! I feel my words are powerless; my impressions inadequate. How can I explain the unknown to you? It leaves within myself an ironical echo ….

He spoke in parables, of locusts and fireballs. Burning fires and dark clouds of hate. There is no doubt that the Americans will win the war but they will not win lasting peace. What will be won will eventually crack and shatter which will lead to further conflict in the region. The threat of the Middle East is nothing compared to the other menace foreseen. So much of life will be destroyed, so much will be rebuilt, as man himself will be rebuilt. How strange to walk by his side and see through his eyes. Two ghosts passing through the present and the future. He foreshadowed the encroaching darkness and revealed my path - a sanctuary yet to be found.

Little by little the dark threads of the familiar appear again. I’ve seen the wall. Its foundations are cracking, breaking apart. The table was absent, no people, just emptiness. I found myself standing on a hill overlooking a vast emptiness. The landscape was a desert under sullen skies of numbing desolation and greyness - Failure, futility and sheer black despair swept through me. I felt empty, cold and grey inside. My eyes perceived a land of stone and ashes and its continuity scared me. The land held a drowning depth of stillness and the silence was oppressive. A cry of words “The Fathers have eaten a sour grape and the childrens’ teeth are set on edge” seemed to echo a lament in my mind and I had the feeling that all that once was will be lost. I felt a chill wind of despondency blow over me and I was washed by poignant grief. The sadness of it all, in its way, was worse than the numbing desolation. Now, on reflection, I begin to wonder if it is Jewish fate to struggle this far only to spiral into lasting darkness. And I ask myself why?

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 ...

Israel floundering in a sea of blood and fire. The dead and the despairing. No end in sight. Filled with hate and bloody haze. Tangled emotions, the fatal hour inexorably creeps closer. The gates of paradise are shut. How I listen with ironic detachment to the platitudes of the Arabs and Israelis. The new millennium sullied by the ever- increasing bloody lake – I know that the Israelis will go their own way – they will go beyond recall. Yet another part in the ever-shifting dreams of mankind’s agony that has become woven into a preordained trend of events.

Rivers of blood, black and turgid sliding by in time wherein beneath lies the world’s injustice and cruelty of men. Wandering in the colossal edifice of time, within dark corridors what do I see other than it is all founded upon the fallacy of men. Man could never be just. Whatever happens, we will witness again man’s superb and pathetic aberrations, the good and bad that rests within us all. Strange the dreams I have been having. The pictures I have been seeing. In the dead of night I asked a question and the magpie corralled an answer that leaves me disquieted. All that is seen, all that is known is nothing in the eons of time. A time when this earth will become less populated, a time when man will walk alone – the houses bare of people, the cities empty and degenerating. Those that remain unobscured by the thickening golden mist through a leap into space and time. So close, yet so far. The star wars technology – what fools men be – war in all its naked horror – the crime of man against man. Nothing left but the few to grow and spread.

How can one not believe in God. He is there. He exists and can be seen and known within us all. I do not understand Him. I weep with him. He hears my voice as I hear his but where will it lead? The dreams. My words are not enough to lead me through my despair to the spring of hope as has been foretold. My sons, my sons I cry for you as I cry for your sons and for my Grandson’s son. Listen to me, nothing but ourselves can hold back the tide of horror – everything lies within ourselves – our choice – which road to take … the forks have appeared – the signs have appeared – we live them today and we move forever closer towards death, destruction and conflict – the bloody road where only a few will survive – the other road remains hazy, a white mist encroaches hiding the eternal spring of hope …