MANAN FF - TILL THE END OF TIME

ONCE UPON A TIME IN ANCIENT PALESTINE...

Two weeks had elapsed between Nandini's appointments because she had to be away on another business trip. Out-of-town trips were not rare for her. The beautiful smile with which she ended her last session had faded; the realities and pressures of everyday life had once again taken their toll.

Yet she was eager to continue the journey back through time. She had begun to recall important events and lessons from other lifetimes. She had experienced a glimmer of happiness and of hope. She wanted more.

She rapidly reached a deep trance state.

Nandini remembered the stones of Jerusalem with their distinctive colouring, which would change according to the light of the day and night. At times golden. At other times a tinge of pink or beige. But the golden colour would always return. She remembered her town near Jerusalem with the small dirt and rock roads, the houses, the inhabitants, their clothing, their customs. There were some vineyards and some fig trees, some fields where flax and wheat grew. Water came from the well down the road. Ancient oaks and pomegranate trees were near the well. This was a time in Palestine, as it always seemed to be, of intense religious and spiritual activity, of new changes, always the hope and yet the heaviness, the harshness of the days, of eking out a living, of being oppressed by the invaders from Rome.

She remembered her father, named Eli, who worked at home as a potter. Using water from the well, he created shapes from clay, making bowls, jars, and many other items for his home and for the villagers, and even some to sell in Jerusalem. Sometimes merchants or others would come through the village and buy his jugs or cookware or bowls.

Nandini supplied many more descriptions of the potter's wheel, the rhythm of her father's foot on the wheel, and details of life in this small village. Her name was Miriam, and she was a happy girl living in turbulent times. Soon her life would be forever changed by the spread of that turbulence to her village.

Dr. Dhawan helped Nandini to progress to the next significant event in that lifetime: her father's premature death at the hands of Roman soldiers. The Roman soldiers frequently tormented the early Christians who lived in Palestine at that time. They devised cruel games merely for their own amusement. One of these games accidentally killed Miriam's beloved father.

At first the soldiers tied Eli around the ankles and dragged him behind a horse ridden by a soldier. After an endless minute, the horse was stopped. Her father's body was battered, but he had survived the ordeal. His terrified daughter could hear the soldiers howling with laughter. They were not done with him.

Two of the Romans then wrapped the free end of the rope around their chests and began prancing around, as if they were horses. Her father lurched forward, his head striking a large rock. He was mortally injured.

The soldiers left him in the dusty road.

The senselessness of it all added to her piercing anguish, added a bitter anger and hopelessness to her father's violent demise. This was just sport to the soldiers. They had not even known her father. They had not felt his gentle touch as he tended to her minor childhood cuts and bruises. They had not heard his humour as he worked over the wheel. They had not smelled his hair after he bathed. They had not tasted his kisses or felt his hugs. They had not spent every day of their lives with this gentle, caring man.

Yet in a few terror-filled minutes they had snuffed out a beautiful life and had filled Miriam's remaining years with a grief that would never quite heal, with a loss that would never be replaced, with a hole that could never be mended. For sport. The senselessness outraged her, and tears of hatred joined those of her pain.

She rocked back and forth on the dusty blood-stained ground, her father's large head cradled in her lap. He could no longer speak. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. She could hear gurgling in his chest every time he laboured to breathe. Death was very close. The light in his eyes approached dusk, the end of his day.