“The only way to make sure people you agree with can speak is to support the rights of people you don’t agree with.”

~Eleanor Holmes Norton

Here is a very short but personally moving experience that I had a couple of weeks ago…..

I was getting ready to fall asleep when I found myself in a dark, cold room with several other women.

There was only a single ray of light that flowed in from the corner of a wall, up near the ceiling.

All of the women were whimpering and cowering, clothed in woolen dresses but still freezing cold.

We were all looking at each other with both pity and worry. There was one women with a small child as well.

This was definitely some kind of prison cell. It wasn’t really a dungeon, but had a very dungeon-like feel to it.

The room was damp, as were our faces.

I believe this to have been some kind of ancient jail cell, and that we were all being accused as witches, including the child.

My understanding at the moment, through the fear, was that we had all been too independent. We had not behaved as expected and required, and so we were a threat to the power order in our society.

I remember feeling that we were all very peaceful, kind people and did not deserve the suffering and mental torture that we were feeling.

Each woman was to be hanged, I knew that. But it was the imprisonment, the loneliness, the starvation and humiliation which I was most hurt by. How could humans do this to each other?

Why strip someone’s dignity and whole life away from them for merely disagreeing with your ways?

And the child. Was her mother so tainted that even the child could not be given a chance to live on?

At that moment I looked at another woman, one that I knew to be my friend. I knew her to be strong and spiritual and proud.

She looked at me, and her eyes flashed wider in knowing agreement.

I said to the others. “We will pass by them with our heads held high. We shall show them what honor there is in us still. Then they shall see what it looks like when true integrity dies.”

Some of them, who had been gazing at the ground, looked up. Others smiled and some nodded.

At that moment we all began singing a low but heart-warming song.

As our voices raised louder, over the noises from outside, some keys jingled in the background and the door to the cell opened.

That is where the vision ended. As we walked to our deaths.

I wonder, will humans ever stop persecuting that which they see as different from themselves? Will we ever know our true oneness with all things? Will we manifest peace?

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