ZVBM

Hi!

First if all, I thank everyone for their comments. Superman1, you have given me much food for thought.

I had another dream, the third in this series, I think, last week. I dreamed that I was back in my Samaritan friend's home in Holon. It was Saturday, i.e. the Sabbath for both Jews & Samaritans. The young Samaritan that we spoke to back on April 23, on Mt. Gerizim, at their Passover offering, was also there. (see my first journal entry). My younger friend welcomed me, like he expected to see me. I asked him how Sabbath morning prayers were (the main Samaritan Sabbath morning prayer service begins well before dawn); he clapped me on the shoulder and asked me when I would join them. Gaaaah...

Their Passover offering on Mt. Gerizim next year will be in the very late afternoon/evening/early nightfall on Sunday, April 13. Our (Jewish) Passover begins exactly 24 hours later. (Sometimes our calendars jibe, like next year, and sometimes they don't, like this year). Unless we are prepared very early, well in advance, it will be virtually impossible to go back to Mt. Gerizim & watch the ceremony. This might actually be a good thing because I don't know if I could stand it. I would want to be with them too much. There is something authentic about them, I think. If it weren't for the scandal it would cause to my family, I think I would approach thjem with a view towards adopting their version of our faith (as I'll put it) now. But I love my family (wife & 2 boys) more than anything and can't, and won't, do this to them, not now anyway.

We spent last Sabbath, after my latest dream, with relatives we haven't see in a while. I talked about the Samaritans to my cousin (a grandmother of 11) with such (obvious, to her) enthusiasm that she said I would make a good Samaritan, that I should convert. (Note to self: Be careful when you talk about Samaritans!)

Gaaah...

I dreamed last night that I was back in the city where I grew up in the US & have been back to 4 times in the 26+ years that I've been living here. I had to get to the center of town (I was on foot) and had to go through neighborhoods that I hardly ever went to but I had to go through them because they were on the shortest, the most direct route to the city center. I entered a vacant lot that was strewn with heaps of trash and could see the center of town looming in the distance. But there were various paths through the vacant lot, leading to various exits from it, and I wasn't sure which path to take. I tried one which seemed promising by was startled by the sight of a big snake, with mottled coloration, like a copperhead, moving through the piles of trash. I didn't see its head or its tail, only a section of its middle moving through the trash but I knew exactly what it was. I turned around and took another path that seemed to lead towards downtown...and then woke up when my alarm went off.

Downtown represents my destination, where I need to go. The trash-strewn vacant lot is like a maze to be threaded, tho' I'm not sure what the trash represents. Does the snake still symbolize temptation? Is it a pitfall to be avoided or a challenge to be surmounted? Should I have continued on that path? And why did I see only part of the snake (not its head and not its tail)? This snake was much bigger than the one that bit me in my previous dream.

Any thoughts?