Dreaming Your Way to Faith
Loads of great bloggable stuff stored up.
First up, this fascinating story from the Arlington, Virginia Catholic Herald: (H/T to Gashwin)
Uma and Kumar Krishnan were devout Hindus living in Singapore when something remarkable happened.
Uma had a dream in January of 2006: "she saw a 'very humble lady' surrounded by candles.
She and Kumar were devout Hindus and they knew the lady in Uma’s dreams was not a Hindu god. They knew little of Christianity, but they thought this lady might be the Blessed Mother. Still, because they came from a long tradition of Hinduism in India, they didn’t give the dream much thought.
The next year the Krishnans moved to the US and in April of 2009 Uma began to have other dreams:
'One night she dreamed she was walking into a church she’d never seen before. Once inside, she turned right and found a little room where there were red candles and a statue of Mary.
The second night, she was in the same room, but this time she saw a big cross made of palm leaves.
Another night, she dreamed she was in a boat. On her right was a black woman with dark hair and on her left, a lady wearing a blue scarf and holding a Bible. The woman in blue showed Uma some verses to read to make her worries disappear. In her dream, Uma read the Bible verses and both women disappeared.
Uma and Kumar talked about the dreams and, by the fourth night, they decided to visit a church to see what was happening.
Kumar typed “St. Mary Church Fairfax” into Google and entered the address from the first result into his GPS device. The address was for St. Mary of Sorrows Church in Fairfax.
When they got to the church, Uma was shocked. On the outside, it looked just like the church she had dreamed about the first night. When they went inside and turned right, there was a small chapel with red votive candles, a statue of Mary and a cross. It was just like her dreams. Uma started to cry.
“The moment was so touching,” Kumar said. “We were not even Christians and we were not even worshipping when we got such a thing. We were Hindus and we didn’t exactly know how to pray, but we just sat there and said, ‘Thank you. Thank you for all these visions and thank you for bringing us here. We don’t know what to do, you tell us, you guide us, show us what has to be done.’”
Eventually, the Krishnans began to attend Mass and the local charismatic prayer group every week. St. Mary's pastor formed a special RCIA team for the couple and they were baptized on September 12.
Their pastor, "Father Starzynski said Uma and Kumar’s conversion story shows that God works in mysterious ways. He felt honored that he could be there to help the family.
“I think it speaks to how beautifully God can work and does work,” he said. “It makes you think, are we flexible enough to understand the ways God may work that are outside the box that we have constructed?”
As I have mentioned before on ID, experiencing dreams and visions that lead to the non-Christian recipient becoming a Christian is a remarkably common phenomena in the Muslim world. Back in March of 2008, I posted about the research that Dr. Dudley Woodbury had done with 750 "Muslim Background Believers" from all over the world.
"As with Paul and Cornelius in Acts, visions and dreams played a role in the conversion of many. More than one in four respondents, 27 percent, noted dreams and visions before their decision for Christ, 40 percent at the time of conversion, and 45 percent afterward. Many Muslims view dreams as links between the seen and unseen worlds, and pre-conversion visions and dreams often lead Muslims to consult a Christian or the Bible.
Frequently a person in the vision, understood to be Jesus, radiates light or wears white (one respondent, though, said Jesus appeared in green, a color sometimes associated with Islamic holy persons). An Algerian woman had a vision that her Muslim grandmother came into her room and said, "Jesus is not dead; he is here." In Israel, an Arab dreamed that his deceased father said, "Follow the pastor. He will show you the right way." Other dreams and visions occurred later and provided encouragement during persecution. A Turkish woman in jail because of her conversion had a vision that she would be released, and she was. A vision of thousands of believers in the streets proclaiming their faith encouraged a young man in North Africa to persevere."
The same phenomena have been reported in the Hindu world as well.
It is true. The Holy Spirit is in our midst, working in ways that transcend our assumptions of how God works in the world and how people come to Christian faith.
"Then afterward I will pour out my spirit upon all mankind. Your sons and daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions." Joel 3:1
(This passage is better known as Joel 2:28 in most Protestant Bibles. Catholic translations follow the order of the Hebrew text.)
posted by Sherry W @ 3:27 PM
14 Comments
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14 Comments:
I am awestruck.
Well, maybe we should pray that more of this kind of thing happens.
Louise:
All the evidence is that this sort of thing is happening because many millions of Christians all over the world have been praying intensely for a spiritual awakening since the early 90's. It was called "Praying through the Window" and was focused upon what was called the 10/40 window.
The 10/40 Window is an area of the world that contains the largest population of non-Christians in the world. The area extends from 10 degrees to 40 degrees North of the equator, and stretches from North Africa across to China. It is those areas where most of these remarkable manifestations are taking place.
For more information, go to 1040window.org.
In general, In 1990, the nations of the 10/40 Window represented (as of the research date):
82% of the poorest of the world's poor (per capita GNP less than US$500 per year)
84% of those with lowest quality of life (life expectancy, infant mortality, and literacy),
the hub of the world's major non-Christian religions (Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, etc,
Close to 100% of those who are both most-poor and have least-access to Christian resources
The least Christian resource investment
and the least sharing of the Christian message.
The prayer campaign focused upon all those issues.
Wow, I love to hear such stories of God's myteries ways of reaching out to those who are yet to be in God's fold. I would love to hear the rest of the story to see or hear who God put in these dream receivers lives before God sent the dreams.
I would like to hear more of how they were living their lives before and after their conversion. And Oh what a wonderful example of a seeker on the edge of walking with Christ praying. My paraphrase "Here I am, you have got my attention, please show where do I go from hear."
Another motivation to be prepared at all times to be tell the reason for the hope that is in us.
Again, Sherry... wow!
I'm a little confused about the Hindu story. Why did she thank Mary? Did she know she wanted to become Christian before entering the church? I'm just a little confused.
I imagine it was because it was Mary who appeared to her and drew her to consider the possibility. I didn't get the impression the Krishnans intended to become Christians before entering the Church.
The fact that the parish of St. Mary's was the church she saw in her dream was a sign that God wanted her to proceed in a direction that would once have been unimaginable.
It was a pretty dramatic sign. And God often uses signs to get our attention.
Of course, figuring out what the sign means is the all important next step.
Thanks for the reply :)
Oops! I forgot to thank Jesus.
Thank You Jesus!
What a touching story and their willingness to act on it. It still takes courage to act and to live with the consequences.
Praise be to God!
Chris
Hayward, CA
I had a dream that Jesus killed my family. Does that mean I should avoid the catholic faith or do we just respond to the happy dreams?
Anonymous' comment above backs up the question I was about to ask:
Do you think American priests and laity are educated in a way that makes them very skeptical of these kinds of events? I myself have enjoyed several "near-miracles," as I call them, being too diffident to call them the real thing.
So both Catholics and others seeking miracles end up going to Pentecostal-type churches, which despite the risk of hucksterism may indeed be where God acts in visible ways.
"Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God." Is American Catholic diffidence towards miracles a sign of a lack of purity?
I tell every person who goes through discernment facilitator training that one of the challenges we face is that most lay Catholics don't know what "normal" is.
Many of them have had remarkable, even miraculous spiritual experiences but they think of it as (best case) very exceptional or worst case (very odd or suspect.). Part of this is the consequences of our "don't ask, don't tell" spiritual culture.
Lots of stuff is happening but we have no culturally approved way to talk about it. Since we almost never hear other ordinary people tell these sorts of stories, we don't know how relatively common they are.
And part of it is the fact that the majority of our active members are not yet disciples and so are not yet manifesting charisms.
Those of us who work in gifts discernment do have some sense of often "ordinary" Catholic experience "extraordinary" things - but so often people tell us that we are the first person they have ever told.
Which is why I always preface interviewer training by saying "doing gifts interviews is the most fun you can have legally."
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