Stealing Into The Night
A Journey through the Dreams and Visions of the Bible
by
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Religious traditions, for example, like Kundalini yoga, accept the possibility of directly communicating with the Divine. It teaches that when the top most chakra is open in the mind, human beings can communicate directly and immediately with God. The Judeo-Christian Scriptures also teach, and have always taught, that human beings can contact God directly through prayer, dreams and visions.
Dreams not only exist to teach us what we do not know, but they also are given to us in order to direct us to what we must do. They burst upon our consciousness just like a thief breaks into our home and enters our life and space unwelcomed and without permission. Thieves are surprises that violate common rules and laws. A thief does not wait until we are ready to be violated. He crashes into our privacy. A welcomed thief is a set-up. It is an oxymoron. God does not visit us according to our timetable and demands all the time. He reserves the right to take us by surprise.
Yet, the insistence and persistence of Christ to come to us and to be taken seriously can seem so intrusive, unexpected and demanding that St. Paul compares such a coming of Christ to be like a thief who crashes the security of our home in an aggressive fashion – just like a dream does: “…the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night (1 Thess. 5:2).” Although this text refers to Second Coming of Jesus, we know that the final moments of life are nothing but a reflection of what has been going on in our lives throughout our entire personal and cultural history. The final coming of Jesus Christ will be the final outcome of the many miniature comings and goings of God into our consciousness. The Second Coming of Jesus with a capital “S” and “C” will not be for us a totally different and separate reality from how God we experience Him everyday throughout our existence here on earth.
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About the Book
Human history, as outlined in the Old and New Testaments, is shaped by the use of dreams and visions. It is reasonable to assume that to use them for our spiritual direction is a logical and useful point of departure for our personal journeys through life. Biblical traditions are surprising up to date with the practices in modern psychology for using dreams, and in some ways, even more advanced than many of them. This book refers much more to dreams than to the use of visions for our guidance.
Probably, the most salient feature found in Biblical traditions for dream use is the emphasis upon God’s insistence to have direct and immediate contact with each and every one of us. This is most disturbing for some clergy who have been trained to think that they exist to mediate divine providence for the people of God. This may explain why some church leaders fear the use of dreams and think they are dangerous, or at the least, mere meaningless discharges of brain neurons. If using dreams was so dangerous, why did God use them so abundantly with such beneficial results for the ‘little ones’ in the Scriptures? For this reason the book is written more to support those who are willing to use their dreams to guide their spiritual journeys than as a strict ‘how to’ manual for dream interpretation.
About the Author
I have been a marriage and family counselor for thirty-four years and a school psychologist for twenty-nine years. I have two theological degrees, a M.Div. and a M.A. from the University of the State of
I was the founder and director of Assisi House, a non-profit organization, that worked with abandoned children in