Dreams, Visions, and Inspiration (Mission Monday)

“In sacred texts and in artistic narrative of all types, I have long been struck by the role and nature of dreams and visions. [1] We refer to what we experience while asleep as “dreams,” but we also refer to the conscious visions and hopes we have for the future with the same word. [2] In other languages or cultural discourse this overlap is intensified in that the same word can refer to visions which occur while asleep, awake, or somewhere in-between. In Muslim tradition this can be captured by (among others) the Arabic word ru’ya. In the Irish language and literary tradition there is the concept of the aisling [3] Whether drawing from the conscious, the subconscious, or from some combination of the two, these are ways in which our imagination grapples with envisioning a future different than the present. In many spiritual traditions, these visions are understood to be forms of communication with the Divine, and to reflect realities which are deeper than those of the material world alone. [4] A most famous example of this in our Vincentian tradition is the lumière experience of Saint Louise de Marillac. [5] " 

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