In this touching personal story, Fr Brian, an Irish Missionary in Kenya, shares his experience of being healed—and the role dreams played in it.
A remark in a recent issue of MAGNET touched a chord in me. It said something like, ‘We all need counselling and we all need healing!’ As I was growing up, I certainly needed counselling. I never got it. I also needed a very large dose of healing!
I never felt loved; I felt useless
I think I was a strange kind of creature as I grew up in Ireland! I was very shy, very scared, and always felt that God had made a very serious mistake in creating me. I never felt loved by anyone, even in my own home. I was never able to love anyone either. I felt that I was useless; I had lots of anger in me. And then I would be full of guilt about that, as I couldn’t understand why I was always so angry, especially in my home with my parents. I just had no idea who I was or why I was. I simply did not understand myself or why I was born into this world.
Anyway, somehow or other I was accepted in the seminary, though I probably would not be accepted nowadays, me being such an unbalanced character—as I thought. I was ordained priest in St. Patrick’s Missionary Society, and sent to Kenya, East Africa, where I have spent the last fifty-three years.
This inner confusion continued right through the first 14-15 years of my priesthood. I worked hard in the parishes where I was appointed, and I didn’t get into any serious issues with the people I worked with. However twice I finished up in hospital for a few days, suffering I suppose from a minor ‘nervous breakdown’, with major panic attacks, sleeplessness, etc. I used to think ‘am I going mad or what?’
I was advised by a religious sister friend to go for a sabbatical and begin to look for healing. I knew I needed something, but I really had no idea what kind of healing. So in my 40th year I set off into the unknown. I began with a three months renewal course in Ireland with the Columban Fathers. Then I began a kind of a charismatic ‘crawl’ in the USA, as they were the ones who seemed to be involved in Inner Healing ministry. I really felt very uncomfortable in the first community I visited. I spent three weeks with them, but I found the leadership there very controlling. After that I went to a Benedictine monastery in Pecos, New Mexico, USA. And there my healing began, after forty years in my own private ‘desert’.
And to my astonishment it all began through Dreams. I always thought dreams were just ‘nonsense of the night’, and normally I never remembered them at all. However, there was a workshop for Catholic spiritual directors going on in the monastery at the time, so I sat in on it. It was directed by Reverend Morton Kelsey, an Anglican priest and well-known psychologist and author, and a really perfect gentleman. He and another sister spoke of the healing power of dreams, and I thought what kind of rubbish is this! He has actually written lots about dreams, including a small little booklet called “Dreams–the Language of God”.
Then one night I had a terrible nightmare, and I was angry because I blamed the talks I’d heard. I dreamed that I was a youth cutting a hedge, and the next thing I cut a man’s head off! I then ran into my home screaming, and my parents, brothers and sisters all came running, asking, “what’s wrong?” “I’ve just cut somebody’s head off!” And straightaway they all began shouting abuse and insults at me, saying things like, “You are such a stupid fool, you always were, why were you born at all?” I woke up feeling so terrible about myself.
Anyway, next day I shared it with my spiritual director Sr. Donna, and she asked me a few questions about it. To cut the story short that was the beginning of an extraordinary healing for me that is still going on. Just very briefly what I began to discover then, and later I was able to confirm, was that my mother was not happy when she discovered that she was pregnant with me. I was born as World War II was breaking out, and life was not easy for them. She had just given birth to four children in the previous four years, and didn’t feel able to care for another baby just at that time. And, of course, I picked up those feelings of rejection even in the womb.
I spent one month in that monastery, and I began to have the most amazing dreams. That first nightmare more or less described very accurately how I felt about myself. The following dreams began to tell me that I was not at all as useless or a total reject as I had always thought, and that I had in fact quite a number of gifts. I began to see clearly for the first time in my life that this was true. After discussing each dream with Sr. Donna, she would ask me, “Is that you?” And always I had to say, “Yes, that is me!”
That is the story of my first forty years in this world. I am now in the 2nd 40 years of my life which I will finish next year! I came back to Kenya after that sabbatical into a new parish, and I recall that from the day that I arrived there until I left five years later, that it was the happiest five years of my life. I began to know what love is, to be loved and to love. That was something I had never been able to experience freely before. I have been in several other parishes since then, and have enjoyed every one of them. About eight years ago I did a short course on Spiritual Direction, and shortly after that I was invited by a large retreat centre to come and be the spiritual director for people on retreat. And here I am now, and enjoying it very much.
So from being a ‘useless’ person without any talent whatever, as I thought – I now finish up directing and helping many other people. I nearly always mention dreams to them when they arrive, and of course many of them look at me as if I need some psychiatric treatment. But then almost everyone begins to remember their dreams as their retreat continues, and more often than not the dreams become the agenda for their prayer. I often ask them after discussing one of their dreams, ‘Is that you?’, and almost always get the reply, ‘Absolutely me, no doubt!’
Basically dreams are all about you. They are like a story or a little parable about you, but usually in images about somebody else. It is important to remember that every single dream is for healing you, bringing you into a good balance in your life. You will dream every single night of your life, though you may not remember even one of them. There will be the most amazing number of characters coming, the good and the bad. You will find saints and murderers, men, women, children, ugly ones and beautiful ones, people you know and others you have never seen. And they all will represent something in your character in some way. There will be all these extraordinary stories that you could never imagine yourself.
When I was in that monastery, I had that terrible nightmare of cutting someone’s head off by mistake. Then the next dream I had was of the newly-elected Pope John Paul II. I was telling him how good he was and his many gifts, and then he told me that it was true. And these were my gifts of course that I had never known! The following dream I had was having breakfast with the Queen of England! And she represented my feminine emotional side that I was not in contact with up to then.
Just yesterday a young missionary sister who came with a very negative self-image finished her retreat glowing with happiness, after a series of dreams that showed her who she really is, and what she is like. In one of the dreams, someone was digging a very deep hole in the ground, looking for something buried there. The hole went down about ten feet, and then they saw a box that looked like a small coffin. Sister got scared, thinking maybe there is a rotting corpse inside, but when they opened it, they were amazed to find this beautiful treasure. Of course, it was just a parable about herself. Sisters often are very shocked when they dream that they are pregnant, or have given birth to a baby! This then is just a symbol of beautiful new life coming into their hearts and souls. I could go on and on with hundreds of stories–and all are for healing!
So now I’m almost coming to the end of my 2nd 40 years of life, and I can say honestly that this 2nd period has been a wonderfully happy time for me. There are so many people now that I love, and who love me, and I have really enjoyed my life as a priest during this time. And I know now that God also loves me a lot! I think that perhaps this is what Jesus meant when he said we must be born again.
One of the best kept secrets of modern times is that dreams are really the language of God!
Fr Brian Treacy SPS
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