As I may or may not have mentioned before, I spend my days driving around all day. This means I spend a lot of time with the radio on. When I can I listen to Catholic radio, not always an easy thing to do as there aren’t many around where I am. I miss my satellite radio. There tends to be a lot of people on Catholic radio with stories of what I call their God moment, either when they first herd God calling them to come back to the faith, or just telling them to do something. I’m not sue, but I think I am still waiting for my God moment.

These people make it sound so simple. It’s like, well, I was walking down the street and, boom, there was God talking to me telling me what to do. I knew then I had to (insert calling here). I haven’t ad any experience like that. I believe God has talked to me, given me messages through various means, but I certainly haven’t had any kind of God moment. Everything that has happened to me has been way more subtle than what I hear from the radio.

We always hear how God and/or Jesus and/or a Saint is talking to us all the time, we just need to listen. I listen all the time. How do I know what is coming from God or what is coming from someone (or something) else? And how do I know exactly what the meaning is?

Here is a case in point. I have two recurring dreams. One I finally figured out, because I believe God gave me the answer. Another one I can’t. I think when I dream that this is a way God is speaking to me, especially when I remember the dream. Many of my dreams I don’t remember, so they aren’t messages, at least to my way of thinking.

The first one, which since I got the answer hasn’t recurred was of me walking through an old New England type town or city, with old buildings, not skyscrapers, but three or four story high brick buildings. There is one section of this town which s full of old theaters, and I hear lots of voices coming from these abandoned buildings. Instead of going around this section of the town, I go through it and end up going into one of the buildings, which is full of old theater items. The dream always ended the same way, I would be trapped in the building unable to get up and would wake up screaming and having trouble breathing. The last time I had the dream, I didn’t go through that section of the town, instead avoiding the area. I told myself in the dream, “Don’t go through there, you know what happens when you do”. I could still hear the voices, but I wasn’t lured. When I woke up and thought about this, I believe the times I went down into that section, it was because Satan was calling me to. The last time, God told me to avoid it, to not succumb to Satan and sin. I haven’t had the dream since.

The second dream, which I have had for thirty years, is almost always the same, at least it has the same recurring theme, with a few differences here and there. I come back to my father’s store, which has been closed for thirty or so years, and things have changed, they have gone back to the way they were before I ran it. My father is there (he passed in 2000) sometimes like this morning my mother is there (she passed in 1996) and they pretty much ignore me. I ask them wy they have done the things the have, why they didn’t keep doing the things I did, but they don’t answer. There are other parts of this dream which would take me too long to go into,  and some minor variations to it, but I can’t figure out what the dream is trying to tell me. Is it some kind of message from God? I have asked him to tell me what it means, he hasn’t.

Which goes back to my original point, how do we know what He is trying to say? How can we do what He asks us to if we don’t understand? I understand the message in the first dream, quite clearly in fact, but I can’t figure out the second. And this morning there were most of my dead relatives there at the store, and I was trying to tell one of them that soon we would all be together again. I have prayed to God for guidance as to what this means, including in church this morning, but so far there is no answer.

Is this in some way my God moment? What is God calling on me to do?