What’s in a Dream?

by Caroline Cecile

My life took a drastic turn from the moment I found God, and nine month later (yes, nine months as a baby growing inside its mother’s womb till it is ready for a new world).. I remember the image that crossed my mind when I first entered the Unification Church center in Brussels, Belgium. I saw myself entering a wilderness, where nothing could be seen all the way to the horizon except dry, uncultivated land under the intense blue.. What was I in for, I thought at the time?

About one year later, I volunteered to go to England to join the I.O.W.C. and Homechurch providence True Parents began there. It is also there I met True Father and True Mother in the flesh. In the next few months, I was also hit by dreams, that really were nightmares. Perhaps that is why I have not forgotten them, they were so intense. My dreams dealt with images of what felt to me like, the “Last Days”, or the end of the world as we know it. True Father appeared in the dream I am sharing here. I was living in the center in Oxford, England at the time.

I saw myself walking besides True Father on his left. Another brother, tall with ash blond hair, whom I did not know, walked also beside him on his right. We were walking toward the seaside, it seems as if we had to go somewhere. I was in Belgium, my home country. The closer we got to the sea,, the darker it became. By the time we got there, it was dark. The full moon made the scene visible. A large portion of the sea water had been removed, held back somehow, leaving all fish jump about in their last breaths, and people were there, picking up the fish as if looting.

We stepped on the beach and walked to the right which is North for a while till we came to stairs that lead down below the ground. At the end of the stairs, there was a door, and we were supposed to go there. Father knocked on the door. A dark man (not color, but reflection) wearing rimmed glasses and white lab coat opened the door to let us in. It was in fact a laboratory. This man had to take our blood as if doing a blood test. He began with Father, took his blood, eventually ended it. Then it was my turn. The man stuck the needle in the hollow of my arm and began taking the blood out, kept on taking blood, and did not stop. Father looked at him with alarm in his eyes, and shouted, “what are you doing?” The man responded with a sneer, “none of your business, stay out of it, there is nothing you can do!” Father looked into my eyes, I looked into his eyes, alarmed. Father closed his eyes in prayer, I closed my eyes in prayer. At that point, our hearts fused into one, and though the blood kept being taken out, I did not fall down from weakness. I remained standing. Then suddenly, the man stopped, and we were all free to go, including the brother who was there, had been walking on the other side of Father. His blood had not had to be taken out. We were free to go.

… And I woke up

When I reported the dream to my National leader from Belgium, and I also told her that the brother walking on the other side of Father could have easily passed as the central figure I had in the center in Oxford. I was only 15 months a member, and yet, he placed me as his assistant. My National leader, therefore, thought that he, my center leader, had feelings for me, which in our movement, as a result of our understanding of the Fall of man, which is explained in Chapter two of the Divine Principle; we would say if such thing happened, that one had chapter two problems with another, which is capable of killing that person spiritually. And at that time, I did not feel good. Sometimes my energy was sucked out of me literally.

After a while I forgot about the dream. That is until I came here in the U.S.A. for the matching and engagement at the end of 1980. At the time of the matching, I did not feel very good either; and when Father announced that all European members matched with an American had to stay in the country and join MFT, I struggled about this new turn of events. I had made a plan for my Home Church mission in England, and couldn’t wait to begin this work. So that plan crumbled. After a 21 day workshop, I was sent to the MFT center in Royal Oak, Michigan. A couple of weeks later, the dream came back to me, and at that time, I found that the brother walking beside Father was not my former central figure but my husband to be. This realization helped me feel right about the matching, and about being in America, and making this country my home.