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Bucks County Courier Times
Home / Columnists /Kate Fratti
Kate Fratti
August 2, 2010
Heaven Talks To Children
A small, persistent part of me - the part that's grown cynical of organized religion and the very religious - wants me to dismiss Christine Duminiak as a kook. Another part of me cannot.
That part thinks Christine, a married mother of two grown kids and a devoutly practicing Catholic in good standing at St. Ephrem's near her home in Bensalem, might just be the real deal. A woman of God. It feels that way to be in her presence. Could she be a teacher sent by Him (Her?) to comfort the rest of us in times of grief?
There are plenty who'd like to think so, and they fill her spiritual bereavement workshops.
In addition to lecturing, Chris has authored two books on after-death communications meant to assure the grieving that their loved ones aren't really gone. A sign from heaven can be a tap on the head when there's no one there; a book turned to just the right passage; a penny left in a special place; a favorite song on the radio. The dead want us to know they're OK and that we still matter.
Christine's dead in-laws appeared to her once. The sighting started her journey into the spiritual field.
Seeing a ghost, any ghost, would reduce me to a shivering, blubbering mess, and Christine agreed it's the reason God wouldn't OK that kind of sign for me.
Only when the sign is a comfort, is it from God, Christine teaches.
Her second book, "Heaven Talks to Children: Afterlife Contacts, Spiritual Gifts and Loving Messages," will be released Tuesday. In the book, and in a seminar in New Britain later this month, Christine talks to parents about "children's natural gift to see and hear spirits, the importance of accepting their experiences and how to guide and protect them."
Christine, a certified grief recovery specialist (e-mail ChrisDuminiak@aol.com or www.christineduminiak.com), also assures them there are examples in the Bible where spirit communication was practiced by Christ and his followers. Many fundamental believers have serious religious concerns about the nature of spirits. Part of Christine's message to parents is that children who see ghosts shouldn't be shamed or ridiculed or feared by their worried parents.
Christine's next talk will be in New Britain at the Circle of Miracles, 10 Beulah Road. The cost is $30 for adults and free for children ages 17 and under. Register at 215-348-5755 or online at www.SusanDuvalSeminars.com.
She believes children are especially able to see and hear spirits and "Heaven Talks to Children" includes more than 100 accounts involving kids. A child who plays toy trucks with a dead grandfather; a boy who meets his mother's dead boyfriend; a girl whose late great-grandmother helped her lead the family to a gravesite no one had visited in years.
Happy stories, Christine says. Gifts.
In addition to writing and lecturing, she co-hosts a radio show called "Ask the Angels" on Blogtalk Radio. And in 2000, she founded the international, non-denominational Internet group Prayer Wave for After-Death Communication, where the bereaved come to process their loss and learn how to recognize signs from the loved one who has passed.
Some share their stories, but still are trying to explain away the sign. "Afraid to just embrace and believe," is how Christine explains it with a shrug. To each his own.
Her work is to comfort. Her goal is to make the subject of after-death communication less a conversation about ghosts, psychics and mediums and more a mainstream discussion about a benevolent higher power to whom our lives matter.
And in this newest book, she says children have a lot to teach us about that.
August 02, 2010 02:11 AM
kfratti@phillyburbs.com
Bucks County Courier Times
Home / Columnists /Kate Fratti
Kate Fratti
October 1, 2004 6:33 AM
Comfort from beyond is not just for the birds
I think the red cardinal I sometimes spot in my back yard is my late father. Well, not my father so much as a cheerful sign from him.
I'm not even sure it's the same cardinal I see every time. It's just that when I do spy it from the kitchen window, all I can think is, "Hi, Dad." And I feel happy, like when I run into an old friend I haven't seen in a very long time.
I can't explain it, and if you believe Christine Marie Duminiak of Bensalem, there's no need to.
Christine, author of "God's Gift of Love: After-Death Communications For Those Who Grieve," has talked to hundreds of people like me who are pretty sure their dead loved ones stay close by. She also hears from many others who desperately wish for a sign.
Christine, a hospice volunteer, will talk about the ways deceased friends and family members reach out to cheer us when she leads a workshop from 7-8:30 p.m. tonight in the auditorium of Boscov's department store at the Neshaminy Mall in Bensalem.
She'll outline about 20 common ways, ranging from visions and dreams to scents and touches to messages left on answering machines to WHOA! ... birds.
She'll also share signs from her late dad, like the way he used to tap her lightly on the head while she was cooking dinner, a reminder, she thinks, to call her mom. Or the dimes he still leaves around the house.
Still reading? Bless your open-minded heart.
Christine believes signs from beyond are nothing more than comforting, playful reminders from those who've gone before us to say, "Hey, I'm with you still."
A devout Roman Catholic and a parishioner at St. Ephrem's in Bensalem, Christine says she never planned to write a book or teach a workshop or start a prayer group and message board dedicated to signs from beyond. She was an executive business secretary turned stay-at-home mom who - at 50 years old - was considering heading back to work.
It was about that time, in 1998, that her dead in-laws visited.
Say it ain't so, Chris. Not the in-laws.
Her husband's mom and dad appeared to her in the wee hours one morning and stayed with her - silent, filmy holograms - for more than an hour. In the weeks that followed, they appeared again and again. One time, it was as silhouettes playing pinochle. They never said a word.
Christine started to research after-life communications just to find out what the elder Duminiaks were up to. Out of that research grew a commitment to spread the message that "our loved ones survive death, are still a part of our lives, and that God allows them to communicate with us from heaven."
Researchers estimate 50 million to 100 million Americans have had one such experience or more.
In September 2000, Christine founded Prayer Wave for After-Death Communication - www.geocities.com/adcfriends. It's an Internet grief support, spiritual and prayer Web site where people ask for prayers to receive an afterlife sign, learn how to recognize signs, and share their stories in a loving environment where they don't risk ridicule.
Like the kind I'm going to get when my brother hears dad comes to me as a little bird.
Columnist Kate Fratti, whose opinion column appears on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, will one day visit her survivors as an insatiable craving for carbohydrates.
kfratti@phillyburbs.com
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