“YOU GET WHAT YOU WANT”

TAG: MWC Reentry

1

I am a kid walking south on Second Avenue. It is 1944.

Yorkville.

Manhattan.

I watch oncoming pedestrians. Wondering about death. Not scared. I already know death is not the end.

I catch sight of a being who seems almost a giant. I look up at him. He comes closer.

The scene is still with me, like the vision of a near-death survivor. Clear. Unforgettable

“What happens when we die?” I ask silently.

I wait.

“You get what you want,” a voice replies.

2

I was eight when this occurred. Now I’m eighty-five.

The answer I heard long ago is true. We get what we want. Here. And there. In the afterlife. For we are souls. This is my basic understanding of how things are.

Even those who insist they have not gotten what they wanted will, I believe, come to see that everything they intended in their lives, positive or negative, took place.

3

I was a child when WW2 took place.

I wandered the streets of Manhattan.

I barely got through school.

Then came the Fifties.

Global power.

The cold war stand off.

Growth of the military-industrial monolith.

At nineteen, I was an intern at the New Republic. I saw Joe McCarthy censured on the Senate Floor. By peers. On both sides of the aisle.

In college, liberated from math and science expectations, I prospered.

4

Life took off then crashed in the 1960s.

Marriage in Boston.

Civil rights in Nashville and then all over.

Minor fame in Chicago. Creating a magazine that appealed to liberal Protestants. It took off.

But not for long.

Then came Malcolm.

Then Martin.

Then Bobby.

In August, 1968, wasted by these deaths, I preached in Lincoln Park. Love would win, I said. These words hung in the night air. Toward the lake, Daley’s police in a long horizontal line. They gassed us all out of the Park.

It was prelude to their subsequent riot downtown. The words Yippie and ‘Pataphysical come to mind as I think back.

Everything seemed over. “Hey Jude” seemed a consolation. I opened to whatever might be coming

My minor fame diminished swiftly. The end came after my failed effort, in 1969, to persuade Protestant denominations to embrace reparations.

Bereft, I told my wife I’d move anywhere she chose. She selected my childhood summer haunt, the Berkshires at the western tip of Massachusetts.

We started over.

5

The 1970s arrived. I had a bit part in “Alice’s Restaurant”. Wrote editorials for The Berkshire Eagle. Acquired a chocolate lab we called Persephone.

I had no desire to be lost in a drug haze or otherwise accede to the dominant vision of what the 1960s had been. I clung to memories of working with John Lewis, Diane Nash and others in Nashville. And of the redemptive phrase “beloved community.”

I could, and would, write forever.

But I was no longer in the church world.

Worlds define us until we realize they don’t.

I needed a second career. I decided on music.

A lifetime interest in folk-music morphed into a laid-back profession. I sold old stringed instruments. Produced three recordings of my Biblical songs. And sang every week at the Red Lion Inn.

We performed a folk oratorio called “New Rain” all over New England.

As the 1970s drew to a close, I invited everyone I knew to a dinner Alice Brock of Alice’s Restaurant fame helped create. It was held at the Mount in Lenox, Massachusetts, near where I lived.

By then, my marriage was ending. Amicably. My wife had found her true direction. I was not sure of mine.

6

Meanwhile earth time rolled on. As the ‘80s emerged two things engaged me.

Secondary roads. Two lane roads. Across contiguous states and back. Slowly observing. It was mystical. Illuminating. I was hooked on the country.

Gambling engaged me too.. But I did not want to be an addict. Instead, I was a recreational participant-observer. In Nevada mainly. Made wonderful friends. Learned many life lessons.

7

The time from 1986 to now began with a second marriage. It became a guardian angel idyll.

I wrote more songs. Country music mainly. Some were recorded in Nashville. But I never moved back there.

Instead, I pivoted big time. I purchased my first computer in 1981. I fell in love with cyber and the new world it would create.

I have have been full time online since then. There was no Internet yet. I watched it grow. I’m still committed. Seven days a week.

Cyber is our universal tiger by the tail. Despite nay-saying.

8

By the early 1990s, we were back in my home town, Manhattan. We lived in DC, Nevada and Boston on the way.

In the Big Apple, we exist modestly. We pay exorbitant rent for minuscule space. We are happy. We’re at home.

After all these years, I dream I’m an ambassador of Heaven. Most days, I check out a wide range of videos and other online sources.

I talk to over 100,000 followers on Twitter.

I converse with spirit guides.

I park ongoing texts on Kindle.

Spirituality is front and center. Living in the Light a constant aim.

And central to my understanding is the simple concept I heard long ago.

“You get what you want.”

9.

Intention rules. How we intend is how things happen.

Some intents are loving and positive. Others are fear-based and negative. Fear is the Soul’s worst enemy.

The great 19th century journalist, W. T. Stead, died on the Titanic. He later channeled a book called “The Blue Island.” Its tells of his first days on the other side. Its central message: practice good intents.

Literally.

Always.

Without fail.

Positive yields positive. Negative yields negative.

Hellish intentions are experienced.

Penitential intentions are honored.

Divine intentions get thumbs up.

This works on Earth over time. In Heaven, it’s instantaneous.

At eighty-five, I think the wisest thing I ever heard was, “You get what you want.”

Seventy-eight years ago.