Rain pours on me outside, while soft music warms me on the inside. “Abraham, Martin, and John,” the song, plays from this relatively new gadget called a portable, hand-held, transistor radio.
I’m on guard duty as a buck private, having been in the US Army six months now. I’m wearing a slick poncho, an “OD” green-colored sheet of material that’s like a rubber covering that got mixed with a device created just a decade earlier, called “plastic.” The poncho is “yucky.” Gives me the creeps. (I’ll refuse to wear it again during my three-year military stint. Even in the rainy seasons in Vietnam and Panama. I’ll let my clothes get soaking wet and allow them to dry, rather than permit the poncho snake-like feeling on my bare skin.)
On this day in Ft. Dix, New Jersey, however, I wear a “steel-pot” helmet and carry an M-14 rifle beneath the poncho. Ducked into a makeshift tent when the rain fell hard. It kept pouring and there was nothing for me to do, but stare out into the torrential downpour and let my mind drift.
As well as turn on the radio. And hear Dion DiMucci, formerly with Dion & the Belmonts, sing a mournful song that was more Gospel-sounding than his usual teenage rock and roll efforts of “Teenager in Love” and “I Wonder Why,” not to mention “The Wanderer” and “Donna, the Primadonna.”
A message of the 1960s ascends upward in the New Age
He’s singing of men who gave their lives for their country, their beliefs. Persons who placed their ideals above corporeal comfort. All shot down. All killed. And growing so much larger in the wake of their assassinations.
Didn’t you love . . . the things that they stood for?
Didn’t they try . . . to find some good . . . for you . . . and me?
It’s taken me the entire length of the song, before realizing who Dion is actually singing about. John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King come easy. But, I get stuck on Abraham. (And this morning, some 40 years later, I got stuck again when the phrase from that song came to me: “… is anybody wondering …?” Abraham arises in my mind. Abraham of the Bible, the Old Testament, and the father of our world’s three major religions — Judaism, Muslim, and Christianity. I began to “wonder” if the song is supposed to stretch back to that old man. The one with a long white beard who’s prepared to kill his son — what was his name? Issac?– and in performing such a sacrifice, pass a test imposed by the Lord.)
No way can I linger with this thought, and so I switch and focus on another relatively older, bearded man named Abraham. Abraham Lincoln, whose wife, Mary Todd Lincoln convinced her husband to host a spiritualist medium to conduct the first séance at the White House. It is that Abraham the song addresses.
Has anybody here seen my old friend Abraham?
Can you tell me where he’s gone?
He freed a lot of people,
But it seems the good they die young.
You know, I just looked around and he’s gone.
The song laments the death of two presidents and a great civil rights champion, and then poses a question that only came about because of tragedy occurring six months earlier to another Kennedy. “. . . Has anybody seen my old friend Bobby? I thought I saw him walk up over the hill, with Abraham, Martin, and John.“
The rain eventually stops. So does guard duty. But the song’s message continues on to this day: “Find some good for you and me.”
Contoveros 
When we’re ready, right, Mike? ❤
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“When causes and conditions are sufficient, things will reveal themselves.”
— the Buddha
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After writing a blog post about Abraham, the spirits that are channeled by Esther Hicks through the law of attraction, I wonder if this musical number was a calling to me five years earlier to return to the source.
Perhaps the spirits of an older Abraham had been calling out to me ever since the 1960s!
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“Find some good for you and me.”
Last week was not simple for me. I felt weak and alone.I was looking for something or someone who could support me. I found it here.
Thank you, Michael j.
Helen.
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Come.
Into my arms.
Feel my embrace as you rest her head on my chest. Breathe.
Take a deep breath. Now, let it out slowly and feel the Love that’s there. In you. And in me.
_____________________________
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Thank you, Michael j!
You are far, but I feel you are close and support me. It is precious.
God bless you.
Helen.
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I feel this way about all my new Russian friends!
God loves ’em all, in any language you can pronounce His name.
Precious. I like the sound of that. Like a gem, a jewel that one in love could bestow upon another for no reason at all.
Helen of T. Thanks.
michael j
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It sounds like a great song
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One of the best. Still is. It’s become a folk song. May live beyond our years and be sung a hundred years from today. Thanks for visiting!
michael j
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Remember where you were when you heard the song, heard the news of the shootings. Fast forward some 30 years later, and ask another generation where each person was when realizing another plane had struck the New York tower, some watching it live on network TV as we did when Ruby shot Oswald in ‘63.
Some things outside of us never change, Michael j. We should focus all of our change on the inside.
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I like the idea that it is Abraham of the “Abraham Hicks” team. It’s okay if it’s actually the old tri-dimensional Abraham, but I will think of the tenets given by the one associated with Hicks.
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Was told that Abraham represents the right line of Love and Spirituality, while his son, Issac, the left line, or way of the Ego. We should strive to walk a “middle line,” called Jacob, which combines the two for the greater good, according to friends I joined at Kabbalah Unity Day today.
Still learning this business, Amy. Not sure what the Hicks would say about their side of the Abrahams.
michael j
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Hmmm…you are so right. There is tons to learn.
I’m willing to look at different streams – always have. Have heard people hell bent on one stream say that those of us who consider other paths simply become a watered down version of whatever.
I feel that I have been exposed to the best of them all. What’s negative about that?
Whatever I learn, I trust that God is leading me because God knows that my will is God’s Will.
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He is always on your side, no matter which path we take!
I like you, Amy the SoulDipper.
michael j
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Back again, my friend. And I like you, too!!
Discovering a blog I hadn’t visited before, check out what I found: http://rachelsnyder.wordpress.com/2010/08/29/didnt-we-love-the-things-that-they-stood-for-video-315/
Sweet.
Thanks for being a part of my morning.
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Great site. Enjoyed it immensely. Left message. Thanks, Amy
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Thanks for visiting Be Whole Now, Michael J – and thanks to souldipper for the mention. Well, they do say that great minds think alike. Surely it’s the same for great spirits, as well, eh? The song had me weeping most of Sunday morning. Glad to make your acquaintance; enjoying what I see here so far!
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I see. You’re new to the song, Rachel. Wow. I remember when I first heard it. (Actually, I just wrote about it!!!) The feeling never left me. And when it rains really hard, I get a mild “flashback” to that time and feel comfort in hearing the words as though it was for the very first time. I think it was the best thing Dion ever did, and rate it one of my all-time favorite songs. Along with Ben E King’s “Stand By Me.” (Played for the teen movie of the same name.)
I remember when Bobby was killed. I had been drafted and in my second or third day of basic training. Martin Luther King’s life was taken shortly after. John F Kennedy died when I was a sophmore in high school.
I was preparing for Court in the Criminal Justice Center of Philadelphia when I saw the plane strike the second tower in New York City. Those moments are frozen in time. Never will forget ’em.
We feel them collectively, and while they are tragedies, they do help bring people closer together.
Welcome. See you later.
michael j
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I too remember it all. I’ll never forget.
Neither will any of us who heard “Martin, Abraham and John” . . .
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Abraham-Hicks.
You were trying to tell me about the woman who channels the spirits collectively called Abraham. That was five years ago.
Isn’t it unbelievable how things work in life?
There is an old Buddhist saying, “when causes and conditions are sufficient, you will see things.”
I guess I wasn’t ready to see this Abraham until now. This message was always there. At least it was there since the year 2010. Causes and conditions had an ripen enough for me to actually see it.
God bless the universe!
Michael J, a mystic in training
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