Last year, on the Sunday prior to Martin Luther King Day, we showed a clip from the “I have a Dream” speech in church. That was really neat. We’re not doing that this year, but last night at music practice, we pulled out a song from the 1960s that goes along with the Civil Rights movement: “Get Together,” by the Youngbloods.

Come on people now
Smile on your brother
Everybody get together
Try to love one another right now.

We decided to play it as part of the service. So we practiced it last night, and it came together real nicely. A fun song to do.

And yes, it took me back…back to my days dropping LSD, smoking weed, the constant sex, cruising the country in a VW van, sticking flowers in soldiers’ guns, wearing hideously unmatched (and probably tie-dyed) clothes, getting wasted at Woodstock while Jimmy played….

Oh wait, I must be thinking of somebody else. I didn’t even wear my first pair of bluejeans until 1972, a radicalizing turning point which left me awash in euphoric sensations of counter-cultural rebellion. Wearing bluejeans and listening to the Carpenters (my first album, “Close to You”), are about as rebellious as I ever got. I sure missed out on a lot. Thanks, Mom and Dad, for raising such a boring kid.