First I had a dream, then...

The birth of the IM4U project/newsletter

First a had a dream and then I wrote a song that goes along in part like this:

You were in my dream last night
You found me naked in the light
With nothing on but my imperfection.
You reached out to me tenderly
You smiled as you whispered,

As you are, I am, too.
Be for me, baby, I'll be for you.
Everything else is an illusion.
An illusion meant to divide us from the light of love within us.

- from You Were in My Dream Last Night, KB words and lyrics © 2017

Not too long after writing those words I found myself at the grocery store, standing in a very long check-out line where, as always, I pondered the mysteries of the ubiquitous customer service model that features multiple check out stations with no staff.  After a few minutes a friendly, loud voice called out in my direction and looking to my left I saw a cashier wearing a huge smile and waving his skinny arms to catch my attention and beckon me down to his check-out line which was at the far end of the idle check out stations.  He was young, not very tall, thin and sort of nerdy, wearing black chinos, a black company polo shirt with ID tag and thick-cushioned black shoes meant for hours and hours of standing and absorbing the moods of the shopping public. As I pushed my cart up to his station he said something like, "Come on down here!  Don't be shy, I am waiting for you,"  or some such outsized positive welcome not customary to the check-out experience. I was completely caught off guard.

Then the bag guy came up and started bagging my items.  Clearly he was a friend of the cashier, equally outgoing and young.  I said to them both, "Wouldn't it be great if all of life was like this, where everyone was open and waving and calling out to others, 'hey - come on down! I am here to help you! Hey!  how's it going? Come right on in here!', and so on.  Wouldn't that be great?  We all laughed and joked about such an idea, tickled by the possibility of this far-fetched notion of being for each other. 

Some of you know me as a songwriter and in the last years of my songwriting (I have switched to straight-up poetry writing in the last several years), I was continually drawn to the subject of love.  I don't mean romantic love but rather, sisterly/brotherly love, the kind of love that is generated out of respect, kindness, positive regard and compassion.  My  song called Big Love goes...

Big love that moves mountains
Big love that knows peace
Big love that grants a new start
That big shining shimmer
Hiding in the glimmer of the faintest of hearts

So all things considered I have decided to go into the business of spreading the IM4U message and conjuring up that 'big shining shimmer hiding in the glimmer'.  I'm going to call my endeavor the IM4U Project.  I will be stating the obvious - that we are all worthy of love, that we all have love within us, that we can learn to love better and change most everything with it, ourselves, others and our world.  So much IS possible.  But at the very least I want to be like the nerdy cashier at the grocery store who shines with a light and brightens the day of a perfect stranger with his IM4U attitude.