I’m listening to John Prine sing one of his haunting songs – My Darlin’ Hometown – and his words take me on a soaring ride back to my hometown along the Allegheny where the beauty is too stunning to describe with any accuracy.

“Far away over the sea

There’s a river that’s calling to me

That river she runs all around

The place that I call my hometown”

As I listen I recall a vivid picture from the past. She’s halfway through the classroom door at my old school, arms loaded with books, and a big smile on her face and I can sense her high energy as she turns and scurries out the door.

Why that picture is still there after 50 years is a mystery to me. I messaged her through Facebook and she just responded.

“It’s always shocking and wonderful to hear that you live in someone’s memory,” she writes.

We live so many lives and it’s worth noting the smallest and sometimes less meaningful things often are the ones that stick in our memory. Why, I don’t know. But I do know we live many lives in our lifetime because there are so many phases to them. We change and adapt as we go along and what we see as a final product is never what it was like when we started out.

I dare go even further: we have many lives, not just in our single lifetime now, but also over the course of hundreds if not thousands of years. Yes, I believe in reincarnation. I don’t just believe it, I know it.

And, no, I couldn’t have been Hitler. I was born before he committed suicide in his bunker.

But I might have been Attila The Hun.

It’s tough to be here on this planet. Tough being so human, so imperfect. Not that it’s easy on the other side – back home in the spirit – but being here means you can slip and slide backwards far easier than you can advance spiritually and find yourself in a better spot when you leave the physical body and return home.

The ego, pride, all the prejudices and emotions we can experience here are absent on the other side, so you can get sideward here in a hurry even if you have the best intentions. The whole idea of being here is to experience all that and more, grapple through it and come out the other side not only intact, but also more intact than when you arrived.

That’s tough.

I’m said this before, but I used to have an hour session once a week with a pastor and often when I left his office my feet were barely touching the ground. I was flying, man. But it didn’t take but a few minutes and a short drive before worldly concerns would come crushing in and I was earth-bound again and as far away from the spiritual world as I was when I entered his office.

Humor, especially in music, can stop my backward slide sometimes. Prine is now singing “Other Side of Town,” and his words are smoothing and funny, maybe not to my wife, but to me, and gain me some time so I can get perspective on my life.

“A clown puts his makeup on upside down

So he wears a smile even when he wears a frown

You might think I’m here when you put me down

But actually I’m on the other side of town.

My body’s in this room with you, just catching hell

But my soul is drinking beer down the road a spell

You might think I’m listening to your grocery list

But I’m leaning on a jukebox, and I’m about

Half …. way there.

I’m sitting in a chair just behind my ear

Playing Dominoes and drinking some ice cold beer

When you get done talking I’ll come back downstairs

And assume the body of the person you presume who cares.”

When I think of my life and how when I cross over it will be compared to what I was supposed to do on this side, I shudder. I had long periods on Earth when I got off my planned spiritual journey and wandered in the desert. I would guess it was a good 30 years when I was tied tightly to Earth and lost my way.

It took junior – our granddaughter – dying to get me back on track. I’m quite sure she came down here to do just that, not just for me but for the rest of the family, too. I was thinking about this the other day and I can just imagine what they were talking about over on the other side as they watched me years ago blunder my way through my life, far removed from my spiritual path.

“Hey, we got to do something,” someone, probably a loved one already on the other side, said. “He’s screwing it up for all of us over here. Somebody’s got to go back and get him straighten out.

“OK, but who wants to go? Not me, that’s for sure. I had enough of that place,” said one.

When there were no volunteers, an enlighten soul who had been here many times and finally made it back in halfway decent shape so he didn’t need to go back again, piped up.

“I tell you what, God frowns on us gambling, but maybe he will forgive us for this: But let’s draw cards out of a deck and the low card goes.”

“I don’t know,” another said. “I’m ticketed to go on to the Hall of Knowledge soon and if I go back I might get sidetracked by all the craziness going on down there and wind up in darkness when I get back here.

“I would have to have some special compensation to go back there,” he added.

‘This is too important. Mosher is completely out of control. You see what he’s doing now?

“No, what is that?”

“He’s drinking Rolling Rock beer, out of a green bottle, no less.”

“Wow! I didn’t know that. That will kill him for sure.”

“Yeah, and it’s too early to have him back here. We haven’t got all the help we need yet to take care of that problem.”

So they eventually settled on drawing straws. Whoever got the short straw would go. For the sacrifice that soul would make, he would bump up a notch on the spiritual ladder when he got back.

The plan was for that soul to be here just short of four Earth years, die violently enough to shock the Moshers back to their senses and rocket them back on their correct paths.

Junior, of course, got the short straw, did her job, and we are all back on track to reach the other side safely.

Unless, of course, a green Rolling Rock beer truck happens to drive by the house.

Then all bets are off.

John Prine has started up again, crashing into my brain like a train jumping its tracks. I’m staggered now, but I will regain my senses and move forward, just like I have since Junior’s return to home and the other side.

“So I’m sitting up here in the north woods

Just staring at a lake

Wondering just exactly how much

They think a man can take

I eat fish to pass the time away

’Neath this blue Canadian moon

This old word has made me crazy

Crazy as a loon

Lord this world will make you crazy

Crazy as a loon.”

Have a great month.

You are loved.