Aged Pioneer Among Aspens – The Death of a Friend

Ray turned 90 last month. The occasion found him writing a series of reflections. They usually involved his thoughts while on his daily walk along the Sturgeon River in St. Albert, Alberta. Here’s part of one he sent me a few weeks ago:

The Northwest wind is blustery, providing welcome protection from mosquitoes. Strolling over the trestle requires vigilance to keep my walking stick from being pushed across my legs.

Entering the shelter of robust aspen trees I hear the leaves, a liquid sound, water over rocks, and recall being lulled to sleep at a campsite beside a stream in Yoho National Park.

Farther up the trail I hear a squeak amidst a gust of wind. I pause until the next rush of wind. Surrounded by aspens, I see a large dead spruce with wind stress cracks, and up and down its body, woodpecker carpentry.

Before too long this aged pioneer among aspens will join the chaotic wind-fall at the side of the trail to become nutrient for future generations.

Previously, I passed an aspen. Its bark blackened at the base, perhaps lightening. In spite of the damage it supports a healthy marquee. This sturdy tree shows no evidence of stress when gusts of wind occur.

As I hike under the liquid sound of aspen leaves I pause; being ninety, I feel a kinship with these trees.

Ray was a Mennonite missionary, a high-school teacher, a college instructor (NAIT), a philosopher/theologian/metaphysician, a progressive questioner of his own tradition, a compassionate humanist, a mystic realist, with, to the end, an insatiable curiosity. An irrepressible, irreplaceable soul. Friend. And still, always, deeply in love with his wife Ginny, who passed away only six-months ago.

Just the other day he sent me a note on the last line of a poem I had written, concerning our expanding universe. Here’s part of his rumination:

… It has been determined, even measured, that an increase in velocity increases mass. Given my total Universe velocity what is my mass without current velocity? Would I even exist?

Einstein, in energy = the speed of light squared, expresses a relationship between the speed of light and mass. Light, a special case, has wave and mass characteristics.

Is that mass an electron? Is this why there is relationship between mass and the speed of light?

Universe is Motion? Motion is Universe? Love is a verb?

When Ray was 85 he asked me to speak at his funeral, which now, because of this pandemic, won’t happen. That’s okay, his own words are better. Written the afternoon before he died — peacefully, in his arm chair — this is how he ended that meditation:

This is too much for my tenth decade grey cells. I will go for a walk in Nature where the frequency of my star dust atoms occasionally become tuned to the frequency of Nature’s star dust atoms and be transported to Spirituality in the essence of the Universe.

Resting in Mystery, Ray

Oh my, I miss you Ray.