Pilgrimage

In 1934, two young men born on the Central Plateau of the Ozarks headed west to California in a Model A along with three other people from the same area.  Arriving in what was then a land of hope and dreams, the two worked as farm laborers, harvesting fruit, baling straw, and picking cotton.  After a year or so without much gain, they returned to their home ground, hardly prodigals but having seen the end of the world where the surf beats against the earth in what appears to ephemeral humanity a relentless stalemate.

My father was one.  The other was Ray.  Ray had a couple of younger sisters.  My mother was one of them.  A year or so after Dad and Ray returned from California, Dad and Mom were married.  Ray got married a year after that.  I think one of the reasons I always found Of Mice and Men so personally compelling is because I could relate it to the stories Dad told of his travels with his future brother-in-law.  Dad would have been a sort of George to Ray's Lennie.  That is not to say that Ray was at all like Lennie in terms of physique or intellect, rather that Dad was the smaller, more wiry and more clever of the pair.  Where Ray excelled was in building and fixing things — houses, cabinets, electricity, plumbing, machinery.  He was not as good with numbers as Dad except when it came to carpentry.  Ray also had no concept of the fear of heights.  Vertigo was simply not possible for him, and he could walk the thin edge of a two-by-four three stories up as casually as if it were flat on the ground.

People, though, were always a problem for Ray.  He was not that hard to get along with, so long as you let him have his way.   His older brother was always delightfully profane.  Ray could be like that as well, but he was always profane just the same.  My grandmother was the happiest Christian I ever met.  My grandfather was an agnostic with an Indian mother, an unknown father, and a love of strong drink.  Some of their eight children were like Grandma, some more like Grandpa.  Ray was a little more like his father, probably, though you cannot be related to my grandmother and not have at least some sense of humor. 

The reason I write about my uncle is because he was the last of them on either side.  I have one aunt left who suffers from dementia and would not know me.  I used to have a wealth of uncles, seven living and three deceased when I was born.  I had seven aunts.  That's not counting the "by-marriage" uncles and aunts that basically doubles the number.  Now that whole generation hangs by thread.  Ray passed on a couple of days ago.  I went to the flower-reading last night and saw a roomful of cousins of various degrees.  One of them is a long-time preacher, now in his seventies himself, who prayed at the end and thanked God for Ray's life.  I said, Amen.

My wife asked me, when we got the news that he had passed, where I thought Ray was.  I said that if prayer will get you into heaven, he is safely home.  Mom and Dad were talking with Ray's older brother -- the delightfully profane one -- who remarked in response to a question, "Oh, hell, yes, I believe."  I have no doubt that he did, and I think the same is probably true of Ray.  I don't suppose anyone can say for sure about the state of another person's soul.  There are those who will say that because Ray did this or did not do that he is lost eternally.  If he is in hell, life should be easier among the living.  The devil will have his hands full. 

(If Ray heard me say that, his response would be stated with emphatic grimness:  "You goddam well better believe it, by god!"  Then he would laugh, "Good luck to that bastard sonuvabitch keepin' me.")

Perhaps I am weak and sentimental and not biblical enough, but I think Ray will be all right in the end.  I am also inclined to think he might have a little settling up to do:

Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw - each one's work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done.  If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward.  If anyone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.  — 1 Corinthians 3:12-15

But Ray was a builder, remember, and I think some of what he built will stand the fire of God's glorious presence.  When the chaff has burned away on judgment's threshing floor, I believe substance will remain to the purified Ray.

He was already in the nursing home and going blind when Dad died.  Dad passed on four months shy of his ninety-eighth birthday.  Ray would have been ninety-eight if he had lived four more months.  Others may take nothing from the coincidence, but I know that the Lord gave it to me as a sign that the two old pards are reunited once more. 

It seems to me that I can see a place very like the hills of home but somehow more solid and real, as if I had only seen them before as a bright reflection in a clear, mirroring stream.  There on one bald hilltop I seem to see a light, a campfire under evening shadows, reflected in faces brighter with inner light than the memorial fire itself.  All but one of those faces I know, but not as once I knew them.  For now the lines etched by earthly care and weathering have faded with the fullness of new life, except for those left as though engraved for the beauty of remembrance upon a vessel of gold.  I see each countenance filled with a sober joy that is both ancient and blissfully child-like.   The One I do not know is familiar in a way the others are not, and I know that I have known Him longer and better than the rest. 

A call is heard from the soft shades, and that one face lifts toward the call with such glory that the shadows humbly bow and step back to reveal the pilgrim who has traveled very far.  The pilgrim I know well, but, at first, he seems too wan and weary, drawn and small, too ghostly to exist in this solid and potent place.  Perhaps, though, it is only an illusion from the distance being much greater than I can imagine, for, as he draws nearer the fire, he appears to grow and strengthen until he is restored to himself and more.  His great, deep laugh reverberates across the ridges and hollows, thrown back, not in echoes, but in the electric thundering voice of the very land itself joining him in his happiness.

All are eager to greet and embrace the pilgrim, but they know they must wait while the One takes him aside so briefly as a deferential shadow cloaks them.  The earth seems to shiver, and the others bow their heads in awe and reverence.  Even having passed through the fires and the trials, through the dimness and uncertainty, the pilgrim must yet weep for a moment in this land of the blue hour, as the Master speaks His secrets.  Those who wait for the pilgrim know that, though the whispers of our Shepherd wring out our tears, it is His touch that wipes them finally away and turns them to glittering, eternal jewels.  Then the faithful shadow lifts and the two return to the circle.  My uncle is a pilgrim no longer, and, with his face, too, now filled with light, he rests.