...we are here to celebrate a life lived right.

For many of us, Jim was a mentor, but even for those who were just acquaintances, he was a big influence because he was all of himself.

The intensity of his involvement in art, philosophy, politics, psychology, history, physics, music, dirt bikes, hunting -- and his humor and common sense -- affected all of us.

To a greater or lesser degree we lived our lives in response to his, in the same way that one lives in response to a force of nature. In his absence, we will all have to rearrange the structure of our lives, to question what we are doing and why.

And that very questioning, if it leads to a widening embrace of the world beyond ourselves, will bring us closest to the spirit of his memory.

Nothing in the universe stops -- there is only life and change. Death is the word we use to describe a really big change. Jim would argue that after death there's nothing, but then you'd have to argue about -- what is nothing?

I'd say he became part of everything he loved-- the landscape, sky and clouds, part of each of us, and part of the universal consciousness of which he sometimes spoke.

Tina Dickey 7/10/99