To the Rastafied Church of the Cowboy Buddha: grace and peace to you.

The motivation to write came while crossing Neahkahnie Mountain on the way to work at Jupiter’s Books. I was listening to Brewer and Shipley in honor of our beloved Rev. Billy Lloyd Hults.

“Waiting for the train that goes home, sweet Mary, hoping that the train is on time …”

Hearing those words, I thought of Billy as I last saw him – propped at his home computer on the eve of the election, skin and bones in a faded Obama T-shirt. It had been some time since I had visited him in his smoky sweat-lodge full of books, artwork and mystical carved rocks.

Perched on Billy’s couch I recalled a visit years ago when he was publishing an essay by Don Berry, author of the historical novel, “Trask.” Billy showed me the author’s Web site which included a rotating skull with a counter marking the days that Berry’s doctor said he had left to live.

Now Billy is waiting to board that train that travels faster than light. I thought about this near the top of the mountain crossed by explorer Trask with the aid of Charley Kehwa, his Native guide.

The tears came on strong, but not because Billy is dying. Like the rest of us, he’s been doing that for some time. No, I cried in that moment because I realized that a treasured local shaman is going to meet Jesus.

Not that they haven’t crossed paths before, during vespers at the pub, perhaps. When Jennifer and I lived in Tennessee we’d come to Cannon Beach during the winter holidays.

Energized by the wild coastal weather I would venture out from my in-laws’ home to commune with the salty outlaws down at Bill’s Tavern.

We’d raise a few pints to politics and philosophy and Billy would rail against the anti-social sins of the corporate church.

“Everybody eats, nobody hits,” declared Billy on more than one occasion. Institutional failure to uphold those rules was for him a moral outrage.

During his sermons I sometimes felt like a token Christian at the bar. Billy deserved better, no doubt. I can imagine him debating theology with pipe-smoking scholars like C.S. Lewis or J.R.R. Tolkien.

Instead he got a hillbilly for a buddy believer, and he welcomed me into a village as magical as Narnia.

Billy was the first talking beast I met in Cannon Beach, other than my in-laws. That was back when he was publishing “The Upper Left Edge.”

I remember visiting him at Jupiter’s Books when he was behind the counter.

I’d walk in to find him leafing though some strange tome while Sally Lackaff sat in a chair by the woodstove, creating artwork for the newspaper. It was like chatting with Lucy and Mr. Tumnus the Faun.

He published one of the first things I ever wrote, a holiday letter about Cannon Beach penned in the early ’90s.

For a long time I thought his paper’s name was a pun on some lofty leftist leaning. Years later Billy informed me that he chose the name because “that’s where you start writing.”

Billy encourages others while sharing his own scriptures on life.

In a recent e-mail commenting on our economy, he cautions us about putting too much faith in paper inscribed with claims about God.

He writes: “it isn’t the people who make the money and what they have to say that we need to trust, it is the artists and the actors. It is those who share their talents with our towns. …”

Billy backs those words with lifelong support for creative expression.

He’s emboldened many wordsmiths through his publishing and has spread the faith through classes at the Tolovana Arts Colony – which he co-founded with writer Michael Burgess.

He coaxes us to put fellowship ahead of authority, to value intelligence, kindness, beauty and humor above material power.

Billy says he would prefer not to be smothered with phone calls and visits during this spiritual season. Let’s remember him in our holiday thoughts and prayers. Give thanks for the reverend as he travels on.

Watt Childress is a Cannon Beach merchant and freelance writer who lives on a Nehalem Valley farm. E-mail him at w attchildress@yahoo.com