Remembering John Steinbeck And T.S. Eliot On All Saint’s Day

October 30th, 2009  |   

There are at least two reasons why I am fond of Halloween—one rather mundane, the other a bit mystical.
 
The earthly reason is my fondness for chocolate. I wish that an archeologist would discover a long-lost copy of the Hebrew Scriptures. Inside would be another translation for the description of the Promised Land—“the land of milk and honey.” It would read “the land of milk and chocolate.” At long last, a Biblical justification for my craving. 
 
Preparing for Halloween, Judy asks me what kind of candy I want in the house for Trick or Treat night. The underlying reason for her question is that she knows that we have lived here for eight years and not one child has ever knocked on our door on Halloween. Get the point? I wait for the knock on our door so that I can share the candy, but if the evening passes and no costumed kids arrive on our porch, I end up with the treats.
 
The heavenly reason why I like Halloween has to do with the fact that it precedes All Saint’s Day—the first day of November. That day marks the important church calendar date when Christians recall all those who have died—particularly those who have helped shape the lives of those of us still on our earthly pilgrimage.
 
On All Saint’s Day I call to mind a host of family members, teachers, coaches, various mentors, friends, public figures, and colleagues who have helped shape me—all those with fingerprints on my heart, mind and soul.
 
One of my favorite bumper stickers says: IF YOU CAN READ THIS, THANK A TEACHER. I have lots of teachers to thank for my love of books. And I must not forget the authors, many of them dead, who have written powerful and inspirational books—words which have influenced and shaped me. I consider them to be branches on my family tree. Each one of them is embedded in my mental, emotional and spiritual DNA.
 
In this issue of Notes I would like to single out two writers that touched me as a young person. I continue to carry them around with me like a school kid with a backpack full of books. I’m speaking of John Steinbeck and T.S. Eliot.
 

Discovering Community On Route 66 On The Way To California
 
As a senior in high school, I was required to give a speech in front of the student body. My topic was John Steinbeck. His two great literary works—“The Grapes of Wrath” and “East of Eden” had captured me at an early age.
 
I’ve just re-read “The Grapes of Wrath” in preparation for a two day Law and Literature seminar held at Washington and Lee University—that place where, one year after my high school graduation, I was introduced to the writings of T.S. Eliot.
 
“The Grapes of Wrath” recalls the migration that took place during the Great Depression when thousands of people were driven off their land by the forces of nature (farmland turned to dust) and unscrupulous capitalistic banking and business interests (human nature’s propensity for greed and power). The story is about the powerful and the powerless—the Haves and the Have-Nots.
 
Steinbeck’s narrative is focused on the Joad family. Tom Joad, just released from prison, finds his family homeless and in the process of loading up their car. Bankrupt, their home bulldozed and their land taken by the bank, the book charts their journey west on Route 66 from Oklahoma to California—their hoped-for promised land.
 
But California will not deliver on the promise. Instead of milk and honey, they encounter the bitter greed and oppressive economic forces they had left behind, and which plague the entire country. The Joads, along with so many destitute people, are forced into migrant crop work owned and operated by people who exploit them.
 
There is an old saying that borders on the cynical yet has a germ of truth in it—“Education is wasted on the young.” Re-reading Steinbeck I recognized the fact that when I read it 55 years ago I didn’t really know what I was reading; the powerful truth in the novel, which exceeded the captivating story, was beyond my comprehension. Nevertheless, Steinbeck planted a seed within me that would sprout as I grew older.
 
Having spent a number of years working with migrant and immigrant workers, I am able to see what Steinbeck saw—the flowing stream of workers held captive by unjust corporate interests. The new Route 66 is the route taken by immigrant workers who travel from Central America and Mexico for work. They are reincarnated Joad’s. On top of that, I see how small farms have been gobbled up by large farm and corporate interests, as in Steinbeck’s day, leaving farmers no better off than the migrant workers once hired to harvest their crops. 
 
I’ve come to see and understand what Steinbeck, through Tom Joad, saw and understood. The lesson learned is simply this: As long as poor, exploited people operate alone, no change will occur. Change will come only when an individual becomes more than an isolated “I” and comes together in an organized “we.” The forces that keep individuals apart, even make them hate and fear and suspect each other, must be confronted if injustice is to be recognized and overcome. Bringing people together in an organized way is a prerequisite for overcoming injustice.
 
Steinbeck writes about these folks as they become a “we” around a fire, food and conversations in which they share their pain, their hopes and their dreams. “In the evening a strange thing happened: the twenty families became one family, the children were the children of all. In the evening, sitting around the fires, the twenty were one.”
 
And then comes the radical message associated with sharing, a sharing described in the Bible about how the early Christians shared all that they had so that no one was needy (Acts 4:32-37). Steinbeck writes: “The two men squatting in a ditch, the little fire, the side-meat stewing in a single pot, the silent, stone-eyed women; behind, the children listening with their souls to words their minds do not understand. The night draws down. The baby has a cold. Here, take this blanket. It’s wool. It was my mother’s blanket—take it for the baby…This is the beginning—from “I” to “we.”
 
Steinbeck was profoundly influenced by the Bible. He connects the Bible with our everyday human struggle here on earth. Toward the end of the novel, Tom Joad, remembers a Bible passage mouthed by Jim Casy (J.C.), the preacher who baptized him. “Two are better than one, for they have a good reward for their labor. For if they fall, the one will lif’ up his fellow, but woe to him that is alone when he falleth, for he has not another to help him up.”
 

The Road To T.S. Eliot
 
The road that led from my home in Baltimore to Lexington, Virginia, where I would spend four years in college, was the road that led me to T.S. Eliot.
 
I was a philosophy major at Washington and Lee University. The department had one professor, and I shared that major with only four other students. I owe my gratitude to Dr. Myers, who required me to purchase and study from a book that has now become a dog-eared and musty-smelling copy of “T.S Eliot: The Complete Poems and Plays.”
 
Recently someone called my attention to The Rock, a poem written in 1934 by T.S. Eliot an author I re-read frequently. I find it interesting that “The Grapes of Wrath,” published in 1939, was being written at the same time as Eliot’s poem. Even more profound is the fact that both works are as relevant today as they were back when fascism was on the rise in Europe, and capitalism was displaying its ugly side in the United States.
 
Folks are always asking me for recommendations for books to read. Along with “The Grapes of Wrath,” I’d recommend reading T.S. Eliot, particularly the poem The Rock. Here are just a couple of lines from Eliot’s poem to tickle your fancy. The words, like Steinbeck’s, bring to mind the situation right now in our polarized, politicized nation.
 
What life have you, if you have not life together?
There is not life that is not in community,
And no community not lived in praise of God.
 
And now you live dispersed on ribbon roads,
And no man knows or cares who is his neighbor
Unless his neighbor makes too much disturbance,
But all dash to and fro in motor cars,
Familiar with the roads and settled nowhere.
 
Much to cast down, much to build, much to restore.
And the wind shall say: “Here were decent godless people:
Their only monument the asphalt road
And a thousand lost golf balls.”
 
When the Stranger says: What is the meaning of this city?
Do you huddle close together because you love each other?”
What will you answer? “We all dwell together
To make money from each other”? or “This is a community.”?
 
Oh my soul, be prepared for the coming of the Stranger.
Be prepared for him who knows how to ask questions. 
 
Notice how Steinbeck and Eliot emphasize our life together—living one’s life not merely as an individual, but out of concern for we the people. They prize community and castigate a wretched materialistic individualism that lives at the expense of the poor. But today, if someone talks about “we,” that person is called a socialist. Case in point, the cry for universal health care is called socialized medicine, and President Obama, is called a socialist for supporting universal health care.
 
A message from a clergyman in nearby Kentucky is worth sharing with you.
 
This minister preached that “health care is a human right” and invited people to pray for “universal health care.” A member of the church responded by saying that he had preached “an Obama sermon.” The preacher said that he was only preaching a traditional Christian message about Jesus’ command to “love your neighbor as yourself.”  (The message embodied in that Acts of the Apostles passage mentioned above.)
 
Later, while reflecting on the exchange with his parishioner, the preacher confronted the struggle lots of preachers face. The struggle, simply put, is how to preach Matthew, Mark, Luke and John when too many people in the pews believe in Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Lou Dobbs, and Bill O’Reilly.
 

The Art Of Being A Preacher
 
Tom Joad, on his way home from prison, runs into Jim Casy, his old preacher. Casy tells him that he isn’t a preacher any more—he’s lost the Spirit. “I ain’t gonna baptize. I’m gonna work in the fiel’s, in the green fiel’s, an’  I’m gonna be near to folks. I ain’t gonna try and teach ‘em nothin’. I’m gonna try to learn. Gonna learn why the folks walks in the grass, gonna hear ‘em talk, gonna hear ‘em sing. Gonna listen to kids eatin’ mush. Gonna eat with ‘em an’ learn gonna cuss and swear an’ hear the poetry of folks talkin’. All that’s holy, all that’s what I didn’ understan’. All them things is the good things.”
 
Casy joins up with the Joad’s in their trip to California, confronting injustice wherever it raises its ugly head. He becomes a union organizer and that gets him in trouble with the bosses and the law. He organizes workers to go on strike in protest of bad working conditions, and finally is beaten to death by strike-breaking company thugs. Casy’s death is a spiritual epiphany for Tom. He is moved to follow Jim Casy’s example. J.C. could very well have become Steinbeck’s literary character for Jesus Christ.
 
One can imagine Tom, perhaps in an All Saint’s-like moment, remembering J.C. and dedicating himself to Casy’s mission. Tom, about to leave his family to work for a larger community of sisters and brothers, tries to comfort his Mother who worries about when she will see him again.
  
Tom speaks: “Well, maybe like Casy says, a fella ain’t got a soul of his own, but only a piece of a big one—an’ then—Then it don’t matter. Then I’ll be around in the dark. I’ll be everywhere you look. Wherever they’s a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever they’s a cop beatin’ up a guy. I’ll be there. If Casy knowed, why, I’ll be in the way guys yell when they’re mad an’—I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry an’ they know supper’s ready. An’ when old folks eat the stuff they raise an’ live in the houses they build—why, I’ll be there. See? God, I’m talkin’ like Casy. Comes of thinkin’ about him so much. Seems like I can see him sometimes.”
 
What did I know about being a minister when I began my work back in 1964? Sure, I had known a few good clergy—some worthy of  emulation. But the real work of ministry was learned only as I, like Casy and Tom Joad, began to claim my own humanity while living among others, and listening and acting together with anyone willing to love one another and work for social justice. That’s where real preachin’ takes place, don’t you think? As the Episcopal Prayer Book says, “not only with our lips, but in our lives.”
 

I Was Martin Luther Last Sunday
 
Now that I no longer have a regular Sunday preaching job, I get asked to do some interesting things. Last Sunday, Reformation Sunday, I was Martin Luther in a one act play at the First Presbyterian Church. Two other retired clergy joined me. One was Pope Paul III and the other was John Calvin. The setting for the play was in heaven where we talked about the turmoil caused over Luther having challenged The Roman Catholic Church in 1517 by nailing his 95 thesis on the Castle Church in Wittenberg.
 
At one point, justifying my protest, I deliver harsh words to the Pope. “Father Paul, there was so much for me and many others to be furious about. Much of the Roman Catholic Church was a corrupt mess. The practice of Christianity was a cartoon of what Jesus’ first followers practiced.”
 
Playing the role of Martin Luther fired me up. The news last week that Pope Benedict had offered to welcome schismatic Episcopal churches into the Roman Catholic Church,
including married clergy, angered me. The Pope has opened the church door to congregations which object to women and gay clergy. In other words, the Roman Catholic Church, in my view, has now become a sanctuary for bigotry.
 
Upon leaving the Presbyterian Church, I gave thought to scratching out a few points of protest on a piece of paper and nailing it on the door of Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church just across the street. I thank God that I didn’t have paper or pen or a hammer and nails.
 
When Steinbeck received the Nobel Prize for his writings he said this: “The ancient commission of the writer has not changed. He is charged with exposing our many grievous faults and failures, with dredging up to the light our dark and dangerous dreams for the purpose of improvement.” Luther was certainly a preacher who dredged  beneath the surface of the way things were in the church.
 
A final verse from Eliot’s poem, The Rock seems appropriate here.
 
Of all that was done in the past, you eat the fruit, either rotten or ripe.
And the Church must be forever building, and always decaying, and always being restored.
 
One could very easily replace the words the Church with other words—like a human being, or our nation, or all human institutions. Try this word game.
 

The Politics Of Change And Renewal
 
John Steinbeck dabbled in politics. In 1952 and 1956 out of his concern for the immorality of the nation, he supported Adlai Stevenson for President. In a letter to Stevenson, he wrote: “A strange species we are. We can stand anything God and nature can throw at us save only plenty…If I wanted to destroy a nation, I would give it too much and I would have it on its knees, miserable, greedy and sick…What we have beaten in nature, we cannot conquer in ourselves. Someone has to re-inspect our system and that soon. We can’t expect to raise our children to be good and honorable when the city, the state, the government, the corporation all offer higher rewards for chicanery and deceit than probity and truth.” 
 
Despite this somber view, Steinbeck believed that our nation’s life could be turned around and hoped that Stevenson could be the 1950’s version of a “Yes we can” man. That hope still lives among those who love this land and wish no violence to intrude.

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