holyref

Reflection: Through his character Jim Casy, Steinbeck effectively explored the now somewhat ubiquitous notion that God is love— that humanity exists with an oversoul which is very intimately bound to the land, so that the American sense of spirituality is in harmony with our sense of relationship with the land. It's not surprising to me that as our connection to the land has eroded so has our connection with the spiritual. It's not that I necessarily agree with what Casy says about the holiness of love for humanity, but that I see it as a very American spirituality. To me Casy's conviction that our notions of holiness may be askew resounds as the death toll of our deep-seated legacy of Puritanism and the birth of a distinctly American understanding of God as being something intrinsic to wilderness, not something that seeks to root it out and condemn it.