A little learning from Casy, "Grapes of Wrath"

I watched Grapes of Wrath again last night and was blown away by the sheer beauty of it as I am every time I watch it.  The movie itself is great.  I love old movies in black and white that do not depend on bells and whistles but on brilliant acting and a well written story to reach the audience.  This movie is one that does that.

And, I of course, love Steinbeck's wonderful depiction of the human experience during times of strife and struggle. He pulls out the beauty in people  from under their apparent ugliness or imperfection.  He gave people hope in a time when hope seemed to be blowing away with the dust in the wind.  When you read him you are often left   with just a hint  of something...a knowledge that beyond all suffering is something worth fighting for.

Casy was my favorite character in the movie and in the book.  In almost all Steinbeck's stories he creates a character who depicts what it means to be enlightened or awake. Casy was that character in this novel...a "preacher" who gave up on preaching because he did not feel "he knew enough" and began to question what he was told to believe. He felt he lost the Spirit but as the story develops we see how he actually found it and became like "a lantern" for others.

I love this quote the most:

'What's this call, this sperit?' An' I says, 'It's love. I love people so much I'm fit to bust, sometimes.' . . . . I figgered, 'Why do we got to hang it on God or Jesus? Maybe,' I figgered, 'maybe it's all men an' all women we love; maybe that's the Holy Sperit-the human sperit-the whole shebang. Maybe all men got one big soul ever'body's a part of.' Now I sat there thinkin' it, an' all of a suddent-I knew it. I knew it so deep down that it was true, and I still know it.”

What does it say that we can all learn from:

• The Spirit...is love.
• We do not need to say that this love, this Spirit belongs only in the deities we worship ( in this case...coming from the Christian Bible Belt of the United states... God or Christ)
• We don't just need to love God
• We need to love all men and all women.
• The Holy Spirit is the Human Spirit 
• The Holy Spirit is within all of us
• There is just "One" soul and we are all a part of that soul
• We are all as Tom later tells his Ma, " a little piece of a great big soul"
• this is "knowledge" and a "truth" we have inside of us. It comes from a man who questioned everything else and felt like he knew nothing but he knew this!

This is like the wisdom generated in the enlightened mind. 

Casy even goes on to say,

"I  got thinkin' how we was holy when we was one thing, an mankin' was holy when it was one thing. An' it on'y got unholy when one mis'able little fella got the bit in his teeth an'run off his own way, kickin' an'draggin' an'fightin'.  Fella like that bust the holi-ness"

Is that miserable little fellow ego?

What also reminds me of enlightened wisdom are these words:

"There anin't no sin and there ain't no virtue.  Just stuff people do."

Hmm!  Just some thinking generated from re-watching a great movie and re-reading a great book.  I encourage you to check out both.  :)

All is well in my world.

References :

Steinbeck, John (1939) Grapes of Wrath. The Viking Press

Grapes of Wrath (1940) movie...on Netflix now (sorry ...don't have this cited correctly)

Spark Notes ( n.d.) Grapes of Wrath. Important Quotations explained on Sparks Notes. Retrieved on http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/grapesofwrath/quotes.html

Grapes