{"id":4945,"date":"2012-05-06T12:58:26","date_gmt":"2012-05-06T16:58:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/monkeymind\/?p=4945"},"modified":"2012-05-06T13:12:10","modified_gmt":"2012-05-06T17:12:10","slug":"the-whole-shebang-preacher-casey-tom-ma-joad-the-way-of-universal-salvation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/monkeymind\/2012\/05\/the-whole-shebang-preacher-casey-tom-ma-joad-the-way-of-universal-salvation.html","title":{"rendered":"THE WHOLE SHEBANG: Preacher Casey, Tom &#038; Ma Joad &#038; the Way of Universal Salvation"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p><a href=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/81\/2012\/05\/Grapes-of-Wrath.jpeg\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/81\/2012\/05\/Grapes-of-Wrath.jpeg\" alt=\"\" title=\"Grapes of Wrath\" width=\"200\" height=\"309\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-4946\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>THE WHOLE SHEBANG: Preacher Casey, Tom &amp; Ma Joad &amp; the Way of Universal Salvation<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>James Ishmael Ford<\/p>\n<p>6 May 2012<\/p>\n<p>First Unitarian Church<br>\nProvidence, Rhode Island<\/p>\n<p>Text<\/p>\n<p><em>And the angel thrust in his sickle into the earth, and gathered the vine of the earth, and cast it into the great winepress of the wrath of God.<br>\n<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The Book of the Revelation of John the Divine 14:19<\/p>\n<p>These are hard times.<\/p>\n<p>And as I consider them, I find my mind, my heart going back to John Steinbeck\u2019s Grapes of Wrath, what I consider one of the great spiritual texts, certainly one of the most important to be produced on our American soil. And I can\u2019t think of the book without thinking of the movie, and I can\u2019t think of the movie without thinking of the song, of Woody Guthrie\u2019s powerful synopsis.<br>\nLike all true stories, there are more than a couple of versions to how Woody Guthrie got around to writing the Ballad of Tom Joad. It appears Woody is responsible for a couple of those versions, himself.<\/p>\n<p>The most likely version seems to be that Woody, who was not famous for wide reading, went one day to a Manhattan theater and saw John Ford\u2019s masterwork, The Grapes of Wrath. He was really impressed, really impressed. He thought it went right to the heart of the matter and was worried that someone without the quarter it cost to see the movie might not get to hear the message.<\/p>\n<p>His friend Pete Seeger recounts how he ran into Woody that very day, and how Woody feverishly asked if Pete had a typewriter he could use. Pete said no, but that his friend Jerry Oberwager did. So, they purchased a half-gallon jug of wine (of course\u2026) and went to Jerry\u2019s apartment, a six-flight walk up.<\/p>\n<p>Pete tells us how Woody, \u201csat down and started typing away. He would stand up every few seconds and test out a verse on his guitar and sit down and type some more.\u201d Pete added, \u201cAbout one o\u2019clock (Jerry) and I got so sleepy we couldn\u2019t stay awake. In the morning we found Woody curled up on the floor under the table; the half-gallon of wine was almost empty and the completed ballad was sitting near the typewriter.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/WKWGAGPy_kw\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The Grapes of Wrath was very controversial. Some people dismissed the book as some sort of sentimental celebration of the poor. Some so hated the book that it was called, sometimes by the same people, sometimes at the same time a celebration of communism or of Nazism. At the other end I\u2019ve seen people so moved by it that they claimed it was inspired by their religion, Catholic or Protestant, at its best. We do know when the Nobel committee awarded Steinbeck, they cited the Grapes of Wrath as one of their principal reasons.<\/p>\n<p>So, what was it that so caught the imagination of so many people for good and for ill? What made people denounce it, John Ford to make a movie from it just one year after it was published and Woody Guthrie to render it to a song right after that?<\/p>\n<p>I suggest we hear the reason sung to us by Preacher Casey, failed minister, broken heart, witness to all that is, and some of the worst of that up front and ugly. Out of this terrible wound he sang of a great mystery.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBefore I knowed it, I was sayin\u2019 out loud, \u2018The hell with it! There ain\u2019t no sin and there ain\u2019t no virtue. There\u2019s just stuff people do. It\u2019s all part of the same thing.\u2019\u2026 I says, \u2018What\u2019s this call, this sperit?\u2019 An\u2019 I says, \u2018It\u2019s love. I love people so much I\u2019m fit to bust, sometimes.\u2019\u2026 I figgered, \u2018Why do we got to hang it on God or Jesus? Maybe,\u2019 I figgered, \u2018maybe it\u2019s all men an\u2019 all women we love; maybe that\u2019s the Holy Sperit-the human sperit-the whole shebang. Maybe all men got one big soul ever\u2019body\u2019s a part of.\u2019 Now I sat there thinkin\u2019 it, an\u2019 all of a suddent-I knew it. I knew it so deep down that it was true, and I still know it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Let me confess to you, with variations on it, with a different emphasis here and there, an unwinding of the consequences, this is all I preach. <\/p>\n<p>Here is the universal message of the engaged heart. Each of us is unique and precious. And each of us shares one soul, boundlessness, love. Sometimes we have to pay attention to that part about how precious each of us really are. Sometimes we have to pay attention to how we\u2019re all connected. Most of the hurt we manufacture, the wounds gouged by our human behaviors, come when we forget one truth in favor of the other and act from that one-sidedness.<\/p>\n<p>Now the song of the Grapes is set within a particular hard time in our country when the fact we\u2019re connected, the fact we share one soul was forgotten, ignored, crushed by people who solely following the song of the singular heart were creating wealth for themselves at the cost of using up and throwing away others. And, much of the book was a celebration of the communal response, of smaller expressions of the great unity, particularly revealing the need for unions to balance the accumulation of power in too few hands.<\/p>\n<p>These were dangerous times. And once again we find how we live in dangerous times. I suggest in this country we are haunted by the shadow of a return to those days described in painful detail within that novel, led by preachers of the individual trumping the needs of the community. The callousness of this hidden by twisted philosophies of the individual, either claiming unseen forces at play in the single minded accumulation of wealth that will raise all boats, or more honestly, if brutally, denying we\u2019re related, denying our connections, denying that soul, and with it all responsibility for each other.<\/p>\n<p>There appears to be something in our human hearts, where we pull one way or the other, overbalancing, creating hurt. And so I\u2019m no more fond of philosophies that claim we are all one and ignore the needs and desires of the individual. But, in our country, in these times in particular, that\u2019s not the problem. Far from it. The problem is grasping after wealth at any cost. <\/p>\n<p>So here we are today. I look around me. This is what I see. Today there are those who would throw off the advances of social concern woven into the fabric of our culture for the past hundred years, of intuiting we all share one soul, or, to use another way of pointing to the deeper truth being ignored, of how we are all one family, successfully enough to have half our country today reduced to poverty, maybe half of them desperately poor. Much of this masked by the fact unless one becomes homeless there are refrigerators, phones, televisions and cars. Here one mark of poverty is weight, the poor, most are getting calories, but of the worst sort, leading to an epidemic of diabetes and other similar problems.<\/p>\n<p>But, for those who want to see hunger as the mark of poverty, just wait. If the most radical social policies that are being touted become rule of law, hunger is coming; real stomach burning hunger is just around the corner. Already our food pantries and soup kitchens are running on overtime. Come back here to church any third Monday. Join our loaves and fishes truck going out to parts of the community you may not usually see. There you\u2019ll see what it looks like. And what is spreading, a cancer in this nation.<\/p>\n<p>But, what to do about this? What do I do about this? You? Us?<\/p>\n<p>Well, the book, the film and the song, all address such a time, the soul sickness that allows it, and the cure. For many, and I admit, for me at first, the response is found in Tom Joad\u2019s words. \u201cWhenever they\u2019s a fight so hungry people can eat, I\u2019ll be there. Whenever they\u2019s a cop beatin\u2019 up a guy, I\u2019ll be there\u2026 I\u2019ll be in the way guys yell when they\u2019re mad an\u2019-I\u2019ll be in the way kids laugh when they\u2019re hungry an\u2019 they know supper\u2019s ready. An\u2019 when our folks eat the stuff they raise an\u2019 live in the houses they build-why, I\u2019ll be there.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And it is true. This is seeing in our own lives everyone else. And acting from that place. Tom is going out to act. All noble, and, frankly, kind of guy-like, part of the appeal to John Ford, whose favorite actor was, after all, John Wayne. There is a hint of gunplay hanging in the air. And, there can be times where that might be the only response. If we\u2019re not careful it can come to that.<\/p>\n<p>When we\u2019re not careful, we simply tumble from one excess to another. Most revolutions end up eating their children. They replace one excess for another. And, frankly, the tyrannies of the communal can be just as awful as the tyrannies of the individual. Look at what happened when idealists won collectivist states, and the horrors that followed for those subject to the power of the certain.<\/p>\n<p>I suggest there\u2019s a third way. We find it in the real hero of the book. <\/p>\n<p>The first time Ma appears it is when Tom tells the preacher an anecdote about her. \u201cI seen her beat the hell out of a tin peddler with a live chicken one time \u2019cause he give her an argument. She had the chicken in one han\u2019, an\u2019 the ax in the other, about to cut its head off. She aimed to go for that peddler with the ax, but she forgot which hand was which, an\u2019 she takes after him with the chicken.\u201d There\u2019s nothing ethereal about Ma, she lives in a hard world, and she meets it.<\/p>\n<p>And she isn\u2019t foolish. She hears the siren song of the dream California that\u2019s being pitched to the poor and dispossessed. But, she says \u201c\u2018I\u2019m scared of stuff so nice. I ain\u2019t got faith. I\u2019m scared somepin ain\u2019t so nice about it'\u201d She lives in the real world, and that world has hurt and disappointment as part and parcel.<\/p>\n<p>And, and, and it is Ma who in the camp seeing hunger all around and says we have to feed the children, even when not sure there\u2019s enough for her own. It is Ma at the end of the book, in a scene too hard for the movie, too hard for the song, but which reveals the heart of the matter, who when there is nothing left, nothing, encourages her daughter Rose of Sharon whose baby has been stillborn to breast feed a starving man, the only food left. Hope when there should be none.<\/p>\n<p>In the book we don\u2019t have the closing monologue given Ma in the movie. But throughout she does sing to us. Ma sings the song of hope. Nothing false in her. No pap. Only the real deal. In the book she doesn\u2019t get the fine lines, the words that we remember and quote. I think I prefer that to the speech in the movie. Instead, hers is the way of quiet action, of real action, of reaching out and of leaving no one behind, being fully part of it all, blessing all those who do what needs doing, with love and with care.<\/p>\n<p>Yes, these are hard times.<\/p>\n<p>And many are calling to us with their solutions.<\/p>\n<p>But, if we want the wisest of teachers, of guides through these dangerous times, I suggest, we turn our hearts, our attention, to Ma Joad, who sees the connections, sees the horror and the love at the center of it all, and then gets up and does the work.<\/p>\n<p>We do this, and we may, we just possibly, may find our way through.<\/p>\n<p>Amen.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/6lWyBD9eSfk\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>THE WHOLE SHEBANG: Preacher Casey, Tom &amp; Ma Joad &amp; the Way of Universal Salvation James Ishmael Ford 6 May 2012 First Unitarian Church Providence, Rhode Island Text And the angel thrust in his sickle into the earth, and gathered the vine of the earth, and cast it into the great winepress of the wrath [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":120,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>THE WHOLE SHEBANG: Preacher Casey, Tom &amp; 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