The Ghost of Tom Joad Knocking at the Door: A Pilgrim's Journey into the CaliforniAmerican Heartland--23. Now, Willing to Dig Deep

Hoh Rain Forest, Steve Brown 2019 

 ...it is a sad thing to see the interest in interested men thin out and weaken and die.  We have known so many professors who once carried their listeners high on their single enthusiasm, and have seen these same men finally settle back comfortably into lectures prepared many years before and never vary from them again.  Perhaps this is the same narrowing we observe in relation to ourselves and the tidepool--a man looking at reality brings his own limitations to the world.  If he has strength and energy of mind the tide pool stretches both ways, digs back to electrons and leaps space into the universe and fights out of the moment into non-conceptual time.  Then ecology has a synonym which is all.

--John Steinbeck, Sea of Cortez, 1941

Dang, there is so much packed into that little quote.  Steinbeck's writing has a thickness and a density that is easily overlooked because of his preference for the simplest language possible to carry a concept and his affinity to the common man.  But he isn't light, and there is so much to learn about how to observe and engage from him.

 ...it is a sad thing to see the interest in interested men thin out and weaken and die.  That is the key.  To not do that.  It is what the bards have been writing since words first clung together and crawled out of the mind desperately searching for that connection, this is how it is to think, to feel, to scream, I am, to voice that essential question:  to be or not to be while the heart still beats.   To breathe deeply, to engage in more than measured teaspoons, to swim that tidepool magnificently, digging deep, thrusting forward, avoiding the natural tendency towards tedium and spiritual death--dulled, tainted and tarnished, worn and weary from the simple act of living, limited over and over again in his options, simply by being himself--worn thin by weariness of engaging in battles that seem to have no worth.  How does a man avoid that?

Hemmingway's answer seemed to be to simply do more.    Not be more.  Not do more for others, not grow more.  Just do more.  Travel more.  Fish more.  Hunt more.  Record more.  Write more.  Become fully engaged in not engaging--just doing.  No thoughts but in actions.  An endless movie-reel of adventure until the reel finally breaks, things unwind, and you find yourself with a gun turned towards yourself, mumbling Our nada who art in nada... 

Instead, Steinbeck seemed to suggest that if one could dive deeply enough into the tidepool of life through the disciplined mind, one could touch some sustaining universal all.  It is important to note that although reaching all comes from diving deep into the tidepool of life, all is not the tidepool itself.  It's not something that can be measured in teaspoons.   It can't be measured at all.  It stretches both ways, digs back to electrons and leaps space into the universe and fights out of the moment into non-conceptual time.  It isn't something measurable, but also isn't something unknowable.  He's tasted enough of it on the tip of his tongue to know it is real.  Or, as he says in the Grapes of Wrath:  "Cabon is not a man, nor salt nor calcium.  He is all these, but he is more, so much more...".  

Steinbeck is not an atheist in a traditional sense.  He's not a materialist.  Science is the means, the tool, not the end, the arrival.  The transcendence he longs for is only reachable through close observation of the tidepool--in that sense it is the tidepool.   But it isn't just the tidepool.  Simply swimming around in this life and being isn't enough.  If he has strength and energy of mind the tide pool stretches both ways, digs back to electrons and leaps space into the universe and fights out of the moment into non-conceptual time.  Transcendency in short, occurs only through a disciplined, engaged mind.  And what is that transcendence?  Unlike with Hemingway, it is not the adventure, it is not the escape. It is observing something so closely one becomes part of it, and when one does that, one can taste the all on the tip of the tongue.

Notice "ecology has a synonym which is all".  They are similar, not the same thing.  However, I must admit Steinbeck does do this weird reversal though, which suggests he might be more atheist than I'd like to believe.  He doesn't say, "All has a synonym which is ecology."  That would make ecology the understandable likeness that makes all comprehensible through comparison to something more tangible.  Ecology would then point towards all.  He switches that around and makes all point towards ecology.  In other words, Steinbeck seems to be suggesting God is a synonym for ecology.  If that is true, he clearly was an atheist.

However, we still have that problem:   "Cabon is not a man, nor salt nor calcium.  He is all these, but he is more, so much more...".    A strict Darwinist cannot come to that conclusion.  In science, everything is the sum of its parts.  There is no getting more out of the system than is already there.  There is no more than what already exists.  Yet, Steinbeck clearly states his belief that there is something more.

I believe Steinbeck states "ecology has a synonym which is all" intentionally the way he does to emphasize that there is absolutely no way to reach all except through ecology, through knowing the tidepool and how life connects, intimately.  Transcendency doesn't come through escape, but rather it comes through deep immersion in life.  Science, or knowing, is the means to touch God.   But God is tangible.  The something more, "so much more" does exist.  One can touch that reality and know that it is.  God just isn't above life.  He is life.  He is the great I AM!  The better we understand life--how we are all interwoven, vulnerable, and connected to each other in this great big tidepool, the better we understand God.  Hemingway could not find God because he was looking for a clean, well-lighted place, a sanctuary, disinfected, free from the chaos of life.  Steinbeck wants us to get our boots muddy, to get in the tide pool and dig around in life, because he knows that if God is to really be found, it won't be in a sanctuary--a clean well-lighted place--isolated from humanity.  Instead, God can only be found in the midst of it all--in the daily struggle for life--because God is all.  To know all is to know God.  Ecology therefore becomes a means of transcendency.  The more we understand how we are all connected and dependent on each other, the more we understand the nature of God.  To know each other well is to know God.  And by each other, that doesn't mean just man.  The more I know the spider that climbs along my window ledge well while I do the dishes, in that moment, the better I know God.  Though clearly something more, God is only truly observable in what is real.  His nature is tangible to us at those rare moments we recognize our intimate connections with everything around us.  

Perhaps for Steinbeck, those connections were indeed what was real.  Perhaps God was a metaphor for ecology.   If that was the case, who cares?  The result is the same.  A perfect God would want us to understand the tidepool he created for us well.  He would want us to know what connects us deeply and act accordingly.  Does it matter so much that I care for the spider on my window ledge because I care about how we are connected biologically or because I know how we are connected spiritually?  Isn't it that connection that God is really about.  To be connected through love is to know God deeply.  In those moments we are aware of that, we know God.  In those moments we feel isolated, and either inferior or superior, to all that is around us, we are as removed from God as is Satan, for if God is the great, I Am, there is no knowing Him isolated from His creations.   He exists in a very real sense because we all are.  In the sense that there is no musician without his music, no artist without his art, no writer without his writing, there is no creator without his creations.  God is because we are.  We are His ultimate joy, and the better we understand each other, the better we understand God.  The more we carefully dip our hands into the tidepool, the more we can feel His hands reaching in also, a superior simultaneous action, coinciding with our own desire to understand and feel that connection that is all.

Hoh Rainforest

Here in the sponge land
of moist temperate air
and giant moss-draped
big leafed maples,
these glacier carved
rock canyon walls
are like God,
seen only by those
willing to believe anything

and those willing

to get down in the mold

and decay of life, 

dig through root

and rusted rot, 

moving worm

and slug,

and clumps

of moss

carpeted 

by tiny

white

jeweled

flowers

until stone sacred

stone

is reached.

Mother Theresa

knew God

in the bedrock

beneath crowded clumped

humanity. 

Somewhere above me

shimmers

the great white peaks

of the Olympic Mountains

and I’m caught between

willing to believe anything

and willing to dig deep.

        --Steve Brown, 2003