"I ain’t sayin’ I’m like Jesus," the preacher went on. "But I got tired like Him, an’ I got mixed up like Him, an’ I went into the wilderness like Him, without no campin’ stuff…Sometimes I’d pray like I always done. On’y I couldn’ figure what I was prayin’ to or for. There was the hills, an’ there was me, an’ we wasn’t separate no more. We was one thing. An’ that one thing was holy."
– John Steinbeck
The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 8. Jim Casy is asked by Granma Joad to say grace before they have family breakfast. It is ironic that the former preacher uses the occasion for some deep spiritual qestioning. Casy, like Jesus, tells how he has struggled with temptation and his spirituality, and had to take off into the wilderness to learn what was holy. As he prayed alone among the hills he discovered that they weren’t separate any more, the universe and all people were united – by holiness. This is an example of Emerson’s "Over-Soul," the oneness between God, man and nature.