A prayer from the wilderness

The following excerpt is from Steinbeck's, The Grapes of Wrath (Chapter Eight), spoken by the preacher who claims he is no longer a preacher...
He is asked to pray for the family before breakfast, and this is a piece of his prayer. If preaching is really about truth telling, and about telling and interpreting the stories of scripture, I would argue the man still knows how to preach, and in fact his instinct is to do so.

"I been thinkin', I been in the hills, thinkin' almost you might say like Jesus went into the wilderness to think his way out of a mess of troubles. Seems like Jesus got all messed up with troubles, and He couldn't figure nothin' out, an' He got to feelin' what the hell good is it all, an' what's the use fightin' and figurin'. Got tired, got good an' tired, an' his sperit all wore out. Jus' about come to the conclusion, the hell with it. An' so He went off into the wilderness.

I ain't sayin' I'm like Jesus. 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. Nighttime I'd lay on my back an' look up at the stars; morning I'd set an' watch the sun come up; midday I'd look out from a hill at the rollin' dry country; evenin' I'd foller the sun down. Sometimes I'd pray like I always done. On'y I couldn' figure what I was prayin' to or for. There was hills, an' there was me, an' we wasn't separate no more. We was one thing. An' there was me an' the hills an' there was the stars an' the black sky, an' we was all one thing. An' that one thing was holy."