Book Review: have a little faith

I've been reading a lot lately. Melissa got me the new Mitch Albom book have a little faith and I highly recommend it.

Mitch is a sportswriter for the Detroit Free Press (and I remember him fondly from my growing up years in Detroit), who became well known nationally through his book Tuesdays with Morrie. This is Albom's first non-fiction book since then, and it is fantastic.

The story begins with Mitch's childhood rabbi (aka "Reb") asking him to give the eulogy at his funeral. Mitch looks at Reb wondering if he is dying, but Reb tells him it's coming but not in the near future. Mitch accepts and begins meeting with Reb, this man of God he used to fear, on a regular basis as part of the agreement. Mitch wanted to get to know Reb as a human being. The book chronicles the 8 years Mitch travels from Detroit to New Jersey to meet with the rabbi, a wonderfully joyous man who sings all the time, ("How are you doing, Reb?" Singing "The old gray rabbi, ain't what he used to be....") and who has given his life's service to building a single community of faith.

The vignettes are marvelous, ranging from snippets from Reb's sermons throughout the years, to how the Reb handled inter-faith connections in his community, including a scene with the Roman Catholic priest from the church across the street. Just fabulous.

But intertwined with the Reb's story are the details of another man Mitch has gotten to know during this same time: an African-American pastor in the inner-city of Detroit who ministers to the homeless. Henry is a former drug dealer and addict who had a life changing experience with God, and now leads this small congregation called "I Am My Brother's Keeper" in a dilapidated church abandoned by the Presbyterians. Mitch, in part through his interactions with his rabbi, wants to give back to his community. Tentatively, this well off Jewish man begins reaching out to the impoverished Christian people he meets.

I won't give more than this away. This is a remarkable story and one that will stay with you for some time.

Reveling in Being Dependent

There's no way around this, but I don't like sitting for too long and having people do things for me. It's hard for most clergy, and other people in "helping" professions, to be recipients of care and grace, to have people get my meals, help me put on my shoes, or run my errands.

And yet that's what's happening right now.

I've been reminded of that wonderful passage from Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom. The book is about Mitch's mentor Morrie who is dying of Lou Gehrig's disease. Mitch asked Morrie how it was having people do even the most basic things for him, including wiping his bottom. Morrie responds:

'I'm an independent person, so my inclination was to fight all of this—being helped from the car, having someone else dress me, because our culture tells us we should be ashamed if we can't wipe our own behind. But then I figured, Forget what the culture says. I have ignored the culture much of my life. I am not going to be ashamed. What's the big deal?

'And you know what? The strangest thing.'

What's that?

'I began to enjoy my dependency. Now I enjoy when they turn me over on my side and rub cream on my behind so I don't get sores. Or when the wipe my brow or massage my legs. I revel in it. I close my eyes and soak it up. (115-16)

I'm no way near Morrie's acceptance (nor his condition), but I am trying to revel in being dependent. To revel in being loved. Not in that shower-me with-all-your-attention sort of prideful way, but recognizing that when I accept the love and care offered me with graciousness, I honor the people who are doing things for me.

The reality is that all of us will at some point in our lives need to be dependent on others. Sure, our culture tells us we shouldn't need to depend on others, but life isn't like that. And when we shut ourselves off to that help when we need it, we rob both ourselves and those who desire to show us love of meaningful connections, of building community and deepening friendships.

So I'm learning to revel in being dependent. It's a tough lesson for me, to be sure, but one I'm needing to learn.

Finding Wholeness

On All Saints' during my sermon, I read a a couple of paragraphs from Frederick Buechner's book The Longing for Home about how we can find wholeness. It's a great quotation, and I wanted to share it again in case you missed it or if you wanted to hear it again.

The world floods in on all of us. The world can be kind, and it can be cruel. It can be beautiful, and it can be appalling. It can give us good reason to hope and good reason to give up all hope. It can strengthen our faith in a loving, God and it can decimate our faith. In our lies in the world, the temptation is always to go where the world takes us, to drift with whatever current happens to be running strongest. When good things happen, we rise to heaven; when bad things happen, we descend to hell. When the world strikes out at us, we strike back, and when one way or another the world blesses us, our spirits soar. I know this to be true of no one as well as I know it to be true of myself. I know how just the weather can affect my whole state of mind for good or ill, how just getting stuck in a traffic jam can ruin an afternoon that in every other way is so beautiful that it dazzles the heart. We are in constant danger off being not actors in the drama of our own lives but reactors. The fragmentary nature of our experience shatters us into fragments. Instead of being whole, most of the time we are in pieces, and we see the world in pieces, full of darkness one moment and full of light the next.

It is in Jesus, of course, and in the people whose lives have been deeply touched by Jesus, and in ourselves at those moments when we also are deeply touched by him, that we see another way of being human in this world, which is the way of wholeness. When we glimpse that wholeness in others, we recognize it immediately for what it is, and the reason we recognize it, I believe, is that no matter how much the world shatter us to pieces, we carry inside of us a vision of wholeness that we sense is our true home and that beckons to us. (109-110)