"Will you do my eulogy?"

Book: Have A Little Faith
Author: Mitch Albom
Publisher: Sphere
Pages: 249
Price: Rs 495

Eisha Sarkar
Posted on Mumbai Mirror on Wednesday, July 28, 2010 at 06:08:19 PM

It would be hard for sports journalist-turned-writer Mitch Albom to better his Tuesdays with Morrie, you would have thought. But that's what makes Albom different. In Have A Little Faith, he trudges familiar ground once again, only to come up with a refreshingly heartwarming piece of non-fiction that makes you believe in and question faith at the same time.

This time Albom tells the stories of two men of God - one, Jewish Rabbi Albert Lewis who nurtured a congregation for sixty years and the other, African-American Pastor Henry Convington, a former convict who turned to God to show him light. It takes the not-so-religious Albom by surprise when Rabbi Lewis asks him, "Will you do my eulogy?"

Albom decides he needs to know the Rabbi better before he can say something about him at his funeral. Thus starts a series of interactions over a period of eight years where Albom discovers the man behind the flowing robes who straddles around his house wearing bermudas, bright-coloured socks and sandals. The hours he spends with the "Reb" makes Albom realise that the essence in life is not success or power but it's about belonging to and nurturing a community.

Mitch Albom with Rabbi Albert Lewis

The author mentions one of his conversations with Rabbi Lewis:
"What do people fear most about death? I asked the Reb.
'Fear?' He thought for a moment. 'Well, for one thing, what happens next? Where do we go? Is it what we imagined?'
That's big.
'Yes. But there's something else.'
What else?
He leaned forward.
'Being forgotten,' he whispered."

Albom draws parallels between the lives of the rabbi and the pastor, Henry Convington. Unlike the singing rabbi who had given his life to a congregation, Covington's leap towards faith was more like an act of redemption. A hardened drug addict who was convicted for a murder he did not commit, Covington turned to God when he saw his life slipping away. A skeptical Albom watches the pastor build a congregation in an old dilapidated church, he watched Convington give the homeless shelter in the church and give sermons to drug-addicts who're not yet willing to enter the church from the wall. He watches, feeling a twinge of guilt, as Covington preaches to a small audience in a plastic tent on the church premises:

Mitch Albom with Pastor Henry Covington

"When people tell me that I'm good, my response is, 'I'm trying.' But there's some people that know me from back when - anytime I make that trip to New York - and when they hear I'm pastor of a church, all of a sudden, it's like, 'I know you're getting paid, boy. I know you gettin' paid. I know you.'
He paused. His voice lowered.
'No, I say. You knew that person, but you don't know the person I'm trying to become.'
'You are not your past.'"

While the rabbi and the pastor are important characters in the book, central to the book is the author himself. The book is journey Albom embarks on to rediscover faith through the deeds of the Lewis and Convington and finally, a little of his own. He transcends the barriers of his own Jewish prejudices to buy a tarpaulin cover for the broken roof of Convington's church and later by writing newspaper columns about the church's desperate need for repairs. After all, no religion says any work done for the poor is bad!

Tender, deeply-moving and amazingly simple, Have a Little Faith - with its stories, sermons and anecdotes - answers all those questions about religion, God and man that could help resolve eternal conflicts. If only man could be satisfied with such reason...