Then some people came, bringing a paralyzed man, carried by four of them.
And when they could not bring him to Jesus because of the crowd, they made a hole in the roof.
MARK 2:3-4
On a Sunday morning, with the snow whipping sideways, I pulled open the church’s large front door and stepped into the vestibule. The sanctuary was freezing-and empty. The roof hole was above me. I could hear the wind whipping the blue tarp. An organ sound was coming from somewhere, but there was no one around.
“Psst.”
I turned to see the thin man with the high forehead, motioning me to another door on the side. I walked in and did a double take.
Here was some kind of makeshift mini-sanctuary, just two short pews wide, with a side “wall” of plastic sheeting staple-gunned into wooden two-by-fours. It was like a fort that kids make in the attic. The plastic wrapped overhead as well, creating a low ceiling.
Apparently, with no heat to fight the cold, the church had been forced to build a plastic tent inside its own sanctuary. Congregants huddled in the limited seating. The small space made it less frigid, although people still kept their coats on. And this was where Pastor Henry Covington now conducted his Sunday service. Instead of a grand altar, he had a small lectern. Instead of the soaring pipe organ behind him, there was a black-and-white banner nailed on the wall.
“We are grateful to you, God,” Henry was saying as I slid into a back row. “God of hope…we give you thanks and praise…in Jesus’s name, amen.”
I glanced around. Between the roof hole, the heat being shut off, and now a plastic prayer tent, you wondered how long before the church withered out of existence altogether.
Henry’s sermon that day had to do with judging people by their past. He began by lamenting how hard it is to shake a habit-especially an addiction.
“I know how it is,” he bellowed. “I know what it’s like when you done swore, I’ll never do this again…next time I get my money, I’m gonna do this and I’m gonna do that,’ and you go home and you promise your loved ones, ‘I messed up, but I’m gonna get back’-”
“Amen!”
“And then you get some money, and all those promises-out the window.”
“Way-ell!”
“You’re so sick and tired of being sick and tired-”
“Sick and tired!”
“But there comes a time when you have to admit to God, this stuff is stronger than me-it’s stronger than the rehab program-it’s stronger than the pastor at the church…I need you, Lord…I need you, Jesus…”
He started clapping.
“But you gotta be like Smokey Robinson…”
He burst into song. He did two lines from “You Really Got a Hold on Me.”
Then back to preaching.
“And maybe you make it to the supermarket and buy some groceries, then someone comes up to you and you get weak…and all the groceries that you bought for seventy dollars, you’ll give ’em away for twenty-”
“Fifteen!”
“Yes, sir…fifteen…that’s right, if you on a hard enough mission to get high…I’m tellin’ you, I know what it’s like to be in, and I know what it’s like to be out.”
“Amen!”
“But we gotta fight this thing. And it’s not good enough for just you to get clean. If someone else is trying, you gotta believe in them too-”
“Preach it, Pastor!”
“In the Book of Acts, we read that Paul-after his conversion-people distrusted him because he used to persecute the church, but now he praised it. ‘Is this the same guy? Can’t be! Nuh-uh.’…It’s amazing how folks can’t see you, ’cause they want to keep you in that past. Some of our greatest problems in ministering to people is that they knew us back before we came to the Lord-”
“Yes it is!”
“The same thing with Paul…They saw him…they couldn’t believe that this man’s from Jesus, because they looked at his past-”
“That’s right!”
“They just looked at his past. And when we’re still looking at ourselves through our past, we’re not seeing what God has done. What He can do! We’re not seeing the little things that happen in our lives-”
“Tell it now.”
“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 the pastor of a church, all of a sudden, it’s like “I know you gettin’ paid, boy. I know you gettin’ paid. I know you.’”
He paused. His voice lowered.
“No, I say. You knew me. You knew that person, but you don’t know the person that I’m trying to become.”
Sitting in the back, I felt a shiver of embarrassment. The truth was, I had struggled with similar thoughts about Henry. I’d wondered if, back among his New York world, he’d laugh and say, “Yeah, I got a whole new thing going on.”
Instead, here he was, preaching in a plastic tent.
“You are not your past!” he told his congregation.
Did you ever hear a sermon that felt as if it were being screamed into your ear alone? When that happens, it usually has more to do with you than the preacher.
After all his years of dogged survival, the Reb, I believed, could beat back any illness; he just might not beat them all.
The attack that had left him slumped in a chair, confused and mumbling, proved not to be a stroke at all, but rather a tragic consequence of his multiple afflictions. In the stir of doctors and prescriptions, the Reb’s Dilantin medication-taken, ironically, to control seizures-had been inadvertently increased to levels that pummeled him. Toxic levels.
Simply put, pills had turned the Reb into a human scarecrow.
When the problem was finally discovered-after several terrible months-dosages were quickly adjusted, and he was, in a matter of days, brought out of his crippling stupor.
I first heard about this in a phone call with Gilah and a subsequent one with Sarah.
“It’s amazing…,” they said. “It’s remarkable…”
There was a buoyancy in their voices I hadn’t heard in months, as if an unexpected summer had arrived in their backyard. And when I caught a plane to the East Coast and entered the house myself, and got my first glimpse of the Reb in his office-well, I wish I could describe the feeling. I have read stories about coma patients who suddenly, after years, awaken and ask for a piece of chocolate cake, while loved ones stare in dropped-jaw disbelief. Maybe it was like that.
All I know is that he turned in his chair, wearing one of those vests with all the pockets, and he held out his bony arms, and he smiled in that excited, crinkle-eyed way that seemed to emit sunlight, and he crowed, “Hellooo, stranger”-and I honestly thought I had seen someone return from the dead.
What was it like? I asked him, when we’d had a chance to settle.
“A fog,” he said. “Like a dark hole. I was here, but somehow I wasn’t here.”
Did you think it was…you know…
“The end?”
Yeah.
“At times.”
And what were you thinking at those times?
“I was thinking mostly about my family. I wanted to calm them. But I felt helpless to do so.”
You scared the heck out of me-us, I said.
“I am sorry about that.”
No. I mean. It’s not your fault.
“Mitch, I have been asking myself why this happened,” he said, rubbing his chin. “Why I have been…spared, so to speak. After all, another couple of whatchamacallits…”
Milligrams?
“That’s it. And I could’ve been kaput.”
Aren’t you furious?
He shrugged. “Look. I’m not happy, if that’s what you’re asking. But I must believe the doctors were doing their best.”
I couldn’t believe his tolerance. Most people would have been at a lawyer’s office. I guess the Reb felt if there was a reason for his rescue, it wasn’t to file lawsuits.
“Maybe I have a little more to give,” he said.
Or get.
“When you give, you get,” he said.
I walked right into that one.
Now, I knew the Reb believed that corny line. He truly was happiest when he could help someone. But I assumed a Man of God had no choice. His religion obliged him toward what Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature.”
On the other hand, Napoleon once dismissed religion as “what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.” Meaning, without the fear of God-or literally the hell we might have to pay-the rest of us would just take what we wanted.
The news headlines certainly endorsed that idea. In recent months, there had been terrorist train blasts in India, greedy executives sentenced in the Enron fraud case, a truck driver who’d shot five girls in an Amish schoolhouse, and a California congressman sent to jail for taking millions in bribes while living on a yacht.
Do you think it’s true, I asked the Reb that day, that our nature is evil?
“No,” he said. “I believe there is goodness in man.”
So we do have better angels?
“Deep down, yes.”
Then why do we do so many bad things?
He sighed. “Because one thing God gave us-and I’m afraid it’s at times a little too much-is free will. Freedom to choose. I believe he gave us everything needed to build a beautiful world, if we choose wisely.
“But we can also choose badly. And we can mess things up something awful.”
Can man change between good and evil?
The Reb nodded slowly. “In both directions.”
Human nature is a question we’ve grappled with for centuries. If a child were raised alone, separate from society, media, social dynamics, would that child grow up kind and openhearted? Or would it be feral and bloodthirsty, looking out solely for its own survival?
We’ll never know. We are not raised by wolves. But clearly, we wrestle with conflicting urges. Christianity believes Satan tempts us with evil. Hindus see evil as a challenge to life’s balance. Judaism refers to a man’s righteous inclination versus his evil inclination as two warring spirits; the evil spirit can, at first, be as flimsy as a cobweb, but if allowed to grow, it becomes thick as a cart rope.
The Reb once did a sermon on how the same things in life can be good or evil, depending on what, with free will, we do with them. Speech can bless or curse. Money can save or destroy. Science can heal or kill. Even nature can work for you or against you: fire can warm or burn; water can sustain life or flood it away.
“But nowhere in the story of Creation,” the Reb said, “do we read the word ‘bad.’ God did not create bad things.”
So God leaves it to us?
“He leaves it to us,” he replied. “Now, I do believe there are times when God clenches his fist and says, ‘Ooh, don’t do it, you’re gonna get yourself into trouble.’ And you might say, well, why doesn’t God jump in? Why doesn’t he eliminate the negative and accentuate the positive?
“Because, from the beginning, God said, ‘I’m gonna put this world into your hands. If I run everything, then that’s not you.’ So we were created with a piece of divinity inside us, but with this thing called free will, and I think God watches us every day, lovingly, praying we will make the right choices.”
Do you really think God prays? I asked.
“I think prayer and God,” he said, “are intertwined.”
I stared at him for a moment, marveling at the way he was speaking, analyzing, making jokes. Just weeks ago, hands were being wrung for him, tears were being cried. Now this. His daughter called it a miracle. Maybe it was. I was just relieved that he was better-and that his eulogy could wait.
We heard a honk. The taxi had arrived.
“So, anyhow” he said, wrapping up, “that is the story of my recent life.”
I stood and gave him a hug, a little tighter than usual.
No more scares, okay?
“Ah,” he laughed, jerking a thumb skyward. “You’ll have to take that up with my boss.”
The story of my recent life. I like that phrase. It makes more sense than the story of my life, because we get so many lives between birth and death. A life to be a child. A life to come of age. A life to wander, to settle, to fall in love, to parent, to test our promise, to realize our mortality-and, in some lucky cases, to do something after that realization.
The Reb had achieved that.
And so had someone else.
Not Henry-although he certainly lived many lives.
But I refer here to his trusty elder, the man with one leg, who nudged and cajoled me until finally, on a cold night, in a plastic-covered section of the church, he said, in a scratchy voice, “Mister Mitch, I got to share this with you…”
Anthony “Cass” Castelow, it turned out, did have an eye-popping tale: he’d been a star athlete in a big family, gone to the army, come home, become a local drug dealer.
“But okay, now. Here’s what I really need to tell you…”
And this was the story of his recent life.
“Eighteen years ago-back when I had both my legs-I was stabbed in the stomach in a place called Sweetheart’s Bar. I was selling drugs outa there. Two guys came in, and one guy grabbed me from behind and the other guy took the drugs and stabbed me. I nearly died in the hospital. I was gurgling blood. Doctors said I’d be lucky to live through the night. But when I got out, I went back to drugs again.
“Not long after that, the drugs got me sent to prison. Three years. I became a Muslim in there, because the Muslims were clean, they took care of their bodies, and a guy named Usur showed me how to pray, you know, five times a day, on the prayer mats, do the salahs, say ‘Alahu Akbar.’
“But this guy, Usur, at the end of it all, he’d whisper, ‘In Jesus’s name, amen.’ I pulled him to the side one day and he says, ‘Listen, man, I’m a Muslim in here, but my family out there, they’re Christian. I don’t know if it’s Allah or Jesus Christ after this life. I’m just trying to get in, you understand me? ’Cause I ain’t never going home, Cass. Do you understand that I’m gonna die in here?’
“Well, I left prison and that kinda messed me up. I drifted away from anything with God and I got back into drugs-crack, pills, weed. Lost all my money. With no place to go, I went back to the Jeffries Projects, where I grew up, and which was abandoned now and being torn down. I kicked in the back door of a unit and slept in there.
“And that was the first night I called myself homeless.”
I nodded along as Cass spoke, still not sure where he was going with this. His hat was pulled over his ears and his glasses and graying beard gave him an almost artsy look, like an aged jazz musician, but his old brown jacket and his amputated leg told a truer tale. When he spoke, his few remaining teeth poked from his gums like tiny yellowed fence posts.
He was determined to get through this story, so I rubbed my hands to keep warm and said, “Go on, Cass.” Smoke came from my mouth, that’s how cold it was in the church.
“All right, Mister Mitch, now here’s the thing: I almost died a couple times in those projects. Once, I came back at night and as soon as I walked in, someone whacked me over the head with a gun and cracked my skull open. I never did find out why. But they left me there for dead, bleeding, with my pants pulled down and my pockets turned out.”
Cass leaned over and pulled off his hat. There was a three-inch scar on his head.
“See that?”
He pulled his hat back on.
“Every night in that life, you would either be getting high or drunk or something to try and deal with the reality that you didn’t have no place to go. I’d make money all kinds of little ways. Take out garbage for a bar. Panhandle. And of course, I’d just steal. The hockey team and the baseball team, when they was playing, you could always sneak down there and steal one of them orange things and wave people’s cars in if you look decent enough. You say, ‘Park right here.’ Then you run with their money back to the projects and get high.”
I shook my head. With all the hockey and baseball games I’d gone to, I might have handed Cass a few bills myself.
“I was homeless pretty near five years,” he said. “Five years. Sleeping here or there in them abandoned projects. There was a winter night in the rain where I almost froze to death at a bus stop, my stupid behind out there with no place to go. And I was so hungry and so thin, my stomach was touching my back.
“I had two pairs of pants, and they was both on me. I had three shirts, and all three of ’em was on me. I had one gray coat, and it was my pillow, my cover, everything. And I had a pair of Converse gym shoes that had so many holes in it, I loaded up my feet with baking soda to keep them from stinking.”
Where did you get the baking soda?
“Well, come on-we was all out here smoking crack. That’s what you cook it with. Everyone got baking soda!”
I looked down, feeling stupid.
“And then I heard about this man from New York, Covington. He drove around in this old limo, coming through the neighborhood. He was from a church, so we called him Rebbey Reb.”
Rebbey what? I said.
“Reb.”
Cass leaned forward, squinting, as if everything to this point had been a prelude.
“Reb come around every day with food on top of that car-on the hood, in the trunk. Vegetables. Milk. Juice. Meats. Anybody who was hungry could have some. Once he stopped that car, there’d be like forty or fifty people in a line.
“He didn’t ask for nothing. Most he’d do was, at the end, he’d say, ‘Remember, Jesus loves you.’ When you homeless, you don’t wanna hear much of that, ’cause it’s like, when you get through talking about Jesus, I gotta go back to living in this empty building, you know?
“After a while, Pastor got deliveries from these food bank organizations and he’d serve them out the side of his house in an empty field. A few of us made this grill next to his place and we’d heat the food up. People would come from blocks away, they’d bring a bowl, maybe a spoon if they got one-I seen people with plastic bags scooping up food and eating with their hands.
“And Pastor would have a little service right there against his house. Say thanks to God.”
Wait. Outside? Against his house?
“That’s what I’m saying. So pretty soon, we’re liking this guy. We see him coming, we say, ‘Here come Rebbey Reb. Hide the dope! Hide the liquor!’ And he’d give us a little money to help him unload the food trucks-turkeys, bread, juice. Me and a guy had our own unloading system: one for the church, two for us. We’d throw ours out in the bushes, then come back later and pick it up.
“Eventually, Pastor come to me and say, ‘You got enough to eat, Cass? Take what you need.’ He knew what I was doing. “I felt ashamed.”
“One night in the projects, I had just gotten high and I hear Pastor call my name. I’m embarrassed to come out. My eyes are big as saucers. He asks if I can do some landscaping around his grass the next day. And I said, sure, yeah. And he gives me ten dollars and says meet me tomorrow. When he left, all I wanted to do was run upstairs and buy more dope and get high again. But I didn’t want to spend this man’s money that way. So I ran across the street and bought lunch meat, crackers-anything so I don’t spend it on drugs.
“That night, this guy who’s staying where I’m staying, while I’m sleeping, he steals the pipes from under the sink-steals ’em for the copper, so he can sell ’em. And he takes off, and all the water starts running in. I wake up on the floor and the place is flooded. I’m washing away.
“My only clothes is all ruined now, and I go to Pastor’s house and I say, ‘Sorry, I ain’t gonna be able to work for you. I’m all soaked.’ And I’m telling him how mad I am at this guy, and he says, ‘Cass, don’t worry. Sometimes people got it worse than you do.’
“And he sends me over to the church, and he says, ‘Go upstairs, we got some bags of clothes, just pick out what you want.’ And I get some clothes-Mitch, it’s the first time I got clean underwear in I don’t know how long. Clean socks. A shirt. I go back to his place and he says, ‘Where are you gonna stay now, Cass?’
“And I say, ‘Don’t know. My place is all flooded.’ And he goes in, talks with his wife, and he comes out and says, ‘Why don’t you stay here with us?’
“Now I’m shocked. I mean, I did a little work for this man. I stole food from him. And now he’s opening his home?
“He said, ‘You wanna think about it?’ And I’m like, ‘What’s there to think about? I’m homeless.’”
Henry never told me any of this, I said.
“That’s why I’m telling you,” Cass said. “I moved in with his family that night. I stayed there almost a year. A year. He let me sleep on the couch in his main room. His family is upstairs, they got little kids, and I’m sayin’ to myself, this man don’t know me, he don’t know what I’m capable of. But he trusts me.”
He shook his head and looked away.
“That kindness saved my life.”
We sat there for a second, quiet and cold. I now knew more than I’d ever figured to know about an elder of the I Am My Brother’s Keeper Ministry.
What I still didn’t know was why.
And then Cass told me: “I see the way you watch the Pastor. You here a lot. And maybe he ain’t the way you think a pastor should be.
“But I truly believe the Lord has given me a second chance on account of this man. When I die, Jesus will stand in the gap for me and I will be heard and the Lord will say, ‘I know you.’ And I believe it’s the same for Pastor Covington.”
But Henry’s done some bad things in his life, I said.
“I know it,” Cass said. “I done ’em, too. But it’s not me against the other guy. It’s God measuring you against you.
“Maybe all you get are chances to do good, and what little bad you do ain’t much bad at all. But because God has put you in the position where you can always do good, when you do something bad-it’s like you let God down.
“And maybe people who only get chances to do bad, always around bad things, like us, when they finally make something good out of it, God’s happy.”
He smiled and those stray teeth poked into his lips. And I finally realized why he had so wanted to tell me his story.
It wasn’t about him at all.
You really called Henry “Reb”? I asked.
“Yeah. Why?”
Nothing, I said.
What is there that forgiveness cannot achieve?
VIDURA
It was now a few weeks from Christmas, and I dug my hands into my pockets as I approached the Reb’s front door. A pacemaker had been put into his chest a few weeks earlier, and while he’d come through the procedure all right, looking back, I think that was the man’s last chip. His health was like a slow leak from a balloon. He had made his ninetieth birthday-joking with his children that until ninety, he was in charge, and after that, they could do what they wanted.
Maybe reaching that milestone was enough. He barely ate anymore-a piece of toast or fruit was a meal-and if he walked up the driveway once or twice, it was major exercise. He still took rides to the temple with Teela, his Hindu health care friend. People there helped him from the car into a wheelchair, and inside he’d greet the kids in the after-school program. At the ShopRite, he used the cart like a walker, gripping it for balance. He chatted with the other shoppers. True to his Depression roots, he’d buy bread and cakes from the “fifty percent off” section. When Teela rolled her eyes, he’d say, “It’s not that I need it-it’s that I got it!”
He was a joyous man, a marvelous piece of God’s machinery, and it was no fun watching him fall apart.
In his office now, I helped him move boxes. He would try to give me books, saying it broke his heart to leave them behind. I watched him roll from pile to pile, looking and remembering, then putting the stuff down and moving to another pile.
If you could pack for heaven, this was how you’d do it, touching everything, taking nothing.
Is there anyone you need to forgive at this point? I asked him.
“I’ve forgiven them already,” he said.
Everyone?
“Yes.”
Have they forgiven you?
“I hope. I have asked.”
He looked away.
“You know, we have a tradition. When you go to a funeral, you’re supposed to stand by the coffin and ask the deceased to forgive anything you’ve ever done.”
He made a face.
“Personally, I don’t want to wait that long.”
I remember when the Reb made his most public of apologies. It was his last High Holiday sermon as the senior rabbi of the temple.
He could have used the occasion to reflect on his accomplishments. Instead he asked forgiveness from his flock. He apologized for not being able to save more marriages, for not visiting the homebound more frequently, for not easing more pain of parents who had lost a child, for not having money to help widows or families in economic ruin. He apologized to teenagers with whom he didn’t spend enough teaching time. He apologized for no longer being able to come to workplaces for brown bag lunch discussions. He even apologized for the sin of not studying every day, as illness and commitments had stolen precious hours.
“For all these, God of forgiveness,” he concluded, “forgive me, pardon me…”
Officially, that was his final “big” sermon.
“Grant me atonement” were his last three words.
And now the Reb was urging me not to wait.
“Mitch, it does no good to be angry or carry grudges.”
He made a fist. “It churns you up inside. It does you more harm than the object of your anger.”
So let it go? I asked.
“Or don’t let it get started in the first place,” he said. “You know what I found over the years? When I had a disagreement with someone, and they came to talk to me, I always began by saying, ‘I’ve thought about it. And in some ways maybe you’re right.’
“Now, I didn’t always believe that. But it made things easier. Right from the start, they relaxed. A negotiation could take place. I took a volatile situation and, what’s the word…?”
Defused it?
“Defused it. We need to do that. Especially with family.
“You know, in our tradition, we ask forgiveness from everyone-even casual acquaintances. But with those we are closest with-wives, children, parents-we too often let things linger. Don’t wait, Mitch. It’s such a waste.”
He told me a story. A man buried his wife. At the gravesite he stood by the Reb, tears falling down his face.
“I loved her,” he whispered.
The Reb nodded.
“I mean…I really loved her.”
The man broke down.
“And…I almost told her once.”
The Reb looked at me sadly.
“Nothing haunts like the things we don’t say.”
Later that day, I asked the Reb to forgive me for anything I might have ever said or done that hurt him. He smiled and said that while he couldn’t think of anything, he would “consider all such matters addressed.”
Well, I joked, I’m glad we got that over with.
“You’re in the clear.”
Timing is everything.
“That’s right. Which is why our sages tell us to repent exactly one day before we die.”
But how do you know it’s the day before you die? I asked.
He raised his eyebrows.
“Exactly.”
I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.
EZEKIEL 36:26
It was Christmas week in Detroit, but there seemed to be more “For Sale” signs on houses than blinking lights. Folks were not shopping much. Kids were being warned to expect less from Santa. The Depression of our age was unfolding and we sensed it; we wore it on our faces.
Down on Trumbull, Pastor Henry’s church sat cloaked in darkness-they couldn’t afford outside lighting-and unless you pulled open the side door, you might not even know the building was occupied. In all my time there, I never saw the place fully illuminated. “Dim” was pretty much the word for inside, as if the electricity were as old as the walls.
That night with Cass had shown me another way of unraveling Henry-talking to his congregants.
A fellow named Dan, for example, one of the church’s few white members, told me that, years earlier, he had been alcoholic and homeless, sleeping nights on a handball court on Detroit ’s Belle Isle. He would drink a fifth of liquor and up to twelve beers a day, pass out, wake up, and start drinking again. One chilly night he came to the church, but it was closed. Henry, sitting in his car, saw Dan walking away and called him over, then asked if he needed a place to stay.
“He didn’t know me from a hill of beans,” Dan told me. “I could have been Jack the Ripper.” Eventually, Dan got sober by staying thirty straight days in the church.
Another congregant, a short, energetic woman named Shirley, recalled twenty or thirty kids sleeping at Henry’s small house on Friday nights or Saturday afternoons. He called the group the “Peace Posse.” He taught them to cook, he played games, but mostly he made them feel safe. Henry so inspired Shirley that she became a church elder.
A man named Freddie showed me the private room with the wooden bed frame that he lived in on the church’s third floor. He said Henry offered it to him when he was out on the streets. A lady named Luanne noted that Henry never charged for a funeral or a wedding. “The Lord will pay us back,” he would say.
And then there was Marlene, a handsome woman with sad, almond eyes, who told me a brutal tale of drug addiction and violence, culminating in a confrontation with the man she was living with: he yanked her and her two-year-old son out of bed, beat her, and pushed them down a flight of stairs. They landed on an old board with nails in it, and her son gashed his forehead. The man refused to let them go to a hospital. He literally held them captive while they bled.
Two days later, he finally left the house, and Marlene grabbed her son and ran-with only the clothes they were wearing. At the police station, an officer called Henry, who spoke to Marlene over the phone. He sounded so concerned and soothing that she asked the police to take her to his church, even though she’d never met him. Henry gave Marlene and her son a hot meal and a place to sleep-and she’d been coming to his ministry ever since.
I thought about how churches and synagogues usually build memberships. Some run schools. Some host social events. Some offer singles nights, lecture series, carnivals, and sign-up drives. Annual dues are part of the equation.
At I Am My Brother’s Keeper, there were no dues, no drives, no singles nights. Membership grew the old-fashioned way: a desperate need for God.
Still, none of this helped Henry with his heating problems or his bills. His Sunday services continued inside a plastic tent. The homeless nights were still noisy with hot air blowers, and the men kept their coats on when they lay down to sleep. Early winter continued its attack, and the snow piled up on the church’s front steps.
Although I tended to stay away from religious themes in my newspaper writing, I felt a need to expose these conditions to the readership of the Detroit Free Press. I did interviews with a few of the homeless, including a man who was once an excellent baseball player, but who’d lost all ten toes to frostbite after spending the night in an abandoned car.
I filed the stories, but something still nagged at me.
And so one night, just before Christmas, I went to Henry’s house. It was down the block from the church. He had mortgaged it for thirty thousand dollars, back when he arrived in Detroit sixteen years ago. It might not be worth that today.
The brick facade was old, a front gate was loose, and the empty lot where he’d once served food to the neighborhood was matted with snow, ice, and mud. The shed where they stored the food was still there, with netting to protect it from birds.
Henry sat on a small couch in his front room-where Cass once spent a year. He was suffering a head cold and he coughed several times. His place was tidy but poor, the paint was peeling, and the ceiling in the kitchen had partially collapsed. He seemed more pensive than usual. Maybe it was the holiday. His walls held photos of his children, but it was clear they weren’t getting a lot of Christmas presents this year.
In his drug dealing days, if Henry wanted a TV, customers would trade him one for dope. Jewelry? Designer clothes? He didn’t even need to leave his house.
I asked if he ever thought, when he entered the ministry, that one day he might be doing better than he was?
“No,” he said. “I think I was meant to work with the poor.”
Yeah, I joked, but you don’t have to imitate them.
He looked around at the crumbling house. He drew a deep breath.
“I’m where I’m supposed to be.”
How do you mean?
He lowered his eyes.
Then he said something I will never forget.
“Mitch, I am an awful person. The things I have done in my life, they can never be erased. I have broken every one of the Ten Commandments.”
Come on. Every one?
“When I was younger, in some way, yes, every one.”
Stealing? False witness? Coveting?
“Yes.”
Adultery?
“Umm-hmm.”
Murder?
“I never pulled the trigger, but I was involved enough. I could have stopped things before a life was taken. I didn’t. So I was involved in murder.”
He looked away.
“It was a cutthroat business, dog eat dog, the strong preying on the weak. In the lifestyle I was in, people were killed. It happened every day.
“I hate that person I was. I went to prison for a crime I did not do, but I did things out here that I should have gone back for. I was cowardly. I was hard. That may not be who I am now, but it’s who I was.”
He sighed. “It’s who I was.”
His chin dropped to his chest. I heard his nasal breathing, in and out.
“I deserve hell,” he whispered. “The things I’ve done, God would be justified. God is not mocked. What you sow, you reap.
“That’s why I tell my congregation, don’t put me on a pedestal. I sermonize about wanting cherries when you’re planting lemons, but I’ve planted many lemons in my life…”
His eyes were teary now.
“…and I may not have reaped all that harvest.”
I don’t understand, I said. If you think you’re going to be punished-
“Why still serve God?” He smiled weakly. “What else can I do? It’s like when everyone was turning away, and Jesus asked the apostles, ‘Will you go, too?’ And Peter said, ‘Where can I go, Lord?’
“I know what he meant. Where do you go from God? He’s everywhere.”
But, Henry, all the good you do here-
“No.” He shook his head. “You can’t work your way into heaven. Anytime you try and justify yourself with works, you disqualify yourself with works. What I do here, every day, for the rest of my life, is only my way of saying, ‘Lord, regardless of what eternity holds for me, let me give something back to you. I know it don’t even no scorecard. But let me make something of my life before I go…’”
He exhaled a long weary breath.
“‘ And then, Lord, I’m at your mercy.’”
It was late and cold and Henry’s past was all over the room. After a few silent minutes, I stood and zipped my coat. I wished him the best, and went back out into the snow.
I used to think I knew everything. I was a “smart person” who “got things done,” and because of that, the higher I climbed, the more I could look down and scoff at what seemed silly or simple, even religion.
But I realized something as I drove home that night: that I am neither better nor smarter, only luckier. And I should be ashamed of thinking I knew everything, because you can know the whole world and still feel lost in it. So many people are in pain-no matter how smart or accomplished-they cry, they yearn, they hurt. But instead of looking down on things, they look up, which is where I should have been looking, too. Because when the world quiets to the sound of your own breathing, we all want the same things: comfort, love, and a peaceful heart.
Maybe the first half of his life he did worse than most, and maybe the second half he did better. But that night was the last time I questioned how much Henry Covington’s past should shadow his future. Scripture says, “Judge not.” But God had the right to, and Henry lived with that every day. It was enough.
January arrived and the calendar changed. It was 2008. Before the year was done, there would be a new U.S. President, an economic earthquake, a sinkhole of confidence, and tens of millions unemployed or without homes. Storm clouds were gathering.
Meanwhile, the Reb puttered from room to room in quiet contemplation. Having survived the Great Depression and two world wars, he was no longer thrown by headline events. He kept the outside world at bay by keeping the inside world at hand. He prayed. He chatted with God. He watched the snow out the window. And he cherished the simple rituals of his day: the prayers, the oatmeal with cereal, the grandkids, the car trips with Teela, the phone calls to old congregants.
I was visiting again on a Sunday morning. My parents had made plans to swing by later and take me to lunch before I flew back to Detroit.
Two weeks earlier, on a Saturday night, the temple had held a gathering in the Reb’s honor, commemorating his six decades of service. It was like a coming home party.
“I tell you,” the Reb said, shaking his head as if in disbelief, “there were people who hadn’t seen one another in years. And when I saw them hugging and kissing like such long lost friends-I cried. I cried. To see what we have created together. It is something incredible.”
Incredible? My old temple? That small place of Sabbath mornings and funny holidays and kids hopping out of cars and running into religious school? Incredible? The word seemed too lofty. But when the Reb pushed his hands together, almost prayer-like, and whispered, “Mitch, don’t you see? We have made a community,” and I considered his aging face, his slumped shoulders, the sixty years he had devoted tirelessly to teaching, listening, trying to make us better people, well, given the way the world is going, maybe “incredible” is the right description.
“The way they hugged each other,” he repeated, his eyes far away, “for me, that is a piece of heaven.”
It was inevitable that the Reb and I would finally speak about the afterlife. No matter what you call it-Paradise, Moksha, Valhalla, Nirvana-the next world is the underpinning of nearly all faiths. And more and more, as his earthly time wound down, the Reb wondered what lay ahead in what he called “Olam Habah”-the world to come. In his voice and in his posture, I could sense he was searching for it now, the way you stretch your neck near the top of a hill to see if you can look over.
The Reb’s cemetery plot, I learned, was closer to his birthplace in New York, where his mother and father were buried. His daughter, Rinah, was buried there, too. When the time came, the three generations would be united, at least in the earth and, if his faith held true, somewhere else as well.
Do you think you’ll see Rinah again? I asked.
“Yes, I do.”
But she was just a child.
“Up there,” he whispered, “time doesn’t matter.”
The Reb once gave a sermon in which heaven and hell were shown to a man. In hell, people sat around a banquet table, full of exquisite meats and delicacies. But their arms were locked in front of them, unable to partake for eternity.
“This is terrible,” the man said. “Show me heaven.”
He was taken to another room, which looked remarkably the same. Another banquet table, more meats and delicacies. The souls there also had their arms out in front of them.
The difference was, they were feeding each other.
What do you think? I asked the Reb. Is heaven like that?
“How can I say? I believe there’s something. That’s enough.”
He ran a finger across his chin. “But I admit…in some small way, I am excited by dying, because soon I will have the answer to this haunting question.”
Don’t say that.
“What?”
About dying.
“Why? It upsets you?”
Well. I mean. Nobody likes to hear that word.
I sounded like a child.
“Listen, Mitch…” His voice lowered. He crossed his arms over his sweater, which covered another plaid shirt that had no connection to his blue pants. “I know my passing will be hard on certain people. I know my family, my loved ones-you, I hope-will miss me.”
I would. More than I could tell him.
“Heavenly Father, please,” he melodized, looking up, “I am a happy man. I have helped develop many things down on earth. I’ve even developed Mitch here a little…”
He pointed at me with a long, aged finger.
“But this one, you see, he’s still asking questions. So, Lord, please, give him many more years. That way, when we are reunited, we’ll have lots to talk about.”
He smiled impishly.
“Eh?”
Thank you, I said.
“You’re welcome,” he said.
He blinked behind his glasses.
Do you really think we’ll meet again one day?
“Don’t you?”
Well, come on, I said, sheepishly. I doubt I’m going to whatever level you’re going to.
“Mitch, why do you say that?”
Because you’re a Man of God.
He looked at me gratefully.
“You’re a man of God, too,” he whispered. “Everyone is.”
The doorbell rang, breaking the mood. I heard my parents talking with Sarah in the other room. I gathered up my things. I told the Reb about the Super Bowl in a few weeks-“Ahhh, the Super Bowl,” he cooed, which was funny, because I doubt he’d ever watched one-and soon my mother and father entered the room and exchanged hellos as I zipped up my bag. Because he couldn’t easily rise from the chair, the Reb stayed seated as they spoke.
How funny when life repeats a pattern. This could have been forty years earlier, a Sunday morning, my parents picking me up from religious school, my dad driving, all of us going out to eat. The only difference was that now, instead of running from the Reb, I didn’t want to leave.
“Heading to lunch?” he asked.
Yes, I said.
“Good. Family. That’s how it should be.”
I gave him a hug. His forearms pressed tightly behind my neck, tighter than I ever remembered.
He found a song.
“Enjoy yourselves…its laaaa-ter than you think…”
I had no idea how right he was.
“You need to come down here and see something.”
Henry’s voice on the phone had been excited. I got out of the car and noticed more vehicles than usual on the street, and several people going in and out of the side door-people I had not seen before. Some were black, some were white. All were dressed better than the average visitor.
When I stepped onto the catwalk, Henry saw me, smiled widely, and opened his huge wingspan.
“I gotta show you some love,” he said.
I felt his big, bare arms squeezing in. Then it hit me. He was wearing a T-shirt.
The heat was back on.
“It’s like Miami Beach in here!” he yelled.
Apparently embarrassed by the attention of the newspaper columns, the gas company had renewed its service. And a deal was being worked out for the church to more gradually pay off its debt. The new faces coming in and out were people also moved by the story of Henry’s church; they had come to cook meals and help serve them. I noticed a full crowd of homeless folks at the tables, men and women alike, and many had their coats off. Without the cacophony of the air blowers, you heard the more pleasant rumble of conversation.
“It’s something, isn’t it?” Henry said. “God is good.”
I walked down to the gym floor. I saw the man I had written about who was missing his toes. In the story, I had mentioned that his wife and daughter had left him eight years earlier, contributing to his decline. Apparently, someone saw his photo and made a connection.
“I’m going to see them right now,” the man said.
Who? Your wife?
“And my little girl.”
Right now?
“Yeah. It’s been eight years, man.”
He sniffed. I could tell he wanted to say something.
“Thank you,” he finally whispered.
And he took off.
I don’t know if any thank-you ever got to me the way that one did.
As I was leaving, I saw Cass on his crutches.
“Mister Mitch,” he chimed.
Things are a little warmer now, huh? I said.
“Yes, sir,” he said. “Folks down there are pretty happy, too.”
I looked again and saw a line of men and women. At first I assumed it was for food, maybe second helpings; but then I saw a table and some volunteers handing out clothing.
One large man pulled on a winter jacket, then yelled up to Henry, “Hey, Pastor, ain’t you got no triple XL’s?”
Henry laughed.
What’s going on? I asked.
“Clothing,” Henry said. “It’s been donated.”
I counted several big piles.
That’s a good amount of stuff, I said.
Henry looked at Cass. “He didn’t see?”
Next thing I knew, I was following behind the heavyset pastor and the one-legged elder, wondering why I always seemed to clomp on the heels of the faithful.
Cass found a key. Henry pulled a door open.
“Take a look,” he said.
And there, inside the sanctuary, was bag after bag after bag after bag-of clothing, jackets, shoes, coats, and toys-filling every pew from front to back.
I swallowed a lump. Henry was right. At that moment, it didn’t matter what name you used. God is good.
From a Sermon by the Reb, 2000
“Dear friends. I’m dying.
“Don’t be upset. I began to die on July 6, 1917. That’s the day I was born, and, in council with what our psalmist says, ‘We who are born, are born to die.’
“Now, I heard a little joke that deals with this. A minister was visiting a country church, and he began his sermon with a stirring reminder:
“‘Everyone in this parish is going to die!’
“The minister looked around. He noticed a man in the front pew, smiling broadly.
“‘Why are you so amused?’ he asked.
“I’m not from this parish,’ the man said. ‘I’m just visiting my sister for the weekend.’”
The car pulled up to the ShopRite. It was the first week in February, snow was on the ground, and the Reb looked out the window. Teela parked, shut the ignition, and asked if he was coming in.
“I’m a little tired,” he said. “I’ll wait here.”
Looking back, that was surely a clue. The Reb adored the supermarket-for him to pass it up, something had to be wrong.
“Can you leave the music on?” he asked Teela.
“Sure,” she said. And while she shopped for milk, bread, and prune juice, the Reb sat alone, in the snowy parking lot, listening to Hindi chants. It would be his last private moments in the outside world.
By the time they got home, he looked sluggish and felt achy. Calls were made. He was taken to the hospital. The nurses there asked him simple questions-his name, his address-all of which he answered. He couldn’t remember the exact date, but he knew it was the presidential election primary, and he cracked that if his candidate lost by one vote, “I’m gonna kill myself.”
He stayed for tests. His family visited. The next night, his youngest daughter, Gilah, was with him in the room. She had tickets to Israel and was worried about leaving.
“I don’t think I should go,” she said.
“Go,” he said. “I won’t do anything without you.”
His eyes were closing. Gilah called the nurse. She asked if her father could get his medication early, so he could sleep.
“Gil…,” the Reb mumbled.
She took his hand.
“Remember the memories.”
“Okay,” Gilah said, crying, “now I’m definitely not going.”
“You go,” he said. “You can remember over there, too.”
They sat for a while, father and daughter. Finally, Gilah rose and reluctantly kissed him goodnight. The nurse gave him his pills. On her way out, he whispered after her.
“Please…if you turn off the lights, could you stop by once in a while and remember I’m here?”
The nurse smiled.
“Of course. We can’t forget the singing rabbi.”
The next morning, shortly after sunrise, the Reb was awakened for a sponge bath. It was quiet and early. The nurse bathed him gently, and he was singing and humming to her, alive with the day.
Then his head slumped and his music stopped forever.
It is summer and we are sitting in his office. I ask him why he thinks he became a rabbi.
He counts on his fingers.
“Number one, I always liked people.
“Number two, I love gentleness.
“Number three, I have patience.
“Number four, I love teaching.
“Number five, I am determined in my faith.
“Number six, it connects me to my past.
“Number seven-and lastly-it allows me to fulfill the message of our tradition: to live good, to do good, and to be blessed.”
I didn’t hear God in there.
He smiles.
“God was there before number one.”
The seats were all taken. The sanctuary was full. There were mumbled greetings and tear-filled hugs, but people avoided looking at the pulpit. You face front for any funeral service, but you are rarely staring at the empty space of the deceased. He used to sit in that chair…He used to stand by that lectern…
The Reb had lived a few days beyond his massive stroke, in a peaceful coma, long enough for his wife, children, and grandchildren to get there and whisper their good-byes. I had done the same, touching his thick white hair, hugging my face to his, promising he would not die the second death, he would not be forgotten, not as long as I had a breath in me. In eight years, I had never cried in front of the Reb.
When I finally did, he couldn’t see me.
I went home and waited for the phone call. I did not start on his eulogy. It felt wrong to do so while he was still alive. I had tapes and notes and photos and pads; I had texts and sermons and newspaper clippings; I had an Arabic schoolbook with family photos.
When the call finally came, I began to write. And I never looked at any of that stuff.
Now, inside my jacket, I felt the typed pages, his last request of me, folded in my pocket. Nearly eight years had passed in what I once thought would be a two- or three-week journey. I had used up most of my forties. I looked older in the mirror. I tried to remember the night this all started.
Will you do my eulogy?
It felt like a different life.
With a quiet grace, his service began, the first service in sixty years of this congregation that Albert Lewis could not lead or join. After a few minutes, after a few prayers, the current rabbi, Steven Lindemann-whom the Reb had graciously welcomed as his replacement-spoke lovingly and beautifully of his predecessor. He used the haunting phrase, “Alas for what has been lost.”
Then the sanctuary quieted. It was my turn.
I climbed the carpeted steps and passed the casket of the man who had raised me in his house of prayer and in his faith-his beautiful faith-and my breath came so sporadically, I thought I might have to stop just to find it.
I stood where he used to stand.
I leaned forward.
And this is what I said.
Dear Rabbi-
Well, you did it. You finally managed to get us all here when it wasn’t the High Holidays.
I guess, deep down, I knew this day would come. But standing here now, it all feels backwards. I should be down there. You should be up here. This is where you belong. This is where we always looked for you, to lead us, to enlighten us, to sing to us, to quiz us, to tell us everything from Jewish law to what page we were on.
There was, in the construction of the universe, us down here, God up there, and you in between. When God seemed too intimidating to face, we could first come to you. It was like befriending the secretary outside the boss’s office.
But where do we look for you now?
Eight years ago, you came to me after a speech I gave, and you said you had a favor to ask. The favor was this: would I speak at your funeral? I was stunned. To this day, I don’t know why me.
But once you asked, I knew two things: I could never say no. And I needed to get to know you better, not as a cleric, but as a human being. So we began to visit. In your office, in your home, an hour here, two hours there.
One week turned to a month. One month turned to a year. Eight years later, I sometimes wonder if the whole thing wasn’t some clever rabbi trick to lure me into an adult education course. You laughed and cried in our meetings; we debated and postulated big ideas and small ones. I learned that, in addition to robes, you sometimes wore sandals with black socks-not a great look-and Bermuda shorts, and plaid shirts and down vests. I learned that you were a pack rat of letters, articles, crayon drawings, and old “ Temple Talk ” newsletters. Some people collect cars or clothes. You never met a good idea that couldn’t be filed.
I once told you I was not like you, that I was not a man of God. You interrupted and said, “You are a man of God.” You told me I would find something to say when this day came.
But it is here, and you are gone.
And this pulpit seems as empty as a desert.
But all right, here are your basics, for any good eulogy should contain the basics. You were born in New York during the First World War, your family endured terrible poverty, and your father once rode the rails to Alaska -and never broke the laws of keeping kosher. Your grandfather and father-in-law were rabbis-you had rabbis all over your family tree-and yet you wanted to be a history teacher. You loved to teach. In time, you tried the rabbinate. And you failed. But a great Jewish scholar said two words you would later invoke many times with many of us: “try again.”
And you did. Thank God you did.
When you were ordained, the popular thing was to go west, to California. There were rich and growing synagogues there. Instead, you went two hours down the New Jersey Turnpike, to a congregation on its last legs, operating out of a converted house. You did it because, like Jimmy Stewart in It’s a Wonderful Life, you felt an obligation to stay near your family. And like Stewart’s character, you never did get away from this place. Instead, you built this temple. Some would say you carried it on your back.
Under your loving care, it grew from that converted house to a blossoming synagogue pitched between two churches-not exactly the easiest geography. But you always made the best peace. When a Catholic priest from across the street insulted one of our members, you demanded he apologize. When he did, you accepted, as his penance, a gesture. You waited until the Catholic schoolkids were in recess, playing in the schoolyard, then you and the priest strolled around the perimeter, arm in arm, showing that different faiths can indeed walk side by side, in harmony.
You stood up for us that way, you stood tall for us, you built our membership, you built our school, you built a sacred community, you built until we burst at the seams. You led marches and excursions. You made house calls. Endless house calls.
You were a clergyman of the people, never above the people, and people clamored to hear you, stuffing in for your sermons as if to miss them would be a sin in itself. I know you always hated how there was a noisy rush to the exits after you finished. But Reb, think of how many synagogues in which that happens before the sermon starts!
After rabbi-ing through six different decades, you finally stepped down from the pulpit, and instead of moving to Florida, as many do, you simply took a seat in the back row of this sanctuary. It was a humble act, but you could no more move to the back row than the soul could move to the back of the body.
This is your house, Reb. You are in the rafters, the floorboards, the walls, the lights. You are in every echo through every hallway. We hear you now. I hear you still.
How can I-how can any of us-let you go? You are woven through us, from birth to death. You educated us, married us, comforted us. You stood at our mileposts, our weddings, our funerals. You gave us courage when tragedy struck, and when we howled at God, you stirred the embers of our faith and reminded us, as a respected man once said, that the only whole heart is a broken heart.
Look at all the broken hearts here today. Look at all the faces in this sanctuary. My whole life, I had one rabbi. Your whole life, you had one congregation. How do we say good-bye to you without saying good-bye to apiece of ourselves?
Where do we look for you now?
Remember, Reb, when you told me about your childhood neighborhood in the Bronx, such a crowded, tight-knit community that when you nudged a cart, hoping an apple would fall off, a neighbor five floors up yelled out the window, “Albert, that’s forbidden.” You lived with the wagging finger of God on every fire escape.
Well, you were our finger, wagging out the window. How much good have you done simply by the bad we have not? Many of us here have moved away, taken new addresses, new jobs, new climates, but in our minds, we kept the same old rabbi. We could look out our windows and still see your face, still hear your voice on the wind.
But where do we look for you now?
In our last visits, you spoke often about dying, about what comes next. You would cock your head and sing, “Nu, Lord above, if you want to take me, maybe take me without too much paaaain.”
By the way, Reb, about the singing. What gives? Walt Whitman sang the body electric. Billie Holiday sang the blues. You sang…everything. You could sing the phone book. I would call and say how are you feeling, and you’d answer, “The old gray rabbi, ain’t what he used to be…”
I teased you about it, but I loved it, I think we all loved it, and it comes as no surprise that you were singing to a nurse last week, preparing for a bath, when the final blow took you from us. I like to think the Lord so enjoyed hearing one of his children joyous-joyous enough to sing in a hospital-that he chose that moment, you in mid-hum, to bring you to him.
So now you are with God. That I believe. You told me your biggest wish, after you died, would be that somehow you could speak to us here, inform us that you had landed, safe and sound. Even in your demise, you were looking for one more sermon.
But you knew there is a maddening yet majestic reason you cannot speak to us today, because if you could, we might not need faith. And faith is what you were all about. You were the salesman that you cited so often in a Yiddish proverb, coming back each day, knocking on the door, offering your wares with a smile, until one day, the customer gets so fed up with your persistence, he spits in your face. And you take out a handkerchief, you wipe the spit away, and you smile again and say, “It must be raining.”
There are handkerchiefs here today, Reb, but it is not because of rain. It’s because some of us can’t bear to let you go. Some of us want to apologize for all the times we said, through our actions, “Go away,” for all the times we spit in the face of our faith.
I didn’t want to eulogize you. I was afraid. I felt a congregant could never eulogize his leader. But I realize now that thousands of congregants will eulogize you today, in their car rides home, over the dinner table. A eulogy is no more than a summation of memories, and we will never forget you, because we cannot forget you, because we will miss you every day. To imagine a world without you in it is to imagine a world with a little less God in it, and yet, because God is not a diminishing resource, I cannot believe that.
Instead, I have to believe that you have melted back into His glory, your soul is like a returned favor, you are a star in his sky and a warm feeling in our hearts. We believe that you are with your forefathers, with your daughter, with your past, and at peace.
May God keep you; may he sing to you, and you to him.
Where do we look for you now, Reb?
We look where you have been trying-good, sweet Man of God-to get us to look all along.
We look up.
Emptiness is not tangible, but after the Reb died, I swear I could touch it, especially on Sundays when I used to make that train trip from New York. Over time, I filled that slot closer to home, with visits to Pastor Henry and the church on Trumbull. I got to know members of his congregation. I enjoyed his sermons. And although I was comfortable, more than ever, with my own faith, Henry laughingly dubbed me “the first official Jewish member of the congregation.” I came to the homeless nights and wrote more stories about them. People were moved. Some sent money-five dollars, ten dollars. One man drove an hour down a Michigan highway, walked in, looked around, seemed to choke up, then handed over a check for a thousand dollars and left.
Henry opened a bank account for repairs. Volunteers came down to serve food. One Sunday, a large suburban church, the Northville Christian Assembly, invited Henry out to the suburbs to speak. I went to watch him. He wore a long black robe and a wireless microphone. The scripture he chose was flashed up on two giant video screens as he read along. The lighting was perfect, the ceiling solid and dry, the sound was concert quality-there was even a huge grand piano on the stage-and the audience was almost entirely white and middle-class. But Henry was Henry, and before long, he was moving around, exhorting the crowd to earn interest on their talents, as Jesus had once urged in a parable. He told them not to be afraid of coming to his church in Detroit, to use their talents there. “If you’re looking for the miracles God can do with a life,” he said, “you’re looking at one.”
When he finished, everyone stood and clapped. Henry stepped back and humbly lowered his head.
I thought about his dilapidated church downtown. And I realized that, in some ways, we all have a hole in our roof, a gap through which tears fall and bad events blow like harsh wind. We feel vulnerable; we worry about what storm will strike next.
But seeing Henry that day, being cheered by all those new faces, I believe, as the Reb once told me, that, with a little faith, people can fix things, and they truly can change, because at that moment, you could not believe otherwise.
And so, although it is cold as I write this, with snow packed atop the blue tarp on the church roof, when the weather thaws-and it always thaws-we are going to fix that hole. One day, I tell Henry. We will fix that hole. We will shake the generosity tree and raise the funds and replace the roof. We will do it because it needs to be done. We will do it because it’s the right thing to do.
And we will do it because of a little girl from the congregation who was born prematurely, weighing only a few pounds-the doctors said she probably wouldn’t make it-but her parents prayed and she pulled through and she is now a ball of energy with a grin that could lure the cookies out of the jar. She is at the church almost every night. She skips between the tables for the homeless and lets them rub her head playfully. She doesn’t have a lot of toys and she isn’t scheduled for countless after-school activities, but she most certainly has a community, a loving home-and a family.
Her father is a one-legged man named Cass, and her mother is a former addict named Marlene. They were married in the I Am My Brother’s Keeper church; Pastor Henry Covington did the service.
And a year later, along came their precious little girl, who now runs around as if in God’s private playground.
Her name, fittingly, is “Miracle.”
The human spirit is a thing to behold.
I often wonder why the Reb asked me for a eulogy. I wonder if it was more for me than for him. The fact is, he trumped it moments later.
Just before the cantor began the final prayer, the Reb’s grandson, Ron, popped a cassette tape into a player on the pulpit. And over the same speakers where Albert Lewis’s voice used to ring out in wisdom, it rang out once more.
“Dear friends, this is the voice of your past rabbi speaking…”
He had recorded a message to be played upon his death. He had told no one-except Teela, his shopping companion and health care worker, who delivered the tape to his family. It was brief. But in it, the Reb answered the two questions he had most been asked in his life of faith.
One was whether he believed in God. He said he did.
The other was whether there is life after death. On this he said, “My answer here, too, is yes, there is something. But friends, I’m sorry. Now that I know, I can’t even tell you.”
The whole place broke up laughing.
I didn’t forget about the file on God. I went and retrieved it months later, on my own. I took it off the shelf. When I held it, I actually trembled, because for eight years I’d seen the word “God” written on the label, and after a while you imagine some holy wind is going to swoosh out.
I looked around the empty office. My stomach ached. I wished the Reb was with me. I yanked it open.
And he was.
Because there, inside the file, were hundreds of articles, clippings, and notes for sermons, all about God, with arrows and questions and scribbling in the Reb’s handwriting. And it hit me, finally, that this was the whole point of my time with the Reb and Henry: not the conclusion, but the search, the study, the journey to belief. You can’t fit the Lord in a box. But you can gather stories, tradition, wisdom, and in time, you needn’t lower the shelf; God is already nearer to thee.
Have you ever known a man of faith? Did you run the other way? If so, stop running. Maybe sit for a minute. For a glass of ice water. For a plate of corn bread. You may find there is something beautiful to learn, and it doesn’t bite you and it doesn’t weaken you, it only proves a divine spark lies inside each of us, and that spark may one day save the world.
Back in the sanctuary, the Reb concluded his taped message by saying, “Please love one another, talk to one another, don’t let trivialities dissolve friendships…”
Then he sang a simple tune, which translated to:
The congregation, one last time, joined in.
You could say it was the loudest prayer of his career.
But I always knew he’d go out with a song.