Have A Little Faith Part 20

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. 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.

The Moment of Truth 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 Ca.s.s 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, pa.s.s 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 Sat.u.r.day 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 G.o.d.

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. 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 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 Ca.s.s 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 imitate them. 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 h.e.l.l," he whispered. "The things I've done, G.o.d would be justified. G.o.d 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 G.o.d?" 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 G.o.d? 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 G.o.d had the right to, and Henry lived with that every day. It was enough.

JANUARY.

Heaven 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 G.o.d. 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 Sat.u.r.day 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. cried. To see what we have created together. It is something incredible." 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, 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" "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 h.e.l.l were shown to a man. In h.e.l.l, 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."