Good Read

I've read some really good books over the past few months.  Some not so good ones too.  I finished one today.  It's called Have a Little Faith by Mitch Albom.  I got it because I read The Five People You Meet in Heaven and loved it and Tuesdays with Morrie was so good.  He's an engaging writer, I think, because of the subject matter he chooses both with fiction and nonfiction.

Have a Little Faith is nonfiction like Tuesdays.  It's about his Rabbi who asks him to do the eulogy at his funeral.  I folded down several pages because I thought some of the thoughts were profound.  I'm going to share a few.

The first describes one of the rabbi's sermons where he brought a squash and a piece of wood as visual aids to the pulpit.  He stabs each with a knife and then talks about how things that grow quickly are more easily destroyed than things that grow over time.  That's all it says.  The author goes on with other things, but that's a real thought provoker to me.  Faith, trust, commitment, love are all things that grow like a tree and don't really produce wood for a really long time.  Whereas the squash plant sprouts in a few days and blossoms in a few weeks and has so much squash you hardly know what to do with it--but only for a very short period of time.  (Unless you are me and then you can't even get zucchini to grow.)  Anyway,  I think that's a really good lesson.  One of those Our time vs. God's time things.  One of those life is but a small moment things.

Here's another tidbit.  "Faith is about doing.  You are how you act, not just how you believe."  For a Jewish rabbi, that's about as close to a New Testament quoting of "faith without works is dead " as you can get.  Again it made me pause for a minute and fold the page.

The next one I'm going to include the whole thing:

It is 1974 and I am in my religious high school.  The subject is the parting of the Red Sea.  I yawn.  What is left to learn about this?  I've heard it a million times.  I look across the room to a girl I like and contemplate how hard it would be to get her attention.  "There is a Talmudic commentary here,"  the teacher says.  Oh, great, I figure.  This means translation, which is slow and painful.  But as the story unfolds, I begin to pay attention.  After the Israelites safely crossed the Red Sea, the Egyptians chased after them and were drowned.  God's angels wanted to celebrate the enemy's demise.  According to the commentary,  God saw this and grew angry.  He said,  in essence:  "Stop celebrating. For those were my children too."  "What do you think of that?"  the teacher asks us.  Someone else answers.  But I know what I think.  I think it is the first time I've heard that God might love the "enemy" as well as us.  Years later, I will forget the class, forget the teacher's name, forget the girl across the room.  But I will remember that story.

I've never heard this--why would I have?  It's in a Talmudic commentary.  But when I see the Ten Commandments movie or read bits of it in accounts by later prophets talking about the miracle,  there's always a bit of cheering in my mind when the Egyptians get covered by the water.  I'd never thought about how it wouldn't be all joyful for God to see that many of his children destroyed no matter the circumstance.

I don't know how much I want to write but at least one more. 
The rabbi talks about when babies are born their fists are clenched because they want to grab everything in this world and hold onto it.  But when we die, are hands are open because we know we can't take anything with us. 
I don't have a lot to say about that except I like it.

This is the last one.  It's a Buddhist parable.

A farmer wakes up to find that his horse has run off.  The neighbors come by and say,  "Too bad.  Such awful luck."  The farmer says,  "Maybe."  The next day the horse returns with a few other horses.  The neighbors congratulate the farmer on his reversal of fortune.  "Maybe,"  the farmer says.  When his son tries to ride one of the new horses, he breaks his leg, and the neighbors offer condolences.  "Maybe," the farmer says.  And the next day, when army officials come to draft the son--and don't take him because of his broken leg--everyone is happy.  "Maybe,"  the farmer says.

Isn't that just like life.  We can never be sure which things are best for us and which things are just brought on by our own stupid ways.  At least I can't.

It was a good book.  I highly recommend it.