“And when I’d get outside, I would go like this-”
He touched a finger to his tongue and pointed skyward.
“Chalk one up for you, Rinah,” he said, smiling. Now, in the back of his house, I was holding the Reb’s hand, as he had done for others. I tried to smile. He blinked from behind his glasses.
All right, I said. I’ll come back and see you soon.
He half-nodded.
“You…okay…yeah…,” he whispered.
There was little else to do. He was no longer able to speak a full sentence. And with each of my poor attempts at conversation, I felt I was only frustrating him more. He seemed to sense what was happening, and I feared the look on my face would reveal the crushing loss I felt. How was this fair? This wise and eloquent man, who a few weeks earlier had been discoursing on divinity, was now stripped of his most precious faculty; he could no longer teach, he could no longer string together beautiful sentences from that beautiful mind.
He could no longer sing.
He could only squeeze my fingers and move his mouth open and closed.
On the plane ride home, I wrote down some sentences. The eulogy, I feared, was finally coming due.
From a Sermon by the Reb
“If you ask me, and you should, why this wonderful, beautiful child-who had so much to give-had to die, I can’t give you a rational answer. I don’t know.
“But in a commentary to the Bible, tradition tells us that Adam, our first man, was supposed to have lived longer than any man, a thousand years. He didn’t. Our sages, in quest of an answer, related the following:
“Adam begged God to let him see into the future. So the Lord said, ‘Come with me.’ He took him through the celestial chambers, where the souls that were to be born awaited their turn. Each soul was a flame. Adam saw some flames burn purely, some barely flicker.
“Then he saw a beautiful flame, clear, strong, golden orange, and healing. Adam said, ‘Oh Lord, that will be a great human being. When shall it be born?’
“The Lord replied, ‘I’m sorry, Adam, but that soul, as beautiful as it is, is destined not to be born. It has been preordained that it will commit sin and tarnish itself. I have chosen to spare it the indignity of being besmirched.’
“Adam pleaded, ‘But Lord, man must have someone to teach and guide him. Please, do not deprive my children.’
“The Lord gently answered, ‘The decision has been made. I have no years left to allocate to him.’
“Then Adam boldly said, ‘Lord, what if I am willing to bestow on that soul some of the years of my life?’
“And God answered Adam, saying, ‘If that is your wish, that I will grant.’
“Adam, we are told, died not at 1,000, but at 930 years. And eons later, there was a child born in the town of Bethlehem. He became a ruler over Israel and a sweet singer of songs. After leading his people and inspiring them, he died. And the Bible concludes: ‘Behold, David the King was buried after having lived for 70 years.’
“My friends, when sometimes we are asked why does someone perish, someone so young in age, I can only fall back on the wisdom of our tradition. It is true that David did not live long for his day. But while he lived, David taught, inspired, and left us a great spiritual legacy, including the Book of Psalms. One of those Psalms, the twenty-third, is read sometimes at funerals.
“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:
He leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul…
“Is it not better to have known Rinah, my daughter, for four years, than not to have known her at all?”
WINTER
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
Winter Solstice
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!”