Have a Little Faith - Mitch Albom [41]
I thought about my connections in life. I thought about workplace friends who were fired, or had quit due to illness. Who comforted them? Where did they go? Not to me. Not to their former bosses.
Often, it seemed, they were helped by their churches or temples. Members took up collections. They cooked meals. They gave money to pay bills. They did it with love, empathy, and the knowledge that it was part of the supportive undercarriage of a “sacred community,” like the ones the Reb spoke about, like the one I guess I had once belonged to, even if I didn’t realize it.
The plane landed. I collected the papers, wrapped them back in the rubber band, and felt a small grief, like a person who discovers, upon returning from a trip, that something has been left behind and there is no way now to retrieve it.
Thanksgiving
Fall surrendered quickly in Detroit, and in what seemed like minutes, the trees were bare and the color siphoned out of the city, leaving it a barren and concrete place, under milky skies and early snowfalls. We rolled up the car windows. We took out the heavy coats. Our jobless rate was soaring. People couldn’t afford their homes. Some just packed up and walked out, left their whole world behind to bankers or scavengers. It was still November. A long winter lay ahead.
On a Tuesday before Thanksgiving, I came by the I Am My Brother’s Keeper Ministry to see firsthand the homeless program it operated. I still wasn’t totally at ease with Pastor Henry. Everything about his church was different—at least to me. But what the Reb had said resonated, that you can embrace your own faith’s authenticity and still accept that others believe in something else.
Besides, that whole thing about a community—well, Detroit was my city. So I put my toe in the water. I helped Henry purchase a blue tarp for his ceiling, which stretched over the leaking section, so at least the sanctuary would not be flooded. Fixing the roof was a much bigger job, maybe eighty thousand dollars, according to a contractor.
“Whoo,” Henry had gushed, when we heard the estimate. Eighty thousand dollars was more than his church had seen in years. I felt badly for him. But that would have to come from some more committed source. A tarp—a toe in the water—was enough from me.
I got out of the car and a freezing wind smacked my cheeks. With the homeless program operating, the side street was populated with men bundled against the cold. A couple of them smoked. I noticed a slight man holding a child, but as I stepped closer I realized that, under the ski cap, it was a woman. I held the door open and she passed in front of me, the child on her shoulder.
Inside, I heard loud grinding hums, like small engines, then a screaming voice. I turned into the catwalk that overlooked the gym. The floor was covered in fold-out tables, and there were maybe eighty homeless men and women sitting around them. They wore old coats and hooded sweatshirts. A few had parkas; one wore a Detroit Lions jacket.
In the middle of the floor, Henry, in a blue sweatshirt and a heavy coat, moved between the tables, shifting his weight from one foot to the next.
“I am somebody!” he yelled.
“I am somebody!” the crowd repeated.
“I am somebody,” he yelled again.
“I am somebody,” they repeated in kind.
“Because God loves me!”
“Because God loves me!”
A few people clapped. Henry exhaled and nodded. One by one, many of the homeless stood up, came into a circle, and held hands. A prayer was recited.
Then, as if on cue, the circle broke and a line formed, leading to the kitchen and something hot to eat.
I tugged on my coat. It felt unusually cold.
“Evenin’, Mister Mitch.”
I looked over and saw Cass, the one-legged church elder, sitting on the catwalk, holding a clipboard. The way he greeted me with that lilt in his voice—“Evenin’, Mister Mitch”—I half-expected him to tip his cap. I had learned that he’d lost the leg a few years ago, to complications from diabetes and heart surgery. Still, he was always so upbeat.
Hi, Cass.
“Pastor’s down there.”
Henry looked up, gave a small