Have a Little Faith - Mitch Albom [48]
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.”
Life of Cass
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,