MAYBE you have been asked to give a eulogy for someone.
Perhaps you knew the person well enough to represent their life in detail and with empathy.
- Have a Little Faith, by Mitch Albom. Hachette, rrp $35
American author Mitch Albom was asked to do so and felt inadequate.
Albom is known to many readers by the huge international success of his book Tuesdays with Morrie, about a sociologist and his relationship with his students.
His new book, Have a Little Faith, is a return to this rich vein of experience.
The story is about Albom being asked to give a eulogy for an 82-year-old rabbi.
As he sets about the task, he begins to feel a failure.
Albom then begins a journey to understand the Rabbi, affectionately known as Reb.
In the process, he is brought into contact with the faith he lost many years before.
The book is really a dual journey.
There is the primary focus on the preparation of the eulogy, but there is also the journey Albom makes into his own past and beliefs.
This takes him back to his childhood, his family and what faith he had, as well as life today.
The book never reaches the level of preaching to the reader as to what to believe or why.
Instead, what we receive is the gentle self-assurance that fulfilling his duty to Reb assists Albom in arriving at some of life's truths.
Whether or not readers share Albom's ideas is really not the point here. What matters is the discovery of things greater and more enduring than the immediate experience of everyday living.
For Albom, this was the preparation of a eulogy that taught him much about forgiveness and holding on to faith when the chips are really down.
- Mitch Albom will be at the Baptist Church, Collins Street, Melbourne, on March 10 from 6.30pm. Bookings: (03) 9662 4699.
