Thursday, July 22, 2010

Fabulous Phrases: Have a Little Faith

I've decided to turn Barb's idea of sharing great copy into a new CI feature: Fabulous Phrases. When you run across something perfect, send it my way and we'll share! We can all learn from excellence.

Today's phrase comes from Mitch Albom's Have a Little Faith, which is not a great book. If I asked my father what he thought of a book like this, he would have said, "It's fine."

So. It's fine. It's a quick read, a nice story. Not much else to say. It's no Tuesdays with Morrie. But it's fine. And it did have this perfect bit near the end, describing a visit with Albom's beloved rabbi, near the end of the rabbi's life. I need to give you the set-up copy before the great line:

"He was a joyous man, a marvelous piece of God's machinery, and it was no fun watching him fall apart. In his office now, I helped him move boxes. He would try to give me books, saying it broke his heart to leave them behind. I watched him roll from pile to pile, looking and remembering, then putting the stuff down and moving to another pile.

If you could pack for heaven, this was how you'd do it, touching everything, taking nothing."

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I read "Have a Little Faith" last year when I was going through a dark phase in my life and found it to be very helpful. I do love the "touching everything taking nothing" phrase.

Maureen

Jan said...

And it's possible my review is harsh. Rabbi Levin read the book, and said he expected it to be "religion light," and he really enjoyed it.