The Five People You Meet In Heaven

Mitch Albom

The past few days I decided to take a hiatus from "Walking the Bible" and other heavy books to read...more

The past few days I decided to take a hiatus from "Walking the Bible" and other heavy books to read the second one written by journalist and contemporary spiritual motivator Mitch Albom. The first book I read by him, "Tuesday's with Morrie," was great, I really enjoyed it. I'm pretty sure Amazon.com made the recommendation to me (I've had great luck with that) based on other stuff I've read. It was a sad and uplifting story about Morrie, a lifelong teacher, and the final life lessons he taught to Mitch (who was one of his students). It had fantastic ideas about making the most of your life, enjoying every day we have, and similar themes. "The Five People You Meet in Heaven" was another short, sweet book with a great message. Basically, the main character, Eddie, dies and is pulled up to heaven. There, he meets five people who were influential on his life in some way or another, and they teach him more about what happened in his life. This may be a cliche theme, but it really offered small gems of knowledge. This book really meant a lot to me and tied together a lot of thoughts and feelings I've been having about faith and life lately. Through his five people, Eddie learned about the interconnectedness of our lives, the value of sacrifice, and the importance of compassion and understanding. A little more than half-way through I was reading and it really felt like a light went off. Lately I've been writing and thinking a lot about what Phil Devenish, a good friend, minister, and teacher here called the gem of the gospels. For him, the essence of religion, spirituality, faith, and life is the realization that it is a privilege to show love to everyone around us. The Five People really tied all of these ideas of love everyone, don't be afraid to make sacrifices for other people, and we can make a difference by living and loving everyone around us. Phil would say that Jesus teaches (and I think he'd go further and say that spirituality, or religion, or compassion, or whatever you believe in is important because it helps us explore) that the most important thing in being happy and living well is not being able to love other people. It isn't that we should love other people. The most fulfilling and rewarding and enriching thing we can take from spirituality and put in our lives is that it is our privilege to help other people. We can enjoy it and learn from helping others, and grow from helping others, and make an impact everywhere in the world around us by helping others. It's something that has really changed the way I feel for the past week or two. I can feel a difference, a genuine and deep happiness, a feeling of belonging, a purpose, an energy, an enjoyment and love of life and those around me... through loving others, and feeling blessed that I'm able to do that. It feels great to make a large, or small, or even unrecognizable positive influence on someone else's life. Right now for me it's very rarely in talking about church or religion with people. I still struggle with that. But we can all help others with little things, show love through words and actions; spread good will, positive thinking, a sense of worth and belonging, and love to those around us-- and I'd say those are some of the most important ministries to me. And all these things are definitely the result of everything going on here in Maine, of books and conversations and living, observation and exploration and experimentation. Reading "The Five People You Meet in Heaven" really tied a lot of that stuff together for me. That it's also a privilege to make sacrifices for other people and those things, that showing compassion and understanding is a way to show love, that hearing the whole story without judgment is a way to show love, and that we're all connected and in this life together and we can do it together, spread peace and love, and make big differences in peoples' lives. So, I definitely recommend this book. It's short and a very fast read, but it really has a few great things to read, hold onto, and think about how they fit in our lives. Definitely check it out! Stop by and read my blog, where this was originally posted: http://edrew85.blogspot.com peace and love.   hide

I picked up this book solely on the premise of the title alone. It was a title that intrigued me...more

I picked up this book solely on the premise of the title alone. It was a title that intrigued me and a quick flick through the pages solidified my decision to take a copy home. What a great impulse buy it was. The story, narrated in the third person, tells of Eddie- an elderly maintenance worker at a pierside fairground on the American coast. I don't think it will spoil the story to give away the fact that Eddie dies at the end of the opening chapter and from then on we follow him on his journey through heaven meeting his 5 people. Albom pulls off a remarkable feat in making his very unique and distinct version of heaven seem both believable in the novel and, dare i say it, seem possible in reality. After the opening chapter the story shifts from a section on Eddie's heavenly journey to a section describing his past and with this the narrative voice changes in line with the shift. At first I worried that the shift in narrative was going to slow the story down but instead it made the whole experience more organic. At the same time as I was learning of Eddie's past in relation to the five people he was meeting in heaven, I was learning about his past from a direct narrative of various birthdays described by this second narrator. By the time the remaining pages of the book were getting thinner and thinner in my hands I started to feel like I didn't want it to end and yet, at the same time, I felt like I wanted Eddie to find his eternal peace. This novel left me contemplating my own life and my place on this earth. It is only the most heart-felt and touching works of fiction that are capable of doing that to me and as such I rate this book highly. It is not particularly flashy, there is nothing in here that is exotic and there aren't any thrilling action scenes- but this is as thoughtful and caring book as I have read in a long time. If you want some literary food for your soul then I suggest you pick up a copy of this.   hide

All endings are also beginnings. We just don’t know it at that time.” This book...more

All endings are also beginnings. We just don’t know it at that time.” This book depicts the above saying. Eddie felt it was the end of everything when he lost his life at the Ruby Pier while he was trying to save a girl. As he lands in heaven, surprises go beyond what he would have imagined. The five people he met in heaven taught him the lessons of life after he faced death, ironically. There are some individuals whom you meet in life’s uncertain journey. It’s amazing to note what you learn from such beings irrespective of the time spent with them. The strange aspects of destiny take you through that phase of existence, unknown to the mortal and imbibe such teachings during your sole (soul) existence. This brings about a renowned realization of how learning is indeed a continuous process even after you leave the world behind you. It has taught me that no matter what, there is no end to anything. We humans feel that one minor set back portrays the dead end. We fail to look upon it as an optimistic beginning of yet another experience. Death may be an end to one certain lifetime. But it’s just the beginning for the soul to take its course until it reaches its own destination carved for itself. After which it’s another beginning for its journey down earth only this time in another form. Whether on earth or heaven, it has made me realize that the end of one phase is the beginning of another marvelous tryst with life/death. This book was written in a down to earth form yet left me with a heavenly feeling.    hide

Read it in 48 hours..... It's an emotional book, yet practical in what it is conveying. A story...more

Read it in 48 hours..... It's an emotional book, yet practical in what it is conveying. A story written through an inspiring, yet relatively simplistic perspective; the character views his life and make sense of it, after he dies...... At the end of it 5 people allow him insight into himself and his seemingly voided life is explained; the patterns created, by those who crossed his path and incidences/events he partook, or chose not to partake in.....and as his circumstances unfold, one sees the moulding of his existence and reality..... He had lived to accept his life, as it was; one gets the impression that he never questioned life, or indeed himself. He never really believed that he had achieved anything.... The main essence of the book is why live and what for; each affects the other and the other affects the next; the world is full of stories, but the stories are all one.    hide

"All ending are beginnings. We just don't know it at the time..."