June 22, 2021 – davidbruceblog #2

Food

• Renaissance businessman Agostino Chigi was so wealthy that at a dinner he gave for Pope Julius II, servants brought in each course on solid gold plates. After everyone had been served the course, the servants did not wash the solid gold plates and reuse them — they threw them into the Tiber River.

• A Sunday School teacher once taught about Jesus’ feeding 5,000 people with five loaves of bread and two fish, then asked her class how Jesus could do this. One pupil replied, “My mommy makes ‘Clean the Refrigerator Soup’ with just a little bit of food; maybe that’s what Jesus did.”

• Pope John XXIII disliked eating alone, even though according to custom the Pope was supposed to eat alone. He once said, “I have read the Gospel over carefully without finding a single passage which prescribes that one should eat alone. As we know, Jesus loved to eat in company.”

• The fourth pillar of Islam is to fast annually during the month of Ramadan. This focuses the mind of followers of Islam on Allah — and it encourages the giving of help to people who never have enough to eat in any month.

• When is the best time to eat? According to Mulla Nasrudin, “If you are rich, the best time to eat is when you are hungry. If you are poor, the best time to eat is when you can afford it.”

God

• While staying in Scotland, Peg Bracken spoke with a woman who had once regularly received telephone calls from God. The first time it happened, she was going through a time of trouble — her husband had recently died, her son had broken a leg, she was worried about insurance, etc. — and a telephone call came for her in a place she had not told anyone she would visit. She answered the telephone, and a voice said, “This is God.” Of course, she asked, “God who?” The voice answered, “Your good friend God. I just want you to know you’re doing fine. And don’t you go worrying about Ritchie’s leg now. It’s going to be as good as new.” For six months, she received these mysterious telephone calls at least once a week. She never recognized the voice, and she never totally believed that God was speaking to her, although she didn’t want to totally disbelieve either. Once, she started to ask the telephone operator to trace the call, then she changed her mind. After six months, the telephone calls stopped, but things were going well for her and her family by then.

• Professional baseball teams have chapels that their players can attend. However, one season the Seattle Mariners weren’t playing well, and management wondered if religion was a bad thing for the players; after all, should a professional baseball team turn the other cheek and say “It’s God’s will” when it gets beat? Wouldn’t it be better if the players got angry when they lost? A football player made perhaps the best comment about this controversy. Seattle Seahawk Steve Largent was aware that Mariner management had made some bad trades, so he said, “It doesn’t surprise me that the Mariners want to get God out of their locker room. They’ve gotten rid of all their other good players, too.”

• Arturo Toscanini, the famous conductor, once explained to his musicians why he sometimes became so angry at them: “You see, God tells me how the music should sound, and then you come in the way.” Sometimes, rehearsals would go exactly right and the music sounded the way God had told Toscanini how it should sound. Once, after rehearsing Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, the musicians gave Toscanini a standing ovation, but he told the orchestra, “It isn’t me — it’s Beethoven.”

• When Fran Capo was thinking about becoming a stand-up comedian, she asked God for a sign. She also stated that if God made becoming a stand-up comedian really easy, she would consider that to be a sign. Shortly afterward, she went to her school, where she saw a notice that said, “Comedy Auditions.” To make the sign from God even clearer, the auditions were to take place within two blocks of her house.

***

250 Anecdotes About Religion, Volume 2 — Buy

250 Anecdotes About Religion, Volume 2 — Buy the Paperback

250 Anecdotes About Religion, Volume 2 — Kindle

250 Anecdotes About Religion, Volume 2 — Apple

250 Anecdotes About Religion, Volume 2 — Barnes and Noble

250 Anecdotes About Religion, Volume 2 — Kobo

250 Anecdotes About Religion, Volume 2 — Smashwords: Many Formats, Including PDF

BRUCE’S RECOMMENDATION OF BANDCAMP MUSIC

Music: “Listen to the Heartbeat”

Album: GHOST HIGHWAY RECORDINGS SAMPLER 2021

Artist: Tommy and the Rockets

Artist Location: Odense, Denmark

Record Company: Ghost Highway Recordings

Record Company Location: Madrid, Spain

Info:

The money raised by the sales of this sampler will be digitally used for events for children with cancer who are at the Hospital De Santiago de Compostela in coordination with the ASANOG association.

Price: €5 (EUROs) for 31-track album of various artists

Genre: Rock. Pop.

Links:

Album: GHOST HIGHWAY RECORDINGS SAMPLER 2021

https://ghosthighwayrecordings.bandcamp.com/album/sampler-2021

Tommy and the Rockets on Bandcamp

https://tommyandtherockets.bandcamp.com

Tommy and the Rockets on YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcg9ecZ_TK50Ffh7wsH9cmw

Ghost Highway Recordings

https://ghosthighwayrecordings.bandcamp.com/music