THE MOST INTERESTING PEOPLE IN RELIGION: 250 ANECDOTES
By David Bruce
Dedicated with Love to Bryce Jacobs
Many thanks to Ed Venrick for the front cover.
SMASHWORDS EDITION
Copyright 2008 by Bruce D. Bruce
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Front Cover Photograph
© Photographer: Yanik Chauvin
Agency: Dreamstime.com
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The Most Interesting People in Religion: 250 Anecdotes
Chapter 1: From Animals to Death
Animals
• When Muhammad, prophet of Islam, left Mecca in the emigration, assassins tried to find him. According to a sacred story of Islam, Muhammad hid in a cave, and overnight an acacia tree grew up in the mouth of the cave. In addition, a spider made a web over the cave’s mouth, and a dove built a nest on a rock where a person would have to go to reach the cave. The assassins discovered the cave, but felt it was impossible for anyone to be inside, so they did not enter the cave. (When Muhammad left the cave, he was careful not to disturb the nesting dove.)
• Buddhists believe in reincarnation, meaning that we have all lived many, many lives, including perhaps lives as animals. Buddhist stories include tales of the previous lives of the Buddha; these are known as the Jataka tales. Buddhists strive to be compassionate, and when the Buddha lived a previous life as a Rabbit, he vowed to be so compassionate that if a beggar were starving, he would offer his own flesh to save the beggar.
• A man was afraid of dogs. His friends advised him that he would have nothing to fear if he simply recited sacred scripture whenever he saw a dangerous dog. However, the man replied, “I think that I will take a big stick with me just in case the dog doesn’t understand sacred scripture.”
Authors
• Early in his career—in fact, during his first-ever job as a writer—Tucson Weekly columnist Tom Danehy wrote this sentence: “I’d like to see a high school football season go by without a cheerleader getting pregnant.” Of course, this is a sentiment that all can agree with, although some people do not care to see it in print. One of those people was the publisher, and Tom’s career at a writer—at least in that town—seemed likely to end soon, as in immediately. However, the father of a cheerleader, who also happened to be the bishop of the local ward of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a big shot in that town, and a close friend of the publisher, saved Tom’s job by coming to his defense, even though he and Tom had had some major disagreements. Tom ended up leaving the job, and the town, soon anyway, but he always made a point of talking to the bishop each time he returned to the town. Tom says, “We still disagreed about everything (foremost being that his church, at the time, didn’t allow blacks to enjoy full membership), but we were cordial, and it [their relationship] was cool [in a good way].” Tom, of course, still continues to have and express opinions, sometimes controversial, including this one: “I’d like to have a member of the Jehovah’s Witnesses come to my door, find out that I’m Catholic and say, ‘OK, we won’t knock on your door any more. See you in heaven some day.’”
Bar Mitzvah
• Being a celebrity means being able to have celebrity guests at your son’s bar mitzvah. Songwriter Sammy Cahn was on his way to his son’s bar mitzvah when actor Spencer Tracy asked if he could come along. Other celebrities who came along included George Burns and Gracie Allen, Dean Martin, Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh, and Jack Benny and Mary Livingston.
• Jack Soo acted the part of Detective Nick Yemana on the television sitcom Barney Miller. Mr. Soo appeared on the television quiz show Family Feud, where he was asked the question, “At what age does a boy become a man?” His answer was, “Thirteen.” The star of Barney Miller, Hal Linden, asks, “And you thought he was Japanese?”
Baseball
• Many baseball players are religious. Jimmy Piersall was noted for using his bat to scratch a cross in the dirt before hitting. New York Yankee catcher Yogi Berra, who was also very religious, noticed Mr. Piersall do this one game. As soon as Mr. Piersall had made the sign of the cross in the dirt with his bat, Mr. Berra used his glove to rub out the cross, then told him, “Why don’t you let God just watch the game?”
• Sparky Anderson, manager of the Cincinnati Reds, used to levy a lot of fines on his players for infractions of the rules, then donate the money to charity. Reds player Bernie Carbo once asked Sparky, “My wife keeps asking me why we get so many thank-yous from the Heart Fund. She can’t figure out why I’m making so many contributions. What should I tell her?”
Bible
• A pastor once visited a family and asked if they wanted him to read a passage of Scripture from their Bible. The husband and wife agreed, and so they asked their child to bring into the living room that big book that Mommy and Daddy were always reading. A few moments later, the child returned, carrying a J.C. Penney catalog.
• A man claimed to know a lot about the Bible, but in a Bible class it quickly became apparent that he didn’t know as much as he had let on he knew. Still, he was unabashed and claimed, “I know all about that, but I’ve been sworn to secrecy.”
Books
• After moving to Brooklyn, Joe Orlando, an artist for MAD magazine, was visited by a priest who wanted to bless each room of his home. Therefore, Mr. Orlando took him throughout his new home. When the priest saw Mr. Orlando’s big collection of reference works, he asked if any of the works were on the Catholic Index of Prohibited Books (Librorum Prohibitorum). None was, so it seemed as if all were going well. However, the priest asked Mr. Orlando what he did for a living, and Mr. Orlando replied that he was an artist for MAD magazine. This shocked the priest, who pointed out, “That’s on the Index!” The priest did not bless Mr. Orlando’s home.
• A Rabbi in Poland once wrote a little book, although many other Rabbis wrote big books. Asked why his book was so little, the Rabbi explained that the people he served worked hard, long hours, and they were tired at the end of the day. If he had written a big book, many people would read a page or two, then go to sleep. But since he had written a little book of distilled wisdom, the people were much more likely to actually read all of it.
Charity
• Rabbi Israel of Vishnitz once paid a visit to a rich banker. The Rabbi sat down, but remained silent for 20 minutes. Because it is not polite to directly ask a Rabbi why he has come, the rich man could do nothing but sit, squirm, and wonder. Finally, the Rabbi stood up and began to walk away. The rich man then could no longer restrain his curiosity and asked, “Why have you come, Rabbi?” The Rabbi replied that he had come to keep a commandment: “The Talmud says that if someone will be benefited by your pointing out an error to him, then you are obligated to point out his error. But if someone will not correct his ways even if you point out his error, then you are obligated to keep silent. I have come here to keep silent.” Hearing this, the rich man begged the Rabbi to point out his error, and the Rabbi told him of a widow who could not pay her mortgage and on whom the banker was foreclosing. “That’s not my fault,” said the banker. “The bank owns the mortgage, not me.” “See,” said Rabbi Israel. “I knew that you would do nothing.” That night, the rich man was unable to sleep. In the morning, he used his own money to pay off the widow’s mortgage.
• Some Rabbis were collecting money for their yeshiva [school]. They planned to visit a man named Barbuhin to ask for a donation, but when they heard that he ate simple, inexpensive food, they decided that he would probably not give them much money, so they would visit his home last—if at all—to ask for a donation. However, when they visited him, he told them to tell his wife to give them a measure of gold coins. His wife, who like Barbuhin was a good person, did exactly that, giving them a heaping rather than a level measure. The Rabbis were surprised at Barbuhin’s generosity, and they explained why they had felt that he would not give them much money. Barbuhin explained, “I have the right to be economical for my personal needs, but not when it comes to fulfilling my Creator’s commandments.”
• It is important to show respect for other cultures, and we can examine other religions to discover what truth we can learn from them. When Val Halamandaris compiled his book titled Faces of Caring, he wrote about 100 caring people who lived throughout history (and some legendary figures). Along with the text, he included a drawing or a photograph of the person he was writing about. However, for Muhammad, the prophet of Allah and the founder of Islam, he did not include a portrait. Why not? According to Islam, images of Muhammad are forbidden. Therefore, instead of a portrait of Muhammad, Mr. Halamandaris used a verse from the Qu’ran. Translated, the verse says, “I seek refuge with the Lord of the Dawn.” One of Muhammad’s sayings is this: “Every good act is charity. A man’s true wealth hereafter is the good that he does in this world for his fellow man.”
• Some charities send free gifts to people they hope will donate or will continue to donate money to them. (These are known as “guilt gifts.”) However, as you would expect, sometimes these gifts backfire and get the recipients angry at the charity. An actress friend of Guardian columnist Michelle Hanson received a gift of slippers from a charity she supported. Angry, she sent the slippers back. When she received a letter asking if she had received the slippers, she grew angrier and sent the letter back. Then they sent her a gift of gloves. This didn’t help; after all, the actress had been hoping that the money she had given the charity would be spent on helping the needy, not on providing her with slippers and gloves that she didn’t want or need.
• A beggar asked Rabbi Shmelke for alms, but the good Rabbi had no money to give, so he gave the beggar a ring. A few minutes after the beggar left, the good Rabbi’s wife entered the house, and he told her what he had done. She exclaimed, “That ring was very valuable! It had a real diamond in it! Run and catch up with the beggar!” Rabbi Shmelke ran after the beggar, caught up with him, and told him, “The ring I gave you is very valuable. It has a real diamond in it. When you sell it, make sure that you get a good price.”
• Rabbi Aharon Kotler was an Orthodox sage in the 20th century, and he knew that people would watch him to see what he did. One day, as he was entering a synagogue, he gave money to a beggar, and as he later left the synagogue, he gave more money to the same beggar. Asked why he had done this, Rabbi Kotler said that he was afraid that someone might see him pass the beggar without giving money to him and so conclude that the beggar did not deserve to be helped.
Children
• Moses announced to the Jews that God wanted to give them a gift—the Torah—but that he wanted a guarantee that the Jews would keep the Torah and live by its teachings. The Jews decided that a suitable guarantee would be their valuables such as jewelry and precious metals. Moses went up the mountain to talk to God, but when he returned he said that God wanted a better guarantee before he would give the Torah to the Jews. A woman suggested that the Jews’ most precious possessions were their children and so the children should be the Jews’ guarantee to God—if God gave the Torah to the Jews, they would teach the Torah to their children and so ensure that its wisdom would be passed from generation to generation. The other Jews agreed, and this time when Moses came down from the mountain after talking to God he was carrying two large tablets.
• Many religions have fun-filled festivals. For example, Hinduism has Holi, which takes place in March and which features a lowering of barriers between the sexes, and between the social classes, and among the various castes in India. People celebrating this festival run around throwing colored powder and colored water on each other. When Holi is celebrated, mothers make sure that their children are wearing old clothes because the children and the clothes are sure to be drenched with color. On this day, children smear red powder and green powder and blue powder and yellow powder on other giggling children.
• Sometimes, second graders don’t learn the lessons teachers try to teach them. For example, a Sister was teaching her young school children about Jesus and trying to impart to them a lesson about Jesus’ forgiving nature. The Sister said, “When people hurt you, act like Jesus. Give them another chance. Forgive them.” The Sister then asked, “What if the person who hurts you is really mean and doesn’t like you at all? Think: What would Jesus do then?” One of the children answered, “He’d send them straight to Hell.”
• Miriam gave birth to seven sons, all of whom were martyred because they declined to worship idols, even when doing so could save their lives. When her final son was about to be executed, she kissed him and told him to give a message to Abraham, “Say to him: do not be proud because you were willing to sacrifice your only son—I have sacrificed all my seven sons.”
• An Italian child once made a donation to Mother Teresa after celebrating his first Communion. He had asked his parents not to buy him a special suit for the occasion, and not to have a party for him. The child gave to Mother Teresa the money that his parents had saved.
Christmas
• On Christmas Eve of 1943, Albert Szajdholc and his family were hiding in a two-story outbuilding by a Catholic church in Andonno, above the Italian Riviera, trying to stay warm and hoping not to be discovered by anti-Semites. Past midnight, a knock sounded on the door. Mr. Szajdholc opened the door and saw a peasant woman, who gave him a piece of cheese and said, “Buon natale,” which means “Merry Christmas.” Throughout the night, other poor peasants arrived, bringing gifts of food and clothing. The next morning, Mr. Szajdholc met a friend, the barber Giacomo Rossi, and told him what had happened. Mr. Rossi explained that in the church on Christmas Eve, Father Borsotto had spoken about the gifts of the Magi to the Christ child and had said, “Just as our savior couldn’t find any lodging and was born in a manger, alone and rejected, so are Jews today alone and rejected. We have two Jewish families in our midst this Christmas, and they too are alone, hungry, hunted for no reason except being Jews.” Father Borsotto then said that the people in the church could emulate the Magi and bear gifts to the persecuted. The people in the church had listened and brought gifts to Mr. Szajdholc’s family and to the other Jewish family in hiding. Some gifts kept coming after Christmas. Eventually, Mr. Szajdholc and his family had to leave Andonno and stay in the mountains. Usebio and Anna Giordano knew that the Jewish family could not survive at night in the mountains, so they left their barn door unlocked at night so that the Szajdholcs could stay there. The Giordanos also left hot soup for them in the barn at night. The mountains were cold even during the day, and the Szajdholcs stayed in an unheated hut where they were afraid to build a fire—the smoke would reveal their presence. One day, they saw an old woman climbing the mountain to them. She was bringing them hot soup. The Szajdholcs survived the Holocaust.
• During World War II, Army nurses usually made a major effort to celebrate Hanukkah and Christmas, even when they were close to a combat zone. An exception sometimes happened with nurses who were POWs—sometimes it was impossible to celebrate Hanukkah and Christmas. In 1942, Army nurses across the globe celebrated Hanukkah and Christmas. In Arzew, Algeria, nurses decorated a fir tree, using as ornaments stars and candy canes that had been cut out of used plasma containers. They also made 400 pounds of fudge, with the assistance of a kind supply officer. And they sewed 700 Christmas stockings, using red serge that French troops had left behind. In the Philippines, POW nurses were still able to celebrate the holidays. They made boats, dolls, jigsaw puzzles, and toy trains for the children in the POW camp. In Australia, Alice Weinstein was the only Jewish nurse in her unit, so she didn’t celebrate Hanukkah in the traditional way. She remembers, “When Christmas came around, you always went through your things to see what you could give away as a little gift. And the cooks in the outfit didn’t have a lot to work with, but they always put themselves out at the holidays.”
• Bill Talen, who is also known as Reverend Billy, is strongly against the commercialization of Christmas, and in fact, he is strongly against materialism in general. When he first saw Times Square in New York City, he was amazed by the crass commercialism of the place, and so he invented the persona of street preacher Reverend Billy as a way to strike back. He is very willing to perform an exorcism of evil demons from cash registers, and he even has a choir: The Church of Stop Shopping Choir. Together, they sing such songs as “Fill the malls with wealthy people,” although most people are more familiar with the words “Deck the halls with boughs of holly.” Reverend Billy has performed his activism in Starbucks stores, and as a result he was banned from Starbucks stores in California. In fact, Starbucks head honchos once sent a memo to Starbucks rank-and-file employees that was titled “What Should I Do If Reverend Billy Is In My Store?” In 2007, Reverend Billy starred in the documentary What Would Jesus Buy?
• During the first half of the 20th century, Christmas trees often were decorated with lighted candles. During a Christmas Eve gift-giving session at a Texas church, a man playing Santa Claus bent over too near one of the candles, and his coat caught on fire. Immediately, Santa hustled himself out of the church so that he could be away from the eyes of the children as he took off his coat and put out the fire. Still, some of the children were understandably upset, but the preacher, Edwin Porter, told them that Santa had said to “tell all you boys and girls that he has another coat in his pack and that he has to hurry on now or he won’t make it around to your houses tonight to fill your stockings.”
• In 1965, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel participated with Martin Luther King, Jr., in the Selma-to-Montgomery civil rights march; afterward, at the airport in Montgomery, Alabama, he wanted something to eat. A waitress at the snack-bar counter looked at the good Rabbi, with his white hair and beard, and said, “Well, I’ll be d*mned. My mother always told me there was a Santa Claus, and I didn’t believe her, until now.” She also denied that the snack bar had any food. The good Rabbi responded gently, asking if she had water. She did. He also asked if she had eggs. She did. He then requested that she boil some eggs for him—after all, he had done her a favor. “What favor have you ever done me?” she asked. The good Rabbi replied, “I proved there was a Santa Claus.” She laughed, and she served food to him.
• During Christmas of 1864, Union General William Tecumseh Sherman was busy making his famous “march to the sea,” engaging in destruction of the South as he went. However, despite the devastation he and his troops caused, he did give permission to some Union soldiers to celebrate Christmas. The soldiers made dolls out of rags as well as other crude toys, and they gathered together some of their food to give away to Southerners. They then decorated a wagon to make it look like a sleigh, and they even improvised antlers for the heads of the mules that pulled the wagon. Finally, with a sergeant dressed up as Santa Claus, they delivered the toys and food to homes in Savannah, Georgia.
• Isaac Sztrymfman hid in rural France with a woman named Madame Duvolder, who called him Jean Duvolder. This fooled the Nazis who would have killed Isaac because he was Jewish. Madame Duvolder was a Catholic for whom Christmas was very important. In 1943, Madame Duvolder and Isaac did not have much money to celebrate Christmas with, but they cut down a small evergreen tree and decorated it. On Christmas Eve, Madame Duvolder told Isaac to shine his shoes and leave them under the tree. In the morning, he found his gifts: a scarf that Madame Duvolder had knitted for him, and an orange—a precious gift because of their rarity in wartime France.
• Like many physicians, Thomas S. Cullen occasionally had patients who could not afford urgently needed medical care. One impoverished woman was very worried about the cost of her necessary operation, so he tried to set her at ease by telling her, “I think I know what you want me to do—as much as necessary, but as little as possible.” As it turned out, what she and her husband were able to give Dr. Cullen was much appreciated, although its monetary value did not cover the cost of the operation—the woman’s very grateful husband left the good doctor a bag of hickory nuts at his door on Christmas Eve.
• Anna Pavlova made Christmas memorable for members of her dance company, many of them teenaged girls. In Montreal, Canada, she arranged a sleigh ride for everybody. Arriving at her hotel, everyone had a feast, then were given the presents, which were hung on a Christmas tree. On another Christmas, the company was on board a shop en route to South Africa. However, in the dining room Ms. Pavlova had placed a Christmas tree, which was loaded with presents. None of her dancers knew how the Christmas tree had gotten on board the ship.
• Three boys—one Catholic, one Protestant, and one Jewish—talked about the holidays. The Catholic boy said, “Christmas is a wonderful day at my house. We go to early Mass, and then we come home and open presents.” The Protestant boy said, “Christmas is a wonderful day at my house. We go to church services, and then we come home and open presents.” The Jewish boy said, “Christmas is a wonderful day at my house. We go to my father’s store, look at all the empty shelves, and then we go home and sing, ‘What a Friend We Have in Jesus.’”
• Cultures differ from country to country. In 1909, Italian baritone Enrico Pignataro arrived in New York just before Christmas. He was shocked to see many wreaths hanging on front doors because in his country a wreath on the door meant that someone in that house had recently died. Mr. Pignataro wrote back home: “I have arrived safely, but a plague has hit this city. People are dying like flies. There are wreaths on almost every door. Light many candles for me, and pray that I may leave this place alive.”
• Children’s book author Jean Marzollo once decided to research how Native Americans celebrate Christmas. One woman told her the story of her son, John Beane, who had been weak as an infant. His family gave him the gift of an eagle feather because an eagle is strong. John became strong like the eagle, and his family celebrated Christmas each year by placing that eagle feather at the top of their Christmas tree. Ms. Marzollo used that story in her book The Best Present Ever.
• Elite gymnasts have to watch what they eat. Very often, their low-fat meals consist of chicken, rice, salad, and for a treat, fruit. At a 1991 Christmas party at world-class women’s gymnastics coach Bela Karolyi’s ranch, the elite gymnasts gave a skit in which one gymnast made fun of their diet by pretending to be Bela’s wife, Marta, telling the gymnasts, “And for dinner, since it’s Christmas, you get two grapes!”
• Maureen Lipman, as a junior member of an acting company, once performed in Neil Simon’s Chapter Two with the great actor Sir Laurence Olivier. For Christmas, she gave him a book. He wrote her a thank-you letter, beginning with an apology for not writing sooner. At the end of the letter—four handwritten pages—he apologized for being so brief.
• At one hectic Christmas in the house of Quaker humorist Tom Mullen, a mother tried to calm the children by saying, “Remember, all these gifts come from Jesus.” Another adult responded, “Then let’s send the bill to him.”
• Christmas can be a hectic time. If we let commercialism take over, all the joy can be taken out of Christmas. Once, a small girl prayed, “Forgive us our Christmases as we forgive those who Christmas against us.”
Church
• In the 19th century, many clergymen regarded going to theaters as sinful. The great 19th-century actor Joseph Jefferson once received a letter from a clergyman who asked him to perform Rip Van Winkle in his church, as he never went to the theater. Mr. Jefferson wrote back to say that honoring his request was impossible because he never went to church.
• When “Shoeless Joe” Jackson was attending Brandon Baptist Church after retiring from baseball, the pastor of the church, the Reverend Boyd Turner, used to stand in front of Shoeless Joe’s liquor store each Friday as a signal for him to open the till, take out his tithe, and give it to the pastor for the use of the church.
Clothing
• Catherine Shipley was both a Quaker and the second wife of Murray Shipley, who lived in Cincinnati, Ohio. She was conservative in her dress and didn’t believe in short skirts. While in England, she stayed at a hotel where she was shocked by the short skirts of the young English women she saw. A gentleman and two women from East India walked into the hotel—the women were covered in cloth from head to toe. Ms. Shipley surveyed the women’s dress, then told the gentleman, “I congratulate thee on being a heathen.” The East India gentleman knew that she was talking about the women’s clothing, and he took the compliment well, replying, “Madam, I think the same thing.”
• Dodger pitcher Carl Erskine joined the Masons, whose symbol is a big ‘G’ in the center of a square and compass—God is at the center of Masonic activities. He saw second baseman Jim Gilliam wearing a belt with a buckle decorated with the Masonic symbol. Mr. Erskine told him, “Good-looking belt buckle.” He replied, “Yes, I really like it.” Thinking of the symbol’s religious significance, Mr. Erskine said, “I guess it has a lot of meaning for you.” Mr. Gilliam replied, “Oh, yes. I saw this in a store window in Chicago and went right in and bought it. I think it’s great. It has my initial right in the middle.
• In Cleveland, Ohio, Father Michael Hayduk is the pastor of St. Mary’s Byzantine Catholic Church. While he was visiting the church’s day care and pre-school, a 3-year-old boy asked, “Why do you dress funny?” Father Hayduk explained about his clerical collar and showed the boy his plastic collar insert. On the reverse side of the collar insert was embossed the name of the manufacturer, and Father Hayduk asked the boy, “Do you know what those words say?” The little boy couldn’t read, but he replied, “Yes, I do! It says, ‘Kills ticks and fleas up to six months.’”
• As a young student at Notre Dame Convent, young Patricia Wilde was scheduled to dance in a short-skirted elf costume. (Short skirts are common in dance to show off the legs, which of course are an important part of dance.) However, when the nuns saw her costume, they immediately began to pin streamers to the skirt to make the hemline longer. Young Patricia protested that the nuns were ruining her costume—to no avail. (Since then, she has danced many, many times in a tutu—the shortest imaginable skirt.)
Death
• Folk tales can contain truth, even if it is not literal truth. Death, who brings death to all living things, was near death one day, but a happy young man saw him and took care of him, saving him. In gratitude, Death said that he would not arrive suddenly on the day that the man was to die, but that he would first send messengers to remind the man that he would die one day. The man lived long and mostly happily, but at times he grew ill and occasionally he even wished that he were dead. One day Death arrived and told the man that it was his day to die. The man was shocked and asked, “Have you forgotten your promise to me? You said that you were going to send messengers to remind me that I would die one day.” Death said, “I did send messengers. Every time that you ill, and especially those times when you wished that you were dead, was a reminder that you would die one day.”
• This is good advice: Repent one day before you die. Of course, few of us are aware much in advance of the day that we will die. (Even condemned prisoners often have the date of their execution changed.) Therefore, we should repent our sins each and every day and avoid sin each and every day. Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai told a parable about a King who told his people to be prepared for when he would hold a banquet. Some of the people thought that the banquet would be held far in the future, so they did not bother to get ready for the banquet since they would have time to do so later. Other, wiser people immediately began preparing for the banquet, realizing that although the banquet could be held far in the future, it could also be held immediately. As it happened, the banquet was held quickly, and only the people who were ready were admitted to the banquet hall.
• Not everyone who dies of AIDS is a gay man or an illegal drug user. Daisy was born with AIDS; her father was a bisexual who infected Daisy’s mother, who then passed the disease on to Daisy. Daisy’s mother, an Englishwoman, took care of her, and Daisy was most comfortable when her mother held her, which meant that her mother got very little sleep. One thing that little Daisy did that made her mother happy was to make a kiss-kiss motion with her mouth, which made her mother feel like Daisy was telling her, “It’s all right, Mummy.” Before Daisy died, she was paralyzed and her body was very twisted, but her mother says that as the life and pain left her body, “She became perfectly straight, and she looked beautiful. Her blonde hair was like a halo, going round her face.”
• In April of 1993 at Washington D.C., Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel spoke at the dedication of the Holocaust Memorial Museum. He told the story of a woman in the Carpathian Mountains 50 years previously who had heard about the rebellion of the Jews in Warsaw, Poland, and who could not understand why they were fighting. She asked, “Why are our Jews in Warsaw behaving like this? Why are they fighting? Couldn’t they have waited patiently until the end of the war?” This woman was unaware of the concentration camps and of why the Jews were fighting. One year passed, and then she and her family were forced onto cattle cars and taken to Auschwitz. Mr. Wiesel then told the crowd, “She was my mother.” She did not survive the Holocaust.
• One night, the Sisters of the Missionaries of Charity went around the streets of Calcutta and picked five or six abandoned people, then brought them to the Home for the Dying and the Abandoned. Mother Teresa was preparing to put a little old lady to bed, but the little old lady told her, “Thank you,” then died. Mother Teresa asked herself what she would have done if she were in the little old lady’s position: “And I answered with honesty. Surely I would have done all I could to draw attention to myself. I would have shouted, ‘I’m hungry! I’m dying of thirst! I’m dying!’ She, on the other hand, was so grateful, so unselfish. She was so generous! The poor—I do not tire of repeating this—are wonderful.”
• At Auschwitz, Dr. Josef Mengele performed horrible experiments on pregnant women that left both the women and their fetuses dead. Therefore, Dr. Gisella Perl, who was in Auschwitz, determined that no more women would be pregnant in Auschwitz. She performed abortions whenever they were needed, feeling bad because she was killing a fetus, but knowing that the abortion was necessary to keep Dr. Mengele from killing both the fetus and its mother. After the Holocaust ended, she worked delivering babies, and she always prayed to God before delivering a baby, “God, you owe me a life: a living baby.”
• In 1974, Muhammad Ali fought in Zaire for the championship title. Before leaving, he visited a child who had leukemia. Mr. Ali told the child, “I am going to Africa and win back my title. I’m going to win my battle. And you’re going to win yours.” Mr. Ali won his battle, but the child was dying. Mr. Ali again visited the child and said, “I told you that we were going to win our battles together. I won mine; now you are going to win yours.” The child looked at Mr. Ali and replied, “No, I’m going to heaven to meet God, and I’m going to tell Him that I knew you, and that you were my friend.”
• A woman mourned the death of her child, and she went from door to door hoping to find someone who could bring the child back to life. Arriving at a Buddhist temple, she met a priest who responded to her that he could bring her child to life if she would find a family that had never known death, borrow five poppy seeds from them, and bring the poppy seeds to the priest. The woman searched for a family that had never known death, but she quickly discovered that every family had known death. Realizing that death is inevitable, she buried her child.
• When the father of James J. Reyor died, a mix-up in communication occurred between the hospital and the funeral home, so his father’s body was late for his own wake. An empty, closed coffin had to be displayed at the funeral home because the body was still at the hospital. One man couldn’t understand why the casket was closed, so Mr. Reyor explained that it was empty. The man asked, “Where’s your father?” Mr. Reyor replied, “He’s still at the hospital.” Surprised, the man then asked, “Aren’t you rushing things a bit?”
• Some people live their lives according to how they perceive God wants them to live their lives. When the ancient teacher Confucius was dying, his disciples asked if they should pray for him. Confucius replied, “My life has been my prayer.” Earlier, he had been appointed to the post of minister of justice for the duke of Lu. However, the duke of Lu was given 80 women. Confucius advised him to turn down the decadent gift. The duke of Lu refused, and Confucius resigned his highly coveted position.
• Isolde, Oscar Wilde’s sister, died in 1867 at the age of 10. Oscar, aged 13, decorated an envelope and put a lock of his sister’s hair in it—it was one of his few remaining possessions at his death. The decorations included his initial and her initial joined together, and this quotation from Mark, ch. 5, verse 39: “She is not dead but sleepeth.” He also wrote his poem “Requiescat” about his sister.