psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus
(often an image or sound) being perceived as significant.
“If it makes them pray, that’s OK,”
said Rev. Father John Straathof, of
to image of Christ found in a grotto.
MilknHoney was in a bad place about
to cast herself into the sea when something brushed her foot. Driftwood. “With
the face of Jesus starring at me.” Now her life is fine “and i wish upon whom every is to win this will have the
same fortune I did.”
Starting bid, $15. It didn’t sell.
But other items have, of course —
the $28,000 grilled cheese sandwich the off-shore casino bought for publicity,
the sandwich nibbled, Our Lady’s face discovered, all of it wrapped in cotton,
kept in plastic. And it never molded. Miraculous. It brought the owner luck,
frequent wins at the casino, not to mention fame and twenty eight thousand
dollars on Ebay.
If I were
Mother Theresa’s image — and I am not – I think I really would inhabit that
Dorito. If I were Mary I would peek out of the knots of the pine ceiling of
Joey B.’s bedroom in
I would etch myself in the stump of the hacked sumac in a crack in the overpass
in
Spanish-speaking neighborhood, where the
Superfund sites almost outnumber the steeples.
If I were
the baby Jesus I might skip the Pizza Hutt billboard in
and that Cheeto, though there’s an argument to make for the pierogi in
homesick Belarussians. I’d get a kick out of the Cone Nebula, a fine place to
watch eternity from. The
swaddling. Ma gets extra credit for hiding in that sonogram of the
eight-week-four-day-old child.
God bless the human brain for the
hardwiring that sees the face everywhere. All our holy ones can not be ignored in these most homey human
places.