Okay, so I'm not a religious guy. Let's get that straight right here at the beginning. But of all the buffoonery and ridiculousness I've seen in the name of religion, this recent spate of grocery store iconography has to make the top-10. It's right up there with psychic surgery and crystal spinning. The latest is a story out of Eugene, OR in which a man claims to have found a pretzel shaped like the Virgin Mary holding baby Jesus. If you ask me, it looks more like a spraddled G-Clef, but then I guess that's what a musician would see, isn't it? What it resembles most of all is a pretzel. And, of course, the man in question has decided to do what you do with all sacred artifacts...he's putting it up on eBay. Hoping, I'm sure, that either some rich, religious zealot or publicity-seeking, online casino (are you listening, Goldenpalace.com?) will step up and open a fat wallet to hand over a wad of cash.
What I really don't understand about incidents like this, whether it's the "image of Mary" on the glass at a finance company in Clearwater, FL, or the "Nun Bun" at Bongo Java Coffee Co. in Nashville, TN, or any number of images of Jesus on items like tortillas, wood-grain paneling, rotting fruit and potato chips, is why the legitimate religious community isn't incensed by this garbage. I try to put myself in the place of a pious man who is approached by some 3rd-rate carnival barker holding what he says is the image of my deity that magically appeared on a sausage patty...and it can be mine for just a few hundred bucks! I'd be likely to want to take a swing at him for insulting not only my own intelligence but my god as well! And yet the beat goes on.
"Ah, but isn't anything that brings one closer to their god a good thing," I hear you asking? No. Especially in the Judeo-Christian tradition. If I'm not mistaken, holding up an image of Christ on a cookie breaks a commandment. Ask Moses what he thought of religious idolatry. Besides...it's not Jesus. It's a cookie! Let's say, just for the sake of argument, that the Christians are right about the whole thing. I would love to hear one of these jokers try to explain to God why they felt it necessary to lay out cash for the Jesus and Mary pretzel. Better yet, imagine the tap-dance the guy who sold it to them would have to do before the Almighty. Talk about getting fitted for a pair of flaming underpants!
Look, we're human. We're genetically wired to recognize faces. So we tend to see faces and images in any pattern. Look at a shag rug long enough and you'll find a piece that looks like somebody staring back at you. It doesn't mean there's anything magical, religious or spiritual about it. Quite the contrary...it's biological science at work. The babies who recognize the faces of their parents are more likely to survive to sire the next generation than those who don't. How? How are those instincts passed down? What's in the pre-wiring that allows us to pass important memories to our progeny? We're not entirely sure yet. And in this universe, that's the real magic. Those answers are out there, and they can be discovered. So let's stop wasting time looking for God on a ganache and start digging into the real questions behind our own existence. The world is a magical place...we don't need to invent false icons to make it interesting. It already is.
