Posted on 12/23/2002 1:44:31 PM PST by Shermy
From my earliest years as a columnist, I recall a tabloid article about a New Mexico resident: A silhouette of Christ, she claimed, had appeared on a burrito she was cooking.
The accompanying photograph showed the woman -- with dark, melancholy eyes -- holding the wrapped tortilla.
To skeptics, the image more closely resembled a map of Czechoslovakia than the countenance of Christ.
Yet curious pilgrims flocked to her home, hoping to gaze upon what they considered a modern miracle.
I was intrigued that she lived in Roswell, a town synonymous with supernatural controversy.
Beset by inquisitive strangers, she finally placed the burrito inside a small display case in her yard -- where interlopers could feel free to look at it day or night. (She even lighted the area.)
I visited Roswell some 15 years later to write about the 50th anniversary of the purported UFO crash there in 1947.
The burrito was still on display, a resident told me.
I was too busy covering extraterrestrial matters, however, to go see it.
Over time, I've come to learn that Jesus sightings on unlikely objects keep the supermarket tabloids fed.
I've read stories of his image on everything from screen doors to marbled bathroom tiles.
In Herculaneum, Mo., a barber shows newcomers his photos of a fire that consumed a Baptist church.
''If you hold it like this, you can see Jesus,'' he said when I visited, pointing to the roiling flames. ''But if you turn it this way, you can see the devil.''
Small-town barbers, some people might say, have far too much time on their hands.
Several years ago, Christ supposedly appeared, too, on a storage tank in northwestern Ohio.
The image in question, though, isn't always that of Christ.
Two years ago in Perth Amboy, N.J., a likeness of the Virgin Mary of Guadalupe was said to have appeared on the swirled glass of a second-story apartment window.
The reason people see Christ in odd places such as burritos, essayist Peter de Vinck suggests, is that they seek evidence of heaven.
A few days ago, in Main Street traffic, I was stuck behind a city bus.
I was about to utter something unprintable when I spied a message spread across the tail of the lumbering vehicle: ''Jesus is the reason for the season.''
The sentiment bears repeating, despite the many front yards adorned with discount-store creches.
At this time of year, Christendom is looking for the face of Christ.
One with a deep thirst is apt to encounter the mirage of an oasis in the desert.
So, when the spiritual hunger is comparably overwhelming, Christians are likely to find peace and good will -- and perhaps even Christ -- in a world ripped asunder by terror and epic cruelty.
Today, if Jesus were born in Bethlehem, the shepherds would probably land on the World Weekly News cover.
Yet, within themselves, they would know what they had seen.
Mike Harden is a Dispatch columnist.
Willie 2:19
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