It boggles the mind sometimes.

There's a church in Clearwater, Florida where they claim that an image of the Virgin Mary has appeared in the glass by the door. I've seen pictures of the image, and if you squint real hard and use your imagination a lot, you can almost believe it looks like a woman with a scarf over her head. To me, it looks like sunlight glinting on stress lines in the glass. A similar image appeared on a concrete building (I forget where) after a rainstorm. It was a big, wet splotch in the concrete. Once again, nothing more than a silhouette. Both images, the one in Florida and the one on the concrete building have a shape similar to the outline of the Madonna in many Renaissance paintings, but there is no detail. No eyes, no nose, no mouth. Nothing to identify it as a woman. For that matter, it could just as easily be a silhouette of Sir Edmond Hillary with the hood of his parka pulled up over his head. Yet, many people are absolutely sure that this is an image of the Virgin Mary.

And then there is the Shroud of Turin, which many people insist was the shroud that Jesus was wrapped in after the crucifixion. This, despite the fact that the linen cloth has been carbon dated. It's fourteenth century. And the supposed blood turns out to be red ochre pigment. The image is a painting.

It was in the news a week or so ago. A woman bit into a peanut M&M, and, to her, the image her teeth left on what remained of the peanut looked like the face of Jesus. They're so small I usually just pop the whole thing in my mouth and bite down on it there. But that habit has probably cost me a fortune. The woman sold the remains of the chocolate covered peanut on eBay for something like $1,800.

Nobody knows what Jesus looked like. Nobody knows what Mary looked like. I guess speculating on the matter can be fun, but it's ridiculous to get worked up over it.

Now, if somebody turns up with a Polaroid that hasn't faded over the past 2,000 years, that would be something. But even then, I think there would still be questions. . . .

Don Firth