Thoughts in a Haystack

Here it is folks ... the elusive evidence of a miracle you've all been waiting for:

Joan Dixon slowed as she drove down Lewis Street in Minersville [Pennsylvania] Wednesday. She was looking for the spot where some say a holy image appears around 5:30 p.m. every day. Dixon believes in miracles.

"In 2000 I gave my husband a kidney and not in a million years did I think I would be a match, so I believe in things like that, definitely," Dixon said.

Some skeptics think the image is a reflection off of a statue in the window of the owner of the garage, the door of which is the site of the glowing apparition. While David Drazenovich agrees that the image is a reflection of light, nonetheless:

... Drazenovich said he's had those windows open all summer. The image began appearing, witnesses say, on Aug. 15, the day of the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Allentown Catholic Diocese spokesman Matt Kerr said the diocese has no plans to investigate the image.

But Kerr said it shows that people's beliefs and convictions remain strong.

I think it's a testament to the faith of the people of Minersville and the surrounding area that they look at this with faith-filled eyes and see the Blessed Mother. They draw strength from that, and that's to be commended.

Norman Girardot, a professor at Lehigh University and expert on comparative religion, had a slightly different take:

It is interesting that we have a spectrum of beliefs or interpretations. That is, religious believers who are convinced that it's a miraculous apparition of the Blessed Virgin, skeptics who simply dismiss it as ridiculous, and the 'ghostbusters' who see it as a quasi-scientific expression of electromagnetic anomalies.

Um ... two woos against one reality?
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