Thursday 16 May 2013

JESUS ON MY TEA TOWEL


[ONE FROM THE ARCHIVES TODAY. NEW BLOG TOMORROW!]

Recently a woman in Coventry (UK) took a tea towel out of the dryer to find a brown stain on it resembling a long bearded man. She and her husband claim the image within the stain is none other than Jesus Christ himself. The woman claimed the stain was not there before the dryer but after the load finished, she took it out and, presto, there was (call me crazy, but something tells me her dryer is too hot and may burn the house down if she’s not careful) an image of the holy man himself.

Of course they have been mobbed with requests from the uber pious hoping to make a pilgrimage to her kitchen of piety to gaze upon her tea-stained tea towel. I’m sorry, I realize my jaded side is showing through in technicolor, but I just never get on board with this type of stuff. Perhaps because I just fundamentally don’t trust humans or their eyesight.

I suppose my first question is why do people always insist it is Jesus imprinted upon their food items, linens, lining in the cat litter box etc. I’ve seen the photo of the tea towel and between you and I, I can’t even make out a face, let alone the face of Jesus Christ. Not to mention, if one can make out a man with a beard, could that not be a likeness of the guy that delivers circulars to the neighborhood, or the former house owner that died in that very kitchen fifteen years before, or even the local bus driver. Why is it always Jesus? Why don’t people see Elvis or Kurt Cobain or dead political figures? Now that would be a miracle. Holy shiz, there is an image of JFK inside the King’s nappy. Now that would get me believing in something (a diet change for the King perhaps).

I realize these days everyone is searching for a miracle of some sort, but I have a hard time believing that Jesus would appear on a towel in some woman’s house in Coventry. Okay, for those not jaded like myself, I suppose your answer is, why on earth not. I just have problems with believing a stain isn’t more than a stain and often a sheer trick of the eye. The King’s entire wardrobe is littered with stains and unidentifiable blobs, but I’ve yet to see a man staring back at me from his trouser leg. [Although, I could swear his hoodie has an image of Johnny Depp sprinting across a bridge naked, then again, perhaps that's just my active imagination]. Trust me, if I did, I’d have confirmation that a year and a half without proper sleep can drive you definitively mad. But then again, maybe that’s why I don’t get Jesus appearing in my house, cause he knows it would go right over my head and out the window.

Ms. McCourt, the tea towel believer, is now insistent that this is a definitive sign from God, and of course this event has strengthened her faith. Apparently another resident of this same area claimed Jesus appeared to her on a drainpipe. [I’m not even sure how one sees Jesus on a drainpipe?] Clearly in this town, something deeply religious (and hallucinogenic) is in the water. 


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