OUR LADY OF HOPE . . . and Madison: I saw a story the other day about an outdoor shrine that the Mexican community of Passaic, NJ recently built to house and honor a tree stump that looks like a statue of the Virgin Mary. The stump was cut down in 2003 on Hope Avenue in Passaic, and would have been tossed into a woodchipper or something, except someone noticed that it looked a bit like the Blessed Virgin in her flowing robes. Well, that touched off a blaze of Marian apparition fever in Passaic, which has vibrant Mexican and Polish immigrant neighborhoods (both nationalities are definitely from the old-school of Catholic Marian worship). A few months ago, some Mexican business people chipped in to set up a little bricked park next to a highway overpass, with a well constructed wooden shrine to protect the stump. Passaic is not far from my stomping grounds (and my mom grew up there), so I decided to drive over and have a look. So, here are a couple of pix.

First off, the new shrine and the brick plaza, in the shadow of Route 21:

Next, a local guy and his kids have a look.

Here’s Mary: you see the head and shoulders; the flowers block the rest. But you can just see two raises in the wood that more or less look like hands over the heart. Hey, no wonder this stump has a following.

But here’s what I see: when you look at the top of the stump, the dark area, you see another sort of face . . . one with teeth sticking out predatorily, not terribly Mary-like.

I suppose it always depends on how you look at things – perhaps I’m looking at the dark side, while those good Catholics of Passaic are seeking out the light. Hey, being of Polish stock, I still have a soft spot in my heart for those old stories about Mary extending her cosmic protection to all the simple of heart. But at bottom, I guess that I’m still an iconoclast.

I’m not a Catholic anymore, but even back when I was, I never had much regard for the whole Mary thing. It all seemed like a way of retro-fitting some female attributes into the whole God thing, while not compromising God’s paternal strength and masculinity. Instead of elevating a Palestinian Jewish mother from the first century into a virginal demi-god, why not just say that God can be both mother-like and father-like, in the traditional sense? But OK, I will admit that I’m expressing a very modern sentiment here, whereas much of the world still struggles for daily survival. And that part of the world very much needs its myths. I guess you could do worse than to give the masses an immaculate celestial-mother, to promise them shelter and hope.

(Of course, as Marx tried to point out, you could do better – by actually giving them opportunities for justice and economic enfranchisement. But forget about Marxism and other forms of Utopia; you might as well let the downtrodden have their religion, ‘cause it’s gonna be a long time until they all get their share of earthly paradise.)