Secular Sunday - Holy Shit!

Jesus is everywhere. Even Ohio. And even in bird poop.

"Poo unto others as you would have them poo unto you." - Jesus Howard Christ

Yes, that is a picture of bird poop that Jim Lawry and his son witnessed being shat onto their car windshield while driving in Cleveland. Apparently Mr. Lawry has said of the incident, "I am blessed. It's been an incredible experience."

Honestly, I think it looks more like a stormtrooper helmet than Jesus...

... but that could just be my nerd showing. In any case, I think it's time we had a frank discussion about what constitutes a religious experience.

I am not a religious person, but as a general rule, if something you worship appears in poop, you better hope it's an accident. I mean, assuming for a moment that Jesus does actually appear in objects (which has its own problems, but we'll get to that), would he really choose to appear in poop? Poop? Maybe. It's been a while since Jesus and I were bros. Maybe he's into that shit now.

But it turns out there is a name for these kinds of shenanigans. It's called pareidolia. And it happens everywhere. In the corner of my room, there is a blob in the stained wood that looks like a woolly mammoth. In Ludwig Bemelman's book Madeline, "a crack on the ceiling had the habit of sometimes looking like a rabbit." A blob of glue looking like Homer Simpson fetched hundreds of thousands of dollars. As mentioned one Fun Fact Friday, for a while people thought there was a face monument on the surface of Mars.

I also happen to be from New Hampshire, and our state symbol is the Old Man of the Mountain. It was a Lincoln-esque profile of a man in the side of a mountain in my fine home state. (He fell down, and we kept him as our state symbol because quite frankly we don't have a whole lot going for us.) And as much as I glow with New Hampshire pride, it's all pareidolia. Clouds, constellations, stains, burnt toast... people have a tendency to create familiar shapes and faces from a random collection of stimuli.

And maybe Mr. Lawry wants to cherish this holy shit, but it's poop. And it happened Cleveland, which is the least likely place for any deity to appear. Ever. So pull it together, human race!

Related: Friday I was eating some delicious chicken tenders. One of them could have vaguely looked like Christ all snuggled up in his tomb for nap time.

"No man cometh unto the Tender, but by me." - Jesus Howard Christ

I did not put this on eBay. I ate it. And it was fucking delicious.