Flash Flood - Tucson Arizona - Rillito River ( Little River River )

Grant Road



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Dodge Road

Elvis, Jesus on Toast – Mary on a Mountain – Hand of Mohammed

Mary on the Mountain?

It has taken some time to write this. It was coincidence or serendipity that the topic of seeing Jesus or Elvis on a piece of toast kind of thing came up recently for me.

I can remember meditating on my lunch hour, sitting on a low wall behind Wal-Mart in some little shade on the recreational walkway, bike, park trail along the Rillito (little river) River in Tucson about fifteen years ago.

I was meditating trying to relieve middle age and work stress.  I opened my eyes and then I focused on a distant peak, part of the Santa Catalina mountain range.  I was looking specifically at the large smudge like area on Big Horn Mountain.

In the noon day sun, a summer Arizona sun I should add, I saw what appeared to be the Christian Icon of Mary on the side of the mountain. As I wrote previously, only a Christian is likely to see Christian iconography and iconic images in the abstract darks and grays of a mountain side. That and only mad men in the noon day desert sun are crazy enough to see God and or start world religions sometimes.

With some additional lunch time meditation sessions, I began to make out more of the total image surrounding the Mary iconic image that I imagined that I saw connecting the dots on a mountain side.

It was then that the words of Revelation 12 seem to take shape before my eyes:

Revelation 12 - A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. ² She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth.  ⁵ She gave birth to a son, a male child, who “will rule all the nations with an iron scepter.” And her child was snatched up to God and to his throne. ⁶ The woman fled into the wilderness to a place prepared for her by God, where she might be taken care of…

¹³ When the dragon saw that he had been hurled to the earth, he pursued the woman who had given birth to the male child. ¹⁴ The woman was given the two wings as of a great eagle (angel), so that she might fly to the place prepared for her in the wilderness, where she would be taken care of for a time…

Along with the opening words of Psalm 121:

I lift up my eyes to the mountains—
    where does my help come from?
My help comes from the Lord,
    the Maker of heaven and earth.

Of course all this was against a backdrop of being in bible study with my local pastor.  And seeing Mary, which was more so a Catholic Icon than a Protestant Icon, and as then being Protestant, I discounted the Mary image seen and kept it to myself. No point in running around sounding like a lunatic and saying there was a giant image of Mary on some mountainside in Tucson.

Though I must recall and admit that my local pastor at the time on our group study of Luke sparked a certain chemistry and or electricity within the group that I file mentally under the category of Holy Spirit (whenever two or more are gathered in my name...).

Fast forward, we move back east for some years and I keep the image, the Jesus, Elvis image on toast, Mary on a mountain thing in the back of my mind.

Some years later I go visit my son in college at Tucson and again am seeing Christian Iconography on a mountain.  From the second floor balcony of his dorm apartment I show him the outline of the smudge on the mountain and tell him what I think I see.  He does not see the image of a woman and child. He says he sees what looks like five fingers on a hand.  Shadows can be so tricky.  I look again and yes I guess you might also see a hand.

And of course since I am so steeped in esoterics and religious lore, I see both images, of Mary and also of the hand.  I see what I choose to see.  What I have in confidence and or in faith am willing to see.

And of course looking, connecting the dots on the image of a hand, I am reminded of the Hand of Mohammed, whose original handprint is said to be imprinted on a charter of protection to the ancient St. Catherine’s monastery in the Sinai Desert.

What is in a name? Or an image? The global reality of the present global culture  is to try and see with all the eyes of all cultures and see what best results in image or form evolve out of all those local cultural and religious contexts of the planet. 

So it goes.

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Arizona Webcam

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Our Lady of Tucson

A rather unknown form of folk art from primarily Mexico is the Retablo.

Originally, this art form was a primitive, religious icon painted onto wood. These items became more commonplace in the nineteenth century when most icons or sacred images were painted onto small squares of tin. These images adorned many a house with a small votive light in front of the image.

The image above is reminiscent of the standard Christian icon image of Mary. I label the image both in the English and Espanol – Our Lady of Tucson, Nuestra Senora de Tucson.

Having lived in the southwest for a number of years, one gets used to the standard pastel colors and desert themes of cactus and coyotes and Kokopelli petroglyph style images. In a way the sacred petroglyphs of some ancient unknown but native American culture such as Kokopelli have been reduced to the present secular culture that inhabits the same land as the ancient and greatly unknown and greatly undocumented culture that has come before.

The above image was suggested to me by a connect the dot sort of thing I saw on the side of a mountain. Only a Christian might see the image of Mary, not a vision, in a french fry or on dirty window panes or the shadows on the side of the mountain as I once witnessed for a moment. People from other cultures do not see through the same lense of interpretation. Standard iconic images suggest divinity but are only really a reflection of it. We see, feel, out from our soul and in a Christian iconic prism to interpret the universe.

Every culture in every time and place sees and hears the universal message of God but such images, if allowed, or such words, if interpreted correctly and in a cultural context manner only reinforce the local culture’s view of the world and beyond the world.

Every culture in every time and place has a valid but small and seperate focused interpretation of the eternal.

As the global culture expands, the things of similarity with the universal common message or program will reveal a new window, image, interpretation of us and the meaning of us against the current backdrop of the universe.


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