Mary in a Tree Stump

In today's paper I read that "thousands of Irish Catholics have flocked this week to a County Limerick church to pray at the stump of a recently cut willow that many observers say has the silhouette of the Virgin Mary." As someone of mostly Irish descent, I wish I could join them.

I know that some sceptics will be asking how Irish Catholics can identify the silhouette of the Virgin Mary when no photographs or genuine portraits of Mary exist. People say that we can't know what Mary looked like, but in fact we have obvious clues. We know Mary was dark and very short,* for example. Jews 2000 years ago had black hair, olive skin and dark eyes. We know that her son, Jesus, was charismatic, and it's likely he inherited his mother's attractive features--she, after all, drew the attentions of what might modestly be called the All-Time-Consort. It seems entirely likely that Mary had roughly the same astonishing silhouette as Selma Hayek, recently seen on TV in the show 30 ROCK.

* We learned from ancient writings that Moses was quite tall for a Jew of his era, standing approximately 5'4" in height. Jesus was, according to tradition, slightly shorter, and John the Baptist reportedly stood a full head shorter than Jesus. Mary's eyes came to the shoulder of John the Baptist, which would have made her (in contemporary terms) well over 44 inches in stature.