Woman sees image of Jesus set in stone
By Sarah Viren
The Daily News
Published July 17, 2005
SEABROOK — Cathy Zinante laughs about the woman who spotted the Virgin Mary in her grilled cheese sandwich. She has her doubts about the guy on eBay claiming the Lord is imprinted in his busted baseball.
But when it comes to her Jesus rock, Zinante is dead serious.
She found the walnut-sized stone among muddy cow prints beside a Hallettsville pond in May. The rock is nearly translucent, save for some cloudy spots and dark lines.
When Zinante holds it up to the light just right, she swears she can see Jesus’ face embedded in four different places in the hard surface.
“Every day I look at this rock and I see different things — every day — and it is just so fascinating to me,” she said, sitting at her kitchen table in Seabrook beside a well-worn Bible and a glass bowl filled with rocks of different shapes and colors.
Seeing divine images in inanimate objects is nothing new.
“Paranormal investigator” Joe Nickell said humans have a tendency to find patterns in randomness. Science calls examples of this “simulacra.”
“The most famous one is the Man in the Moon — most people see a face in the moon,” said Nickell, a regular columnist for Skeptical Inquirer magazine. “These simulacra can be seen by everybody, but the people who are most likely to look for them will be highly religious people.”
Nowadays, people sell their Virgin Mary water stains and tater tots embedded with Jesus’ images on eBay, the online auction site.
That woman with the grilled cheese? She sold her leftovers for $28,000.
Nickell says the mass media have helped popularize these images, but eBay has ferried in a new brand of religious entrepreneurs.
Zinante found her little piece of Jesus on a Friday the 13th, two days after she prayed to God to send her a rock that could “make lots of money.”
At first she saw only a llama in the rock. Later it looked like a camel with a palm tree in the background. But later that week Zinante held it up to the light and saw what she believes is an image of the Son of God.
“It just hit me; it was like, ‘Wow, this is Jesus,’” she recalled. “It’s just an amazing rock.”
Sound crazy? Zinante says she expects that reaction.
“These people who don’t believe, they will think I am crazy and that is just how it is,” she said. “To me this is like — it’s very strong to me.”
The 53-year-old, who spends most days watching her “grandbabies,” is a born-again Christian. She found religion one Sunday morning when the TV got stuck on the Bible Channel and televangelist Jan Crouch seemed to hold her eye.
That was right after Sept. 11, less than two years after Zinante lost her own mother. The two had been “like this,” she says holding her middle and index fingers tightly together.
Religion returned meaning to her life. She hopes the rock will give her a future.
“I believe in miracles,” Zinante said. “Maybe this rock will be what my mission is, what I am supposed to do. Maybe I need to get me a little van and take off. I don’t know yet.”
Zinante is not sure she could sell her Jesus rock on eBay. She’d prefer taking it on tour or bringing it on the Jay Leno show. One of her dreams is to show the stone to Mel Gibson, director of the blockbuster movie “The Passion of the Christ.”
Zinante, who grew up in Montana but later lived in Galveston, has always collected rocks. She has also always had the ability — or determination — to see figures in inanimate objects. One of her rocks looks like it has a kolache in the middle, she says. Another resembles a pinky finger with a tiny nail.
The Jesus stone, though, holds a special spot, enshrined in silver Silly Putty in a plastic display case on a shelf in her kitchen.
Zinante can’t count the times she looks at this rock each day. Most visitors get to see it. When she is alone, or her grandkids are sleeping, Zinante takes the plastic case off its shelf and holds the rock up to the light.
The longer she looks, the more she sees.
“I have a feeling that this rock has something to do with what I have yet to do,” she says, gently putting the case back on its shelf.
texascitysun.com |
