We’re falling behind in our divine visions

Despite significant advances in the fields of wireless communication and meth lab design, the Spokane area has been an embarrassing no-show when it comes to miraculous religious apparitions.

Everywhere but here, people are seeing the Blessed Mother in grilled cheese sandwiches, pretzels and, in Canada, a Lay’s Smokey Bacon Chip.

Just the other day a co-worker notified me of an Internet auction for a Doritos chip that looks exactly like the pope’s hat (www.send2press.com/mediadrome/popechip_72dpi.jpg).

It’s time we stopped consuming our snack foods without examining them for theological significance.

So today I am launching the “Vision Quest 2005” contest.

Major prizes will be awarded for any chips, cheese curls, floor tiles or motel mattresses, etc. bearing sacred shapes, stains or holy images. In order to win, items must be accompanied by a letter of explanation and verifiable name, address and telephone number. (Mailing information below.)

Sure, we’ve had our share of Bigfoot sightings in years past.

I even seem to recall a county fair where some over-imaginative 4-H kid displayed a potato all dolled up to look like Elvis.

Please. What bulbous tuber doesn’t resemble the King in his final fat years?

My hopes for civic salvation were raised for a brief moment last week with a call from Ron McNett.

“It’s about the size of an egg,” said the excited Spokane man. “It’s got the mirror image of Jesus on one end of it. You turn it upside-down and it’s got the mirror image of the icon of the Virgin Mary.

“… It’s mind-boggling!”

McNett was babbling about some stone he’d unearthed from his mother’s garden on the North Side.

Images of both Jesus and Mary? On the same rock?

No heavenly cheese sandwich can top that.

I made an appointment to gaze upon McNett’s wonder with my own two eyes. Now, alas, I must report my findings.

While McNett does have in his possession one well-aged rock, I don’t think it has a thing to do with the Rock of Ages.

I couldn’t catch a glimpse of Jesus or Mary. Or Regis Philbin, for that matter.

McNett tried hard to sell me. He took the rock outside in hopes a little sunshine would help me see the light. He used the point of a pen to trace where he claims the hairline, eyes and mouth supposedly are. He rubbed olive oil on the stone to intensify the image …

This could say more about me than the sacred stone. I do tend to view the world through 20-20 cynicism.

The way McNett tells it, less jaded individuals have swooned over his treasure. One woman “said she was honored to see it,” said McNett. She called it, “A miracle in a rock.”

I wasn’t troubled when McNett told me that he had once pleaded guilty to forgery. There was nothing to indicate that his rock had been augmented by any artificial flimflammery.

Too bad. Had it been, I might have actually seen something.

To McNett, the image on his stone is as detailed and obvious as the Mona Lisa.

I felt totally out of the loop, like when everyone was going ga-ga over those 3-D Magic Eye posters back in the 1990s.

The more I stared the less I saw.

“Ninety-nine percent of the people I show it to see it really clearly,” said McNett, who added, “The rock’s not for sale.”

Hey, don’t look at me. I won’t be making any offers.

I’m taking McNett as a promising sign. If he can get this whipped up about his mystery rock, I know there will be others out there who can see the image of St. Peter on a Pringles or the Lord’s Prayer on a Wheat Chex.

So send your icons in care of Doug Clark’s “Vision Quest 2005,” W. 999 Riverside, Spokane, WA, 99201.

Oh, one last thing for clarity’s sake: I was just kidding about the stained mattresses.