Straight from the (Holy) Mothership?

At first glance, it looks like I found the (Holy) Mother of All Alien Eyes: a window reflection on the side of St. Bernard’s Catholic church that looks like the Virgin Mary with bowed head and hands folded before her in prayer. But before you get religion and come flocking to Keene, NH to see the latest sign that God is among us, take a look at the bigger picture.

Yes, the alien eye in the center of the picture still looks a bit like Mary…but the blobbish reflection on the left looks roughly like all the other aliens I’ve blogged, their bizarre geometries caused by the particular properties of whatever pane of glass is reflecting the slanting sun. I took a moment after snapping this photo to see if there was a stained glass window on the nearby parish rectory that might have been bouncing Mary-beams onto the wall of the church, but I’ve learned from experience that you often can’t find the immediate source of alien eyes, light being both stealthy and insistent in the way it reflects and refracts. Having traveled across the Universe to land on any given wall, a beam of morning light is already miraculous enough, regardless of any member of the Holy Family it might roughly resemble.

So during the same week that Natalie saw in her underwear the face of a sorrowful nun, I too have spotted my own instance of pareidolia, chance beams on one morning’s dog-walk haphazardly aligning themselves into a sign of grace.