I found this through athenae at First-Draft, and am posting it without comment, as nothing I can say would add anything to it.
Chicago Sun Times
Some gaze at viaduct Virgin but forget concrete world
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It appears as if someone has recently scrubbed the walls around the supposed image of the Virgin Mary. She is flanked by Christian-themed flags and signs and posters. At her “feet” are dozens of flickering candles and several bouquets of flowers.
The impromptu shrine is larger than the one that appeared near the entrance to Holy Name Cathedral in the days following the death of John Paul II. Yet those two shrines combined would be about 1/50th the size of the flower-candle-card mountain that grew outside the British Embassy on Michigan Avenue after Princess Diana’s death.
I stop taking digital photos and observing the crowd for a few moments, and I focus on the image itself. Sure, it sorta-kinda looks like the Virgin Mary. At any given moment, there are about 100 million stains forming on walls and on shower floors and in refrigerators. Occasionally you’ll get one that looks like Jesus or the Virgin Mary; just as often, you’ll get one that looks like Cedric the Entertainer or Kelly Clarkson.
Just a few steps west of the holy image, leaning against a streetlight pole on Fullerton, there is a homeless man, holding up a small cardboard sign that says:
HELP
I’M HUNGRY
You’d chastise a screenwriter for such easy symbolism, but there the man sits, squinting against the sun and holding up his sign.
In clusters of two and three and four, the faithful who are flocking to and from the image of the Virgin Mary — they walk right past the homeless man. They walk right past him, as if he’s not even there.
