By Kate Hawley

When a salt stain on the wall of a Chicago underpass began to gain credence as miraculous image of the Virgin Mary, the news ricocheted from Internet and cable all the way to the hallowed halls of the Associated Press and NPR. The more people arrived with cameras and flowers and candles, the bigger the news became, and the bigger the news became, the more people arrived with cameras and flowers and even illnesses they wanted healed.

People have seen God in many such mysterious blobs, but few of these sightings have been so fortuitously timed. Since Pope John Paul II died, the airwaves have been jammed with talk of spiritual loss and God’s messengers on earth. From a CNN interview with a man who had come to see the Virgin for himself: “with the pope dying and you’re looking at all the trouble with the world, you are looking for something good. And I think this is something good.” Leave it to Chicago, a city with strong Catholic traditions forced by bitter winters into parka-wearing pragmatism, to see the Virgin just at the most useful moment.

Adding to the mystique was how the story appeared in the media as a full-blown phenomenon, with crowds and police cars surrounding the site. I realize that few self-respecting journalists would attempt an investigative report of a roadside miracle, but still, I want to know who started this thing. Was it a solitary seeker who, maybe desperate, maybe drunk, suddenly saw the answers to his prayers? Who did he tell? Who did he bring back to see it? How, exactly, did the word spread?

I lived in Chicago for seven years, and I’ve walked through that underpass and many in the city like it countless times. There’s usually graffiti. There’s sometimes a man slumped against the wall, addicted or sick or homeless. Once I saw a dead pit bull in a state of rigor mortis. It’s the unpleasant, dripping, shadowy place you have to pass on your way from the brick and concrete city to the trees and benches of Lincoln Park and the shores of Lake Michigan. In retrospect the metaphor makes sense: why shouldn’t some one perceive divine hope in one of these smelly, stained passageways, which function, geographically and perhaps spiritually, as fulcrums between two worlds?