An Imperfect Miracle by Thomas L. Peters Page A

remembered them if I really tried, but I just never felt like it. I liked Pastor Mike’s sermons a lot better, because he mostly talked about loving your neighbor and not getting a big head and treating other people the way you’d want to be treated, stuff that was pretty easy to understand.
    That morning Pastor Bob started off by saying how bad it was to worship idols and graven images and pictures. I wasn’t really sure what idols or graven images were, but I knew what a picture was and started paying more attention. It turned out that Pastor Bob was all in an uproar about Mary’s face showing up along Main Street and how silly it all was. He said that even if it was Mary and not just some water mark, we’re supposed to worship Jesus and not her. He said that the Catholics were way off base putting so much stock in Mary, building statues to her and painting pictures of her and praying to her and stuff like that, and that we shouldn’t fall into the same trap.
    I didn’t quite follow him on what trap he was talking about, but he made it sound pretty scary and I wondered if I was close to falling into it. Then he said how he’d just read in the paper about some guy in Ohio who thought he saw Mary in a pan right after he’d fried up some rice.
    â€œNow that fellow bows down and prays to his frying pan every morning before he goes to work,” Pastor Bob said, kind of chuckling.
    Most everybody, including Mom, laughed about the frying pan, but Pastor Bob said it really wasn’t very funny when you thought about it.
    â€œWeak-minded people can easily be led astray by such foolishness.”
    I didn’t know if I qualified as weak-minded or not, but Father Tom sure didn’t look weak-minded and Carlos didn’t either. I began wondering if I was headed straight to Hell for having seen her face first and telling that blabbermouth Marcie about her. All this time Mom was sitting there beside me mostly staring up at the stage with her eyes sort of glassy and her head tilted sideways a little. I nudged her arm and whispered whether I could leave early to talk to Pastor Mike. She whispered back that I could, so long as I didn’t make a pest of myself. Just then Pastor Bob started talking about the church’s new building project and how they’d need to raise a ton of money real quick to start construction on time.
    â€œIntroduce yourself to Pastor Mike like a little gentleman,” she whispered real intense and breathy. “Just don’t go up to him and start asking questions. I don’t want him to think you were raised in a barn.”
    Mom was always griping about me acting like I’d been raised in a barn, which I thought was pretty strange since there weren’t any barns that I knew of inside the Millridge city limits. Pastor Bob was still begging for money when I went out to the lobby and found Pastor Mike standing all by himself stirring the cream into his little blue coffee mug. I took a deep breath and walked right up to him to introduce myself like Mom told me. He smiled and patted me on the shoulder and asked me how I was doing. He knew my name too before I even had a chance to say it.
    I’d heard Mom going on and on to her friends one time about how cute Pastor Mike was. I guess it was because of his sharp blue eyes and thick black hair that curled down a little over his forehead. But it was hard to tell what Mom was thinking sometimes, and I didn’t really care whether he was cute or not.
    â€œIs Mary real, her picture on the concrete I mean? Pastor Bob doesn’t think so. He says I’m going straight to Hell if I go down and ask her for favors and stuff, although I haven’t really asked her for anything yet, at least not for myself.”
    Pastor Mike laughed for a few seconds, like I’d just told a good joke or something, and then his face settled into a nice pleasant grin. Pastor Mike had soft, smooth skin and a