I always find it peculiar that no-one is surprised that the baby Jesus, or Virgin Mary, or whatever, always seems to cry tears of lamp oil or glycerin or whatever.
Why not tears of, well, tears? Or at least something stylish, like tears of silver or moondust or something?
I suppose lamp oil and glycerine are practically speaking more useful. Also, they tend not to dry up as fast, so you actually have a chance to notice.
Now I'm thinking about that old /Dragon/ magazine story with the delicate and holy alchemical mechanism that distilled moonlight into liquid, and the thieves who stole some.
(The thieves found that yes, they had distilled moonlight, and no-one was really interested in it. The priests, meanwhile, were leaving all new apprentices unquestioned, took being hit over the head by interlopers at midnight as a matter of course, had three cellars two pantries and a hollow statue full of the stuff, and were desperately waiting for word to get back of thieves who had not only stolen the stuff but figured out what it was good for.)
I can't stand most of the fiction in Dragon, but I absolutely loved that story. :D
I know why the people who set up the miracle use lamp oil and glycerine. I'm just amazed that the worshipers think it's perfectly normal for divine tears to be such... mundane substances.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-02 07:34 pm (UTC)Why not tears of, well, tears? Or at least something stylish, like tears of silver or moondust or something?
(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-02 08:23 pm (UTC)Now I'm thinking about that old /Dragon/ magazine story with the delicate and holy alchemical mechanism that distilled moonlight into liquid, and the thieves who stole some.
(The thieves found that yes, they had distilled moonlight, and no-one was really interested in it. The priests, meanwhile, were leaving all new apprentices unquestioned, took being hit over the head by interlopers at midnight as a matter of course, had three cellars two pantries and a hollow statue full of the stuff, and were desperately waiting for word to get back of thieves who had not only stolen the stuff but figured out what it was good for.)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-02 09:00 pm (UTC)I know why the people who set up the miracle use lamp oil and glycerine. I'm just amazed that the worshipers think it's perfectly normal for divine tears to be such... mundane substances.