Our Lady Of The Highway

On a scouting expedition into the interiors of Jesustan, CF reports sighting an enormous statue of the Virgin Mary with a neon sign proclaiming her to be ‘Our Lady of the Highway’.

Coming as I do from a city in Hindustan where large numbers of temples are engaged in bitter competition over who can build the largest, most luridly-coloured concrete monkey to grace its portals, I at first failed to see just why my native guide even found the statue remarkable.

But then, the image turned around inside my normally idle mind. I put aside my first thought -- which was to have the native flogged for wasting my time -- and allowed some questions to form.

First, there is something, lets face it, disturbing about a statue to a sacred virgin standing on a highway at a locale of the kind normally reserved for sex workers or, perhaps, the exceptionally slutty. If anyone reading this knows if bordellos in Catholic countries have statues Our Lady Of The Quick, Cash-Only Bang-Bang, please do let me know.

Second, the highways in Jesustan, compared with those in my own nation, can only be described as mundane. That someone would seek divine protection for a drive on these roads seemed timorous in the extreme, inconsistent with a nation which is engaged in sending out hordes of warriors to almost all corners of the known world.

Third, and most important, there is something a little unsettling about a tribute to divinity when it is surrounded by hundreds of other neon signs, celebrating fast food and cholesterol control pills; Miller Lite and driving-under-the-influence lawyers.

Then, it hit me. The location of Our Lady among the snarl of advertising makes perfect sense. The advertisements are not, as the crude would have it, simply propaganda to feed supermarket cash tills. Both Our Lady and the signboards are advertisements, advertisements not for the specific idea or project they represent, but for a system of belief. Both Our Lady and McDonalds comfort and reassure, in these ever so distressing times, that all is in fact well with Jesustan.