In order for this to work, you must live in or near a church which displays either statues (as many Catholic churches do), or hung wall paintings on wood (like the holy icons on display in many Greek Orthodox churches). Now suppose attendance at your church is slipping. Well, you need a miracle. The first idea that popped into a concerned Holy Man's mind was to have the statue or icon "weep tears." While the tears are as close as the nearest eyedropper, some subtlety is required. If you put the tears on before the first worshippers arrive, they will have mainly evaporated before some worshipper discovers them and the huge publicity that will revitalize your church kicks off. In the early 20th Century glycerine was readily available at drug stores and was used for stable, non-evaporating droplets, both in Hollywood for tears and sweat, and on holy images that needed to cry if not sweat. In more recent times a variety of clear, odorless oils for cooking and salads are more readily available. There is at least one famous case where a statue of the Goddess Mary, Queen of Heaven, was created with a hollow head into which a large quantity of oil could be placed. It was only necessary to cut away the interior around the eyes until the thin wall was porous in order to have a perpetually weeping goddess, whose tears needed replenishment only once a month instead of every night.

However, tears have a built-in handicap— they are transparent and therefore not visible from a distance, which makes the number of worshippers who can simultaneously "witness" the inexplicable miracle necessarily limited to those who can get right up to the statue or icon. The illogical but effective solution adopted by some unsung Holy Man was to have the statue or icon weep blood! Now, this doesn't make any sense, but it produces a miracle visible from 50 or more feet away. It's become fairly popular, to say the least, despite the foolish simplicity and utter unimpressiveness of the basic phenomenon. The best "blood" results are obtained by mixing red food coloring with glycerine or some odorless clear oil. Then load the old eyedropper and wait for opportunity.

The Hindu world is full of temples, each with numerous statues. However, the only comparable phenomenon I know of is the famous day in the Fall of 1995 when "the Gods drank milk," aka the Great Ganapati Milk Udyog. Rumor spread that when statues of the god Ganesha were offered silver spoons with a small quantity of milk, they drank it. For a good writeup on this wonderous event, and a good explanation of how it worked, click here. Once the story got into the news media, almost any statue in India was reported to be swilling milk by the bucketfull, but it is unlikely that any Holy Action Figure managed to make away with more than a milk-pitcher full of the life-giving liquid. [By the way, Ganesha, being elephant-headed, has a mouth inaccessible to spoons. Ah, but he has a trunk!]

Well, we must wait for the further natural evolution of the phenomenon. A logical synthesis of the Eastern and Western manifestations would have the Virgin Goddess Mary's idol drinking worshippers' blood from silver Communion spoons! Don't hold your breath until the first newsmedia report of this, however. By the way, whenever I find an idol bleeding or weeping, I also invariably find at least one dangerously disturbed, seriously peculiar individual right nearby. Here is a recent, local example... a whole colony of them!

Delusion?