Recently a friend in Buenos Aires told me that there is a post war, early electric Chicago style blues band in Italy called, Jesus on a Tortilla. He recommended that I check them out. First off, I love the name of the band. Since I am a fan of the martyred, pacifist fisherman and populist, itinerant, Palestinian sage, as well as a good bean blanket, what’s not to love?  

So I Googled the band. Before I found the group of musicians, I came across several entries where people actually found the image of Jesus on a tortilla. Different headlines came at me, “San Antonio man finds the face of Jesus on a tortilla.” “Austin man see’s the image of Jesus on a tortilla.” For the record, both incidents as well as other alleged sightings throughout recent history involve flour tortillas exclusively.

My immediate thought was, ‘What, Texans have a monopoly on Jesus on a tortilla sightings?.’  I reasoned there are a lot of people in Texas and a lot of tortillas. It would, of course, make sense that Jesus’ face on tortilla sightings would be much more likely in the Lone Star State than in most places. I get that, but what about my home state of California. We have more people and I would wager we have more tortillas as well. Yet, I couldn’t find evidence of a single Jesus on a tortilla sighting in California... zero, zilch, nada... 

I think this might speak to some larger questions. 1) Is our notoriously fast paced life style here in the Golden State such that we don’t take time to look for religious apparitions in our food? 2) Do we have the face of Jesus on our tortillas out here, but don’t make that all important phone call to the media outlets to share our findings? 3) Maybe we are just the wrong kind of Christians. We might be more of the ‘do unto others, feed the poor, heal the sick, turn the other cheek, while pissing off Harrod’ types, rather than the spooky, scary types who talk about Jesus all the time. I think being the second type would also go a long way in helping to boost the number of Jesus’ face on tortilla sightings. Do you have to be a Christian to see Jesus in a tortilla?  I don’t know, but I think it would help. Maybe we just have too many heathens out here.

For instance, I was at the King Taco in Long Beach, California, once when some young gringo shouted out to his dining companions, “Dude, check it out, it’s like the face of the Dude, the other Jeffrey Lebowski, on my tortilla....RAD!” If that isn’t an atheist interpretation of the Jesus on the tortilla phenomenon, then I don’t know what is.

If that same incident happened in Texas, wouldn’t a similar heathen shout out, ‘Hey all a y’all, I got the face of Waylon Jennings on my tortilla.’?

Perhaps the Jesus on a tortilla phenomenon is just a “Bible Belt” thing. That region of the country is sort of a loose confederation of states where people tend to be very open about their superstitions. I would think these areas are more likely to produce people who experience this type of “vision.”

However, if you go to the upper mid-west where tortillas are not as prevalent, you of course are less likely to find the face of Jesus in your food. Wonder Bread or not, I think you are just not that likely to find the face of Jesus in a slice of white toast. On top of that, Midwesterners as a group are not much for grandstanding. As any midwesterner will tell you (only when asked, mind you) ‘The face of Jesus in mashed potatoes and gravy isn’t anything to make a fuss about.’  

As far as the south is concerned they can make a fuss about anything and can’t keep anything to themselves. They also take their Christianity pretty seriously. I remember several years ago seeing a TV news broadcast where it was reported that a man in Tennessee saw the image of Jesus on the side of a rusted old refrigerator in his yard. It was very impressive. The shroud of Turin had nothing on this regional landscape motif.

Is the face of a deity in food just an American phenomenon? I don’t know; maybe some Saudi sheik saw Mohammad in a milk shake. What do I know? I just discovered the Jesus on a tortilla phenomenon this morning and it’s been going on for years. I am way behind on this one.  

I suppose if I bowed my head and said grace before every meal, theoretically I would be looking directly at my food. Who knows what I’d see? We did this every night as a family growing up. I didn’t see a damn thing. I don’t recall that we had that many flour tortillas, so that may have had something to do with it.

I once saw the image of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria in a pasta dish. I was on a first date and things were going pretty well, so I kept it to myself. A friend of mine swore he saw the face of Che Guevara in a casserole. I believed him, although there was no evidence to support his claim. This happened before people took pictures of their food in restaurants and posted the photo on Facebook.

I do think the wonder of Jesus on a tortilla speaks to the capaciousness of the human imagination and to what is important to us as individuals. It is like the person who sees the shapes of puppies or kittens in the clouds. I like baseball, American history, blues music and geography among other things. I often see Babe Ruth, Benjamin Harrison, Big Joe Turner and the international borders of Brazil in cloud shapes. However, not on the same day...that would be some storm. Just last week the supposed image of Michael Jackson in the clouds went “viral.” I don’t spend as much time looking at clouds as I did a few years ago as there aren’t nearly enough in California lately. Cloud watching during a drought is really a drag.

As much as I think it would be swell to be the first Californian to have an authenticated face of Jesus on my tortilla, I am not going to lose any sleep over this, if it doesn’t work out for me. I kind of prefer corn tortillas anyway. So maybe I’m just sh*t out of luck.

The good news is that I did find the blues band, Jesus On a Tortilla. You can read about them here.

- David Mac