A Helping Hand

In Moscow, the Cathederal of Christ the Saviour is displaying a relic that has people lining up for "hundreds of metres." The relic is back in the Russian capital for the first time since the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. "The relic is the right hand of St John the Baptist. The hand that actually baptised our Lord Jesus Christ," says Father Zacchaecus, the Orthodox Church in America's representative in Moscow. "You see that the hand is intact, you see the skin, although it's dried and darkened, the skin is also intact. The only thing missing are two fingers."

It goes without saying that nobody in the loop has thought to ask how a severed hand made its way from the Middle East through Europe, from biblical times through the Dark and Middle Ages to eventually call Moscow home. I'm thinking maybe I should open an ordinary store, stock it like a pack-rat with all kinds of useless crap, throw up a sign (I'm thinking "Relics From The Past My Ass!") and just let the money start rolling in. Prostitution may be called the world's oldest profession, but as long as the Religion Industry continues its production prostitution will never be the most lucrative.