Our Lady of the PBJ, pray for us

The other day, while I was in the nuts aisle of Whole Foods in Cherry Creek, I had an epiphany. I absolutely love peanut butter.

Once I realized it was sugar, not fat, that was causing me to lose my girlish figure (never a good thing for a drag queen), I’ve been on a quest to rid my life of sugar wherever possible. (Well, except for chocolate. I always make an exception for chocolate. Chocolate should be exempt from everything. It is the one perfect food.)

As I began reading peanut butter labels, I was shocked to see how much sugar was put into a food I considered healthy. The only way to get 100 percent pure peanut butter was for me to grind my own. That’s how I ended up in the bulk food section of Whole Foods. Watching those fresh peanuts jiggle down the chute and come out as a thick, gooey nutty goodness is magical. And even though the machine does all the work, you walk away with such a sense of peanut pride. I hold my plastic container high in the air. “Look, world! I ground my own! I am somebody!”

But you do have to be careful. There is more than one peanut butter grinding machine. One has peanuts. The other has “honey-roasted” peanuts, which is a sneaky way of saying, “we’ve coated your peanuts in sugar!” Thanks, but no thanks. I might as well be buying Jif.

There was a time, however, when I made fun of grinding your own. Back in high school I was in the seminary studying to be a priest. The Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate was the Catholic order of priests and brothers. Not too far from the school in Belleville, IL was the main source of income for the order, the Shrine of Our Lady of the Snows.

The shrine was a little Catholic amusement park. There was a drive-through Stations of the Cross, complete with roadside speakers and buttons you could press through your car window. Jesus may have had to walk miles naked, burdened by the weight of his cross, but you could follow along from the comfort of your car. A giant concrete Fabergé-like Easter egg displayed a mysterious burning flame suspended midair All done with smoke and mirrors, literally. (I climbed inside that egg one day to figure it out. Miracle, schmiracle.)

But the piece de resistance was the Our Lady of the Snows Shrine Gift Shop. Even the priests and brothers were embarrassed. The gift shop was owned and operated by lay folk, so the Oblates had no say on what was sold. The shop carried the usual assortment of bibles, rosaries and glow in the dark crucifixes — because Jesus dying on the cross is a vision you want to see long after turning off the bedroom light. Other souvenirs went down the tacky road, like official Our Lady of the Snows back scratchers and fly swatters. You, too, can send those bugs and itches straight to hell.

The strangest contraption, however, was the grind-your-own peanut butter machine. Yes, you could make your own holy peanut butter. What a peanut butter machine was doing in a religious gift shop was beyond any of our theological dreams. Peanuts aren’t even in the bible.

Perhaps those gift store employees were just way ahead of their time. Instead of saving souls, they were saving people from obesity and sugar-laden peanut butter. Our Lady of the PBJ, pray for us.