From the side of the road, you can see the crosses in the distance. The path then takes you closer, and it’s not until you start getting closer that you realize the width in which crosses are layered together. Big crosses, small crosses, wooden crosses, metal crosses, some with words written on them, some laced with beaded necklaces, and others made of twigs wrapped in string. There’s one massive cross at the end of the path that is like the gatekeeper to the hill of all the other crosses. A metal depiction of Jesus is hung on the top with nails in the wrists and through the crossed over ankles. 

Dad begins his journey to the right – there’s a little dirt path entrance created amongst the crosses that he tucks into. I notice the steps going right to the top and head straight for it – may as well go right through the middle of it first to get a sense of the whole first. There’s a man sitting in the middle of the steps with a hat beside him ready to grasp a few coins that will be his livelihood for the day – I toss in the only two coins I have in my pocket. It seems only fitting that an outcast man would be engulfed amongst the thousands of crosses – it’s where Jesus would have wanted him; at the foot of the cross.

As I climb the steps, it starts to dawn on me just how many crosses there are; it also dawns on me that once you get to the top of the hill, you’ve only just begun to experience this hill of crosses – I had naively assumed the top would be the halfway point before the descent down.  

I actually start to begin to feel overwhelmed. It’s like my mind can’t fathom how many crosses there are, and there are so many little off-shoot path options that I just don’t know where to start – I want to go down them all. 

I find one path that deeks through some trees that winds back to the bottom of the hill. As I walk back down, I get a glimpse of the pavilion off to the side that was built specifically for the Pope a few years ago and decide to go there to get a wide-lens view of the hill – maybe there I could catch my breath a bit before going back in the maze of crosses. 

The pavilion has one massive white cross on the side that faces the hill, so I prop myself against it and look out at the hill. The hill in and of itself is not massive – the locals call it a “bump”. But the width and depth and amount of wooden and metal crosses is too many to even try to count. 

It was in that resting spot that I started to think:

How many of us prefer to stand in the pavilion looking out at the crosses and say, “The cross is great, but I’ll stay here. It’s too overwhelming the closer I get; staying here feels safe; staying here I can have a grasp on things.” 

But maybe the significance of the cross is supposed to overwhelm us? Maybe the invitation is to actually walk right back to where we become so overwhelmed by the magnitude of Christ’s grace and love? To go right back to the place where our minds and hearts can’t fathom the reality of Christ? To the place that feels dangerous and revealing and like a place that we’ll unravel? 

Of all the crosses I looked at, if I strip back all the layers in me, I often feel like the cross that was made of two twigs held together by a piece of string. It wouldn’t take much to unravel, unlike the gigantic metal ones; and there’s often an inner desperation to hold myself together. But maybe I’m not meant to? 

With this invitation in mind, I began my walk back to the hill. I found a side path first – maybe it would gently guide me back to the heart of the hill, the opposite of what I did at first. And then, to allow myself to sit in what I had previously moved quickly through, I found a hidden place in the middle of a patch of thousands of crosses and sat down, offering my two twigs and a piece of string.

“Remind me of Your love, Lord.”

When I think of our individual journeys to the Cross, some of us toodle around the outskirts first and meander our way to the centre; some of us run right to the point that is most dense and then run right back out; some of us find little pastures of grass and sit in the middle of it; some of us stay at the pavilion and never even enter, avoiding the overwhelming feeling of complete, perfect, unfathomable love. 

I think the invitation is to let ourselves be overwhelmed. No matter how we get there, or how much we fear being engulfed by something we can’t comprehend, safety and distance is not the place where we can experience real, profound, and deep encounters with Christ. The cross is not safe; it is dangerous. But it is good. (To quote C.S. Lewis in Narnia)

Will we accept the invitation to walk into the centre of an overwhelming, unfathomable amount of grace and love?

Madison