Gladly, the Cross-Eyed Bear

A couple of weeks ago I saw an odd thing as I was heading out of B'field. I was at the big red light on 460, and happened to look over to my right. When what to my wondering eyes should appear but Jesus.

Well, OK, that was an attention getter, I admit. It wasn't really Jesus. However, it was a man walking down Route 460 carrying a gigantic tree-limb-made cross over his back.

It was one of those odd moments one has in life. The kind that strikes you for a while and you forget about it. "Oh, look. It’s Jesus." Then *zooooooooom!* into the Wild Blue Yonder.

For this report, Jesus was a young guy, mid-twenties he looked to be, wearing jeans, hiking boots, jacket, and baseball cap. A short guy, made even shorter, I'm sure, by the fact that his cross had to have weighed 400 pounds. I’m not kidding – it was huge.

I mentioned it to Mr M when I got to B'burg that night, simply because when thinking about it in the car I just kept envisioning that scene from "Monty Python’s Life of Brian," with Terry Jones as the sympathetic crucifixion director. "Crucifixion? Good. Out of the door, line on the left, one cross each. Next. Crucifixion? Good….."

And so that day passed, and I really didn't think that much more about it.

Until yesterday. When I was heading out of B'field once again (as I too often seem to be doing these days), and on up Route 460, on the other side of the highway and walking in the opposite direction, who should I see but, yep, Jesus.

Jesus was walking along the road again, in his jeans, and jacket, and baseball cap, only this time he also had a very long wine-colored scarf wrapped around his neck. And he was carrying the same old, well, for want of a better phrase, the same old rugged cross.

And so now, of course, I can't stop thinking about him.

Why does he pick Route 460 to do it? Is it a particularly sin-filled road, or is it just where he feels the most traffic flow is? And how does he pick when he's going to walk around with it? Sure, yesterday was a Sunday, but the first time I saw him it was Wednesday. Does he just do it when he has some spare time? "Well, dinner's over and I don't have to be at work till 9, I think I'll go bear the cross a while." And how does he get that cross out to Route 460? He must have a seriously large pickup truck, with reinforced bungee cords to keep it in the bed.

But mostly I think about his conviction. To get out there, in the cold and snow, dragging a 400-lb cross miles and miles in hopes one person will see him and think about The Lord. To know that as he struggles out there, walking with his cross, people are snickering, shaking their heads, and writing smart-ass blogs about him. And to do it anyway. Because he wants to.

There's something very endearing about that, actually.