Crosses began appearing on the lawn of Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary. No one knows who started it, whose idea it was.  It’s okay with the President, Theodore Wardlaw. He wrote an email to the seminary community.

…Yesterday on this campus, we all began to notice what I believe is another “Holy Spirit thing” which cropped up as a surprise overnight–the display of many small crosses behind the chapel, growing out of the grass like crocuses. From my perspective, none of the usual requests had been made or permissions sought, and so, in that respect, it was something “that didn’t appear in the bulletin.” Nonetheless, it is a witness, I believe, that absolutely belongs on this campus or in any faithful context. It is a witness, as I understand it, against oppression and pain and war wherever they appear in our wide world, and when you draw closer to it you see felt-tip markers inviting you to write down on one of those crosses one particular site of such brokenness. Where are such statements more welcome than in the shadow of sacred space, in the midst of a praying community?

Doing his job he asked someone to interpret the going beyond the boundaries of the seminary rules.

You have asked me for an interpretation of the crosses that appeared on the lawn behind the chapel. Here is my understanding:

A short while ago, the 4000th soldier was killed in Iraq, a tragic milestone. No matter what one’s position might be on the war, the death of anyone - a son, a daughter, a husband or wife, a father or mother, a friend - is a grief beyond imagining, and it should be beyond imagining, for once we begin to believe that we can measure the wound of death, we have become something less than human.

We should not limit the horizon of our distress to the soldiers in Iraq. There are also the people who have seen their country torn asunder. Elsewhere in the world we have seen, and are seeing, similar evils unfold in Beirut, Tibet, Sderot,, Columbia, El Salvador and Nicaragua, Gaza, Virginia Tech University, Jerusalem, Helmand, Kosovo, Darfur, the Congo and Rwanda, and on and on. The human capacity to warrant the shattering of individuals and communities seems to be endless.

And so we erect crosses, for us Christians a sign of immeasurable evil, and inexhaustible hope. It is also a call, at a minimum, to witness to the suffering of the world, place by place, people by people. Having witnessed, the greater call is to respond with what power and skills God has placed in our hands, to be instruments of peace.

But first, and always, we must bear witness to the things that make for suffering.
And so we make crosses, in hope that sometime, sometime, there will be no need for more.

Some of the crosses bear witness to particular places and individuals. Most do not. There are markers available to add to the field of crosses what special concerns you may have.

via: Dallas News Religion Blog