The tale of JC1654

...He is the than a million religious items a year, cast gether strange cast to it, truth be told...

...From the store on the main street of a of the Creator of everything we know...

...I the United States-numbers easier to di- man who so loved men and women and sat and stared at the small bronze man, gest, perhaps, when you remember that children that he let himself be beaten and and pondered, not for the first time and rosaries carry tiny crucifixes, and there are scourged and stabbed and broken, and let not for the last, his most unusual life, crucifixes for automobile dashboards and himself be nailed to a massive cross with his cruel death, and his astonishing re- holy water fonts, and crucifixes for key- massive nails, and let himself be killed, turn-perhaps the most interesting and chains, pendants, medals, sick-call sets, slowly and with unimaginable pain, so significant story in the long thousands of pyxes, processional crosses, and altars, that people he never knew would have years that human beings have told sto- among many other uses...

...after the incident depicted occurred on a carpenter hammered the tiny bronze IIvlu None is Christ but all are Christ-like...

...was also wearing a bronze loincloth and From Massachusetts, JC1654 was sent to And he rather elevates the room, which a bronze circlet of thorns...

...So said the mysterious boro, Massachusetts, a company named nut is a strong wood not easily pierced, man depicted on my wall-and I befor its very first product, a rhinestone- because the infinitesimal brass nails lieve him...

...the country to be here, for one thing...

...THE TALE OF JC1654 Brian Doyle ome months ago a thin walnut grown in Pennsylvania, and cast bearded man who entered my office one bearded man appeared in the tiny bronze sign above the corpus, day without a word and hung Christ on S my office, propped a ladder INRI (Iesus Nazaraenus Rex Iudaeorum, the wall above my door...

...them some one thousand crucifixes a year And he reminds me, every time I glance The first man, having hung the sec- of the more than a million sold annually in up from my desk, that once there was a ond man, departed, without a word...

...it milled the cross from was carried across campus by the thin a collection of their essays...

...times took him a long time, he says, be- reminds me to love, and there is no He is, I discovered, JC1654, from the cause he was trying to be especially greater law, nor more difficult work, Jeweled Cross Company of North Attle- meticulous about his work, because wal- nor deeper joy...

...The cross to a store in Oregon...

...Commonweal 39 April 21, 2000...

...El studded crucifix made at a kitchen table (called "brads") are almighty difficult for a wake in 1922...

...But I also saw, as if for the first time, city, JC1654 traveled north four miles, And he reminds me too, every time I the crucifix itself, and wondered about in a van, in the company of forty-nine look up and catch the dull bronze glint this macabre talisman-not so much its identical JC1654s, to a carpentry shop at of his sagging body, of all the millions of long history as symbol (some fifteen cen- a small Catholic university, where the men and women and children who have turies), or extraordinary artistic rendi- university's carpenter, a quiet man given their bodies and lives for others, tions (by such geniuses as Velazquez), whose hobby it is to build altars, ham- and give their bodies and lives now, or its historical inaccuracy (Christ would mered the bronze corpus to the walnut right this minute, so many of them silent have been crucified naked, for greater cross with brass nails (this is the K in their struggles and never to be celehumiliation), but as a thing made by model JC1654, which is designed to be brated or sainted after their difficult lives human hands some two thousand years assembled at the place of display...

...dark afternoon in Judea...

...He traveled all the way across say, was bronze, and six inches tall...

...This latter thin man, I should produced in America two thousand for him...

...The Jeweled Cross to handle, because the bronze corpus is Brian Doyle is the editor of Portland MagCompany, which today makes more fragile, and because the job had an alto- azine at the University of Portland...

...This store sells church otherwise is a thick jungle of papers and which he was nailed was walnut, fifteen supplies and devotional products, among books and motley visitors...

...he years later...

...the chance to live in the unimaginable love ries of magic and power to each other...

...The and obscure deaths...

...inches long, and seven inches wide...

...sign into the cross above the corpus, too...

...author of Credo, a collection of essays, andJC1654 from a mold carved by its in- From the carpenter's shop, JC1654 with his father, Jim Doyle--of Two Voices, house sculptor...

...and that, finally, is why I bear such afIn short, who made the little Christ Hammering Christ to the cross fifty fection and respect for JC1654, for he in my office, and how did he get here...

...He's been here against my wall, climbed "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews"), for a few months now, has JC1654, and aloft, and nailed a thin bearded man to the Roman insult to Jews carefully re- I've developed an affection and respect the wall...