This website is about a man, two thousand years ago, battered and bloody, who died for you and me. It's about a man living in a culture holding honor as the highest virtue, who willfully and innocently submitted himself to the most excruciating (literally, from the Latin, "ex crux" - "from the cross") and publicly humiliating form of execution known in his day. It's about you and me needing to never forget that he would have done it all for you, or all for me. It's about you and me remembering.
And not just remembering, but imitating. "Whoever wishes to come after me must deny his very self, take up his cross, and follow me". I shudder every time I hear or see that line. Few of us are truly called to physical suffering, so what is the mental, emotional, psychological equivalent of Christ's exhortation? Of utter mutilation? I don't want to know, but I have to - I'm called to it, and so are you.
In 2008, I was crawling back to the faith of my youth from the Wilderness of my prodigal twenties. It was a hopeless struggle against vice. One night in my apartment, I responded to a strong internal movement to pray. I knelt in the dark and silence and surrounded myself with my "holy" things, and opened myself to God.
And He came to me. He came into my apartment and enveloped me with a sensation of love and acceptance I could not have imagined in my wildest dreams. He showed me microseconds of the Passion, and briefly removed the spiritual chasm that dampens our understanding of the relationship between our sins and that event - I was able to see, directly, how my sins alone caused that man's suffering, pain, and death. He placed a phrase in my mind that kept repeating itself over and over and over: It's real. It's real. It's real . . .
I have always liked crucifixes. I have always been intrigued by the Shroud of Turin. Following my reversion, I would occasionally hear a particular priest (who is also a medical doctor) refer to "sanitized" crucifixes - the one that leaves out the scourging altogether; or, my personal favorite - "toe-stub Jesus," a little trickle of blood from the crown and spear wound, maybe a little blood on the knees, feet and hands, like he tripped on a rock on his way to Golgotha and got a little scuffed up, poor guy.
I decided I wanted a realistic crucifix - one that attempted to accurately depict the scourging, beating, and utter brutality of the Passion. I googled. I talked with people. I made some phone calls. A couple leads. A couple inadequate attempts. I googled some more, talked with more people, followed up on a few more leads, got desperate. Surely, someone in the history of humanity has made a good, realistic crucifix.
No luck. A couple handfuls of attempts that just didn't succeed - too symmetrical or tidy wounds, too unsymmetrical wounds (think "bucket of paint"), poor attempts at physiological fidelity. Absolutely nothing that satisfied my vision. So, I made a decision. "I'll make one." How hard can it possibly be? Find an artist, sculpt a crucifix, get it reproduced (however you do that), get it painted, voila! No problem.
. . . Well, a couple problems. No artistic ability, no clue how to reproduce a sculpture, and no family, friends, or acquaintances who could help with either. And a question . . . what's it going to look like? Whose version? What actually happened in the crucifixion?
I got a lot of help from the movie, The Passion of the Christ. That's what I saw when I read the Bible and looked at the Shroud of Turin. Now that I was about to put my money where my faith was, however, I needed more than Mel Gibson. Where did he get his inspiration? Eventually I stumbled onto Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich, a 19th century nun whose extensive "visions" (she was the first to say they were no more than dreams) of the lives and deaths of Jesus and many of the saints are recounted in the book, The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Her account of the Passion is moving, profound, full, and unforgettable.
Of course, I also didn't want to rely primarily on one person's "visions". As such, I've done a tremendous amount of research to familiarize myself with every aspect of Jesus's crucifixion. I am aware every disputed detail. In order for this to not be "my" crucifix, where evidence seems to conflict, I defer to Emmerich. To those who would get caught up in small details, I would add, you're missing the point. The point is the sum total and duration of pain. If you get worked up over the placement of the nails in the palms versus wrists (I, myself, am a former subscriber to the wrist theory), I would say don't get distracted by relatively unimportant details. If there is a focal point of this crucifix, it is the scourging and beating. The shredded flesh ("...so marred was his look beyond that of man, and his appearance beyond that of mortals..."), ripped and torn asunder. The running and pooling blood. The bruising on the face. That is the critical realism that has escaped depiction. That is the necessary piece to fully capture the tragic beauty of the event.
Emmerich said that before Christ even got to the scourging, he had sustained wounds from the beatings alone that would have killed most men; but for the angels ministering to him, he would have perished long before he took the first step toward Golgotha. Some take this to mean the angels alleviated his pain. I take it to mean they merely kept him alive - that is, he was made to endure pain beyond what any mere human could have survived; it seems appropriate for someone who had laid upon him "the guilt of us all" - the sins of all humanity, past, present, and future.
. . . It's hard to pinpoint how long the whole process took. Somewhere in the two-to-three year range, though it feels much longer. It turns out good artists are hard to find and, if you can reach them, tend to want a lot of money to make you something. I even hired an Italian-speaker to help me try to work with a multi-generational religious wood art maker in Italy. As these things happen, of course, after exhausting all leads and investigating ways to afford the Italian, I randomly stumbled into an artist right here in Lincoln who has turned out to be . . . shall we say, a God-send.
The rest of the process didn't take as long, only a few months of googling, calling leads, calling leads from those leads (turns out silicone rubber molding and resin casting are not widely practiced or well-advertised crafts in the United States), and getting a lot of free advice from professionals who didn't mind sharing their trade knowledge. And, of course, marveling as God continued to provide the financial resources required at each of those critical junctures.
So, I'm exceedingly grateful to have gotten to this point, and I'm extremely pleased you are here. If you've come this far, there must be something in your heart that yearns for a true depiction, as does mine. If I've missed the mark for you, I'm sorry, and hopefully someday, someone out there will hit it. If you like the art work but not the details, give me a call - my artist won't turn down a job. Please fill out the comment sheet in the FAQ page to share your thoughts, I do consider every suggestion I receive.
I hope, at minimum, if this crucifix doesn't move your heart, it at least makes you think more about the crucifixion. Ultimately, I don't care if you buy my crucifix. I know I'm not going to get rich selling them. My mission is to get people to think about the crucifixion and what really happened, because of and for them, and how that applies to their lives. If the website leads one person one step closer to God, it has succeeded. I've reminded myself constantly from the beginning, "God, this is yours. If you would have me do all this to affect one person out there, I'm in."
Devotion to the Passion is not an obsession with suffering, it is a yearning for Love, the greatest act of Love the world will ever know. If you find in your heart an echo of that yearning, perhaps this crucifix is for you.
Thank you for visiting my website. It has been a long journey, and I am delighted to share my story with you.
God be with you,
Seth Odgaard
Lincoln, NE
And not just remembering, but imitating. "Whoever wishes to come after me must deny his very self, take up his cross, and follow me". I shudder every time I hear or see that line. Few of us are truly called to physical suffering, so what is the mental, emotional, psychological equivalent of Christ's exhortation? Of utter mutilation? I don't want to know, but I have to - I'm called to it, and so are you.
In 2008, I was crawling back to the faith of my youth from the Wilderness of my prodigal twenties. It was a hopeless struggle against vice. One night in my apartment, I responded to a strong internal movement to pray. I knelt in the dark and silence and surrounded myself with my "holy" things, and opened myself to God.
And He came to me. He came into my apartment and enveloped me with a sensation of love and acceptance I could not have imagined in my wildest dreams. He showed me microseconds of the Passion, and briefly removed the spiritual chasm that dampens our understanding of the relationship between our sins and that event - I was able to see, directly, how my sins alone caused that man's suffering, pain, and death. He placed a phrase in my mind that kept repeating itself over and over and over: It's real. It's real. It's real . . .
I have always liked crucifixes. I have always been intrigued by the Shroud of Turin. Following my reversion, I would occasionally hear a particular priest (who is also a medical doctor) refer to "sanitized" crucifixes - the one that leaves out the scourging altogether; or, my personal favorite - "toe-stub Jesus," a little trickle of blood from the crown and spear wound, maybe a little blood on the knees, feet and hands, like he tripped on a rock on his way to Golgotha and got a little scuffed up, poor guy.
I decided I wanted a realistic crucifix - one that attempted to accurately depict the scourging, beating, and utter brutality of the Passion. I googled. I talked with people. I made some phone calls. A couple leads. A couple inadequate attempts. I googled some more, talked with more people, followed up on a few more leads, got desperate. Surely, someone in the history of humanity has made a good, realistic crucifix.
No luck. A couple handfuls of attempts that just didn't succeed - too symmetrical or tidy wounds, too unsymmetrical wounds (think "bucket of paint"), poor attempts at physiological fidelity. Absolutely nothing that satisfied my vision. So, I made a decision. "I'll make one." How hard can it possibly be? Find an artist, sculpt a crucifix, get it reproduced (however you do that), get it painted, voila! No problem.
. . . Well, a couple problems. No artistic ability, no clue how to reproduce a sculpture, and no family, friends, or acquaintances who could help with either. And a question . . . what's it going to look like? Whose version? What actually happened in the crucifixion?
I got a lot of help from the movie, The Passion of the Christ. That's what I saw when I read the Bible and looked at the Shroud of Turin. Now that I was about to put my money where my faith was, however, I needed more than Mel Gibson. Where did he get his inspiration? Eventually I stumbled onto Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich, a 19th century nun whose extensive "visions" (she was the first to say they were no more than dreams) of the lives and deaths of Jesus and many of the saints are recounted in the book, The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Her account of the Passion is moving, profound, full, and unforgettable.
Of course, I also didn't want to rely primarily on one person's "visions". As such, I've done a tremendous amount of research to familiarize myself with every aspect of Jesus's crucifixion. I am aware every disputed detail. In order for this to not be "my" crucifix, where evidence seems to conflict, I defer to Emmerich. To those who would get caught up in small details, I would add, you're missing the point. The point is the sum total and duration of pain. If you get worked up over the placement of the nails in the palms versus wrists (I, myself, am a former subscriber to the wrist theory), I would say don't get distracted by relatively unimportant details. If there is a focal point of this crucifix, it is the scourging and beating. The shredded flesh ("...so marred was his look beyond that of man, and his appearance beyond that of mortals..."), ripped and torn asunder. The running and pooling blood. The bruising on the face. That is the critical realism that has escaped depiction. That is the necessary piece to fully capture the tragic beauty of the event.
Emmerich said that before Christ even got to the scourging, he had sustained wounds from the beatings alone that would have killed most men; but for the angels ministering to him, he would have perished long before he took the first step toward Golgotha. Some take this to mean the angels alleviated his pain. I take it to mean they merely kept him alive - that is, he was made to endure pain beyond what any mere human could have survived; it seems appropriate for someone who had laid upon him "the guilt of us all" - the sins of all humanity, past, present, and future.
. . . It's hard to pinpoint how long the whole process took. Somewhere in the two-to-three year range, though it feels much longer. It turns out good artists are hard to find and, if you can reach them, tend to want a lot of money to make you something. I even hired an Italian-speaker to help me try to work with a multi-generational religious wood art maker in Italy. As these things happen, of course, after exhausting all leads and investigating ways to afford the Italian, I randomly stumbled into an artist right here in Lincoln who has turned out to be . . . shall we say, a God-send.
The rest of the process didn't take as long, only a few months of googling, calling leads, calling leads from those leads (turns out silicone rubber molding and resin casting are not widely practiced or well-advertised crafts in the United States), and getting a lot of free advice from professionals who didn't mind sharing their trade knowledge. And, of course, marveling as God continued to provide the financial resources required at each of those critical junctures.
So, I'm exceedingly grateful to have gotten to this point, and I'm extremely pleased you are here. If you've come this far, there must be something in your heart that yearns for a true depiction, as does mine. If I've missed the mark for you, I'm sorry, and hopefully someday, someone out there will hit it. If you like the art work but not the details, give me a call - my artist won't turn down a job. Please fill out the comment sheet in the FAQ page to share your thoughts, I do consider every suggestion I receive.
I hope, at minimum, if this crucifix doesn't move your heart, it at least makes you think more about the crucifixion. Ultimately, I don't care if you buy my crucifix. I know I'm not going to get rich selling them. My mission is to get people to think about the crucifixion and what really happened, because of and for them, and how that applies to their lives. If the website leads one person one step closer to God, it has succeeded. I've reminded myself constantly from the beginning, "God, this is yours. If you would have me do all this to affect one person out there, I'm in."
Devotion to the Passion is not an obsession with suffering, it is a yearning for Love, the greatest act of Love the world will ever know. If you find in your heart an echo of that yearning, perhaps this crucifix is for you.
Thank you for visiting my website. It has been a long journey, and I am delighted to share my story with you.
God be with you,
Seth Odgaard
Lincoln, NE