(photo courtesy of Jeff)

Field of Crosses
In the summer of 2004, I placed boots on a plaza in an exhibit in West Virginia. That day, we placed something like 869 pairs of boots, each tagged with the name of a man or woman who died fighting the war in Iraq. Sixteen months later, students set more than 2000 crosses in rows on the mall at the college. The day after this picture was taken, a neighbor's son, the husband of one of the children of our church, was in a jeep that hit a roadside bomb. One more cross. Two more families devastated by loss. Two thousand reasons to end a war. And thirty thousand Iraqi civilians gone, leaving their own families behind. When will the madness end?