Her Cross to Share
Trish Jaggli is the first to admit she has a long-standing reputation for being a little, well, different.
So when the struggling artist announced three years ago that she was visited by God while watching a televised movie about the crucifixion, and that He had given her the biggest, most daunting assignment of her life, not even her closest friends took it seriously.
There she was, two months behind on the mortgage, $34 in the bank, out of work for more than four months, and she was talking about making 10,000 crosses and giving them away.
“At first my family was like, ‘Aw, Trish, there’s always something with her.’ Nobody took it seriously. Nobody wanted me to do the crosses,” recalled Jaggli, 48, a nonstop talker who seems to be perennially enthused. “Even I couldn’t imagine doing it. I was paralyzed for months before I made the first one.”
That was three Easters and 1,640 crosses ago. Jaggli, who began handing the crosses to strangers after making 25 and who claims many recipients have been “blessed” in some way, now attacks her mission of the crosses with the same ferocity that allowed her to paint her entire tract house in faux stonework in a single weekend.
Her backyard patio is cluttered with chips of tile, cut mirror, stacks of plywood bases and boxes of glue sticks--all ingredients for the 11-by-8-inch mosaic crosses, each of which is unique and etched with a number.
“My greatest fear now is losing track,” she said. “What if I missed a number? Whoa, I can’t even think of that!”
She did intentionally skip one number--666. “We just flew right past that one,” she said.
Jaggli’s 28-year-old son, Eric, cuts the bases out of sheets of plywood that his mother salvages from a warehouse where she occasionally paints backdrops for trade shows. He helps keep the count by stamping each base with a number.
Jaggli’s daughter Echo, 23, has done her part, as well, chipping in to make a few crosses and introducing friends who do the same.
In fact, Jaggli said, of the 1,640 crosses made so far, hundreds have been designed and crafted by friends and acquaintances who find comfort and inspiration in the straightforward work.
“In the beginning I was told that many people would be involved and that blessings had been prepared in advance. But I didn’t understand the power of restoration until I saw it,” she said.
“I’ve seen big burly guys make the most beautiful crosses. And I’ve seen teenagers turn their lives around after making them. I saw people getting the desire of their hearts once they started making them.”
Jaggli’s sister-in-law, Mary Jaggli, who has made more than 100 crosses herself, vouched for the story, although she concedes she was doubtful at first. Strange as it may sound, Mary Jaggli said, people seem to be helped by making the crosses, or even merely coming in contact with them.
“We’re just your basic people,” she said of her family. “But we’ve all been touched by this. One thing about the crosses, they have strengthened my faith because I spend so much time honoring God, just making them or talking about them. And a lot of us feel that way.”
On the first anniversary of the “visitation,” Trish Jaggli brought a selection of crosses to Mary Jaggli’s home and showed about six family members how to make them. At the time, she had only 50 crosses under her belt.
“The second year we went to my mother’s house and had a little exhibit,” Mary Jaggli said. The count was up to 800 by then. Now at the third anniversary, Trish Jaggli’s mission is gathering steam, pulling in an ever-expanding circle of cross-makers.
She’s going to need them. Jaggli said she has only 10 years to complete her mission.
“I don’t think ahead,” she said. “I was told to only look at the cross I’m making now. That’s how I get through it. I’m now working on 1,641, and it feels like nothing. Really, it’s not a burden.”
She insists that each cross has an intended home, and how it gets there is beyond her control. In fact, she speaks of the crosses with the loving sadness of a mother who has watched her children move on to their separate lives.
“They want to go,” she said, gazing at a half-dozen finished crosses on her kitchen table. “They don’t want to stay here.”
Jaggli’s own childhood was difficult. The second-born in a nomadic family of 10, she did poorly in school and never learned to read, she said.
By the time she reached 30, Jaggli was divorced, with two children, and barely able to pay the bills by painting store windows with holiday scenes and sales announcements. Since then, she has lurched from one freelance job to another, often a month or two behind on the mortgage, driving a decades-old El Camino and praying her roof will make it through one more rainy season.
Though she always considered herself spiritual, Jaggli did not attend church and said she can’t recall having a cross in her home until she began making them. It wasn’t until she and a friend worked through a period of crisis three years ago that both turned to the Bible and organized religion.
Then came Easter, and the television program, and, Jaggli said, an overwhelming feeling of dread or anticipation followed by a bright light and what she described as the voice of God.
In that moment, everything changed in Jaggli’s life. She still struggles, still drives the same car, still frets over roof leaks.
But Jaggli said she found a new tranquillity and trust. Indeed, the day she began making her first cross, a new client called with a $10,000 job, she said. That same client has provided enough work to pay the bills, while allowing her time to work on the crosses.
Many materials, such as the mirrors used on the sides of the crosses and the tiles for the mosaic, are donated or sold to her at a reduced cost, Jaggli said. She sometimes hunts up offbeat ceramics in thrift shops or scavenges them from friends.
In fact, Jaggli’s greatest challenge for the next decade might be finding 10,000 people for her crosses. “It doesn’t leave me with a lot of extra time or money,” she said, “but at least at Christmas, I’ve got every gift covered, and everybody knows what they’re going to get from me.”