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These poems—augmented by John Leon's line drawings of the Cross based on Paul Friesen's crosses—fit into a long tradition of meditations on the Cross articulated in poetry, prose, painting, music. Some of the most famous of the literary meditations are those of St.John of the Cross, George Herbert, John Donne and Paul Gerhardt. The poems in On the Cross reflect these earlier meditations as well as cite paintings by Matthias Grünewald, El Greco, Salvador Dalí, and Giacometti. Music— Bach, hymns, gospel, folk—also enters the volume as a kind of meditation.

Readers are invited to read these devotional poems and then engage in their own meditations. The poems in this volume are but the beginning of an approach to a symbol that leads up to the spiritual life that begins in the teachings of Christ.

Copyright 2005 Cascadia Publishing House