Meditations on Mary

In a gloriously illustrated gift book, the bestselling words of a "late-twentieth-century mystic" (Chicago Tribune) are wed to timeless masterpieces of the Virgin MaryIn her New York Times bestseller The Cloister Walk, poet Kathleen Norris rediscovered her Christian heritage and expressed it in "lucid, luminous prose, hard-headed logic and far-reaching metaphors" (San Francisco Chronicle). Her "beautiful book...lectio divina, or holy reading" (Boston Globe) captured a Roman Catholic audience now larger than ever. Hailed by Robert Coles as "a talented visionary. . . direct, engaging. . . one of history's writing pilgrims but also a contemporary American one," she has excited contemplatives, feminists, readers of all faiths, and connoisseurs of fine writing.In the tradition of Viking Studio's beautiful The Message of St. Francis, Norris's essays on Mary from her Amazing Grace and The Cloister Walk introduce a sequence of images of the Virgin Mary from the great tradition of Christian art. Here, from Raphael to Leonardo da Vinci, we experience the eternal inspiration of the Virgin as Mother of God, Queen of Heaven, devout peasant girl, anxious parent. These works, accompanied by the story of Mary from the King James Version of the Bible and Norris's words invite us into a vibrant new relationship with this icon whose relevance to daily life is still fresh and sacred after two thousand years.