# Shaped by the Cross

> Gire is a wordsmith, a superb story teller, yet always with Christ at the centre.

By Rev. Barbara Allen · 3 July 2012 · Reviews / Books

Canonical: https://insights1.uca.org.au/articles/shaped-by-the-cross/

## **Ken Gire,** **IVP**

This book is slight (only 119 pages) but the content is rich and plentiful. Gire offers seven meditations on what it means to be a disciple by reflecting on Michelangelo’s Pietà.

Gire, who has not seen the sculpture, uses photographs from Robert Hupka’s book: *Michelangelo: Pietà*, a collection of 150 photographs. At the beginning of each chapter, a photograph is included which reflects the meditation to follow. One could sit and pray with the photographs alone.

Gire is a wordsmith, a superb story teller, yet always with Christ at the centre.

This is a book I will use next Holy Week. A prayer concludes each meditation, as well as a list of questions for reflection/conversation, so it could easily be used as a Lenten study.

Finally, Gire’s book makes me think about faith, of “the unseen”: if Gire could write a gem of a book without having seeing the moving Pietà, what does that say about our faith in one whom we cannot see?

***The Rev. Barbara Allen is Chaplain at Strathdon UnitingAged Care, Melbourne. She is completing a book, Animals in Religions, for Reaktion Books.***