Marvelously Made: Gratefulness and the Body

Gratefulness and the Body

Each chapter in Marvelously Made focuses on a vital part of the body (the heart, the lungs, the brain, the joints); relates an anecdote from the author’s experience; provides reader-friendly (i.e., not overly technical) information about the wonders of the organ or body part, and offers a prayer and a set of “gratitude practices”—physical and spiritual meditation exercises to deepen the reader’s appreciation of the body. Excerpt: The heart works (as do all of our organs) every moment of our lives, whether we are aware of it or not. The heart is a muscle, an extraordinary muscle with exquisite timing, which, when disrupted, causes grave problems. Brian Doyle, a writer whose son’s heart had congenital malformation, writes, “It weighs eleven ounces. It feeds a vascular system that comprises sixty thousand miles of veins and arteries and capillaries. It beats a hundred thousand times a day. It shoves two thousand gallons of blood through the body every day. It begins when a fetus is three weeks old and a cluster of cells begins to pulse with the cadence of that particular person, a music and a rhythm and a pace that will endure a whole lifetime. No one knows why the cluster of cells begins to pulse at that time or with that beat.” (from The Wet Engine, by Brian Doyle).