Mary C. Earle

Marvelously Made: Gratefulness and the Body Mary C. Earle

"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 everyday. 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)."