Marvelously Made

Each chapter in Marvelously Made focuses on a vital part of the body (the heart, the lungs, thebrain, 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 aprayer and a set of gratitude practices-physical and spiritual meditation exercises to deepenthe reader's appreciation of the body.Excerpt:The heart works (as do all of our organs) every moment of our lives, whether we are awareof 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 hadcongenital malformation, writes, It weighs eleven ounces. It feeds a vascular system thatcomprises sixty thousand miles of veins and arteries and capillaries. It beats a hundredthousand 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 withthe cadence of that particular person, a music and a rhythm and a pace that will endure awhole lifetime. No one knows why the cluster of cells begins to pulse at that time or withthat beat. (from The Wet Engine, by Brian Doyle).