Novel without End

About a year and a half ago, I bought a copy en español of Ken Follett's World without End, or in this case Un Mundo Sin Fin. All 1178 pages of it.....and I don't read very fast in Spanish. I dithered along with it for a year and more, got to about page 300, and didn't have much energy to continue. Then Sister Kristin Funari came on a Christmas visit, and she spent every possible moment reading the English version of World without End. I decided that if she was having that much fun with it, I owed it to myself to persevere through the remaining 878 pages.

And now, three months later, I have actually read page 1178, the novel without end has ended, and I feel very pleased to have arrived there. I am also reminding myself that the next book I pick up in Spanish could well be something a little, er, shorter....say 250 pages, max? But Ken Follett is always fun, and I now have a vocabulary that includes some unusual architectural terms - who knows when I can ever use it?

Tomorrow I fly back to Seattle for three weeks of combined meetings, vacation, family time and friend time - at least I won't need to carry a three-pound book along!

The work of our hands

Korla and I were talking the other day about work we've done and work we've loved. She said that when she was writing her college thesis and working she spent whole long and tiring days in front of a computer screen, but what she really loved was making theater sets, making something you could touch and see at the end of the day's work. It's the same for me: I do a lot of my work in front of the computer, but I feel more engaged, more complete, more myself when I'm cooking or gardening.

That conversation tugged at me, and I remembered the visible joy our PazSalud doctors have in doing hands-on medicine - touching, looking, listening, asking questions - old-fashioned physical medicine without the computers and machines and tests available that are so much a part of their life as doctors in the United States (that's Dr. Anne Welch in the photo from our 2010 medical mission). Those machines and tests are amazing tools, and so is my computer, but there's a hunger we begin to feel when we've spent too much time in front of the screen and away from real bodies, real substances, real work. That's the kind of medicine Dr. Abraham Verghese, author of the astonishing novel Cutting for Stone and chair for the theory and practice of medicine at Stanford teaches: the old-fashioned and necessary arts of the physical exam and hands-on medicine.

Handwork - building theater sets, making quilts, practicing yoga, gardening, making music, drawing, tending patients - seems to me essential to our sense of well-being, of being human. The work of our hands is real work - messy, essential and holy.

A visitor

Yesterday and this morning I had a great visit with Sheila McShane, CSJP Associate, and Director of the Clinica Maxeñia in Santo Tomas la Union, Guatemala. Sheila was accompanying some clinic volunteers on their way to the airport, and managed to stay overnight for a visit in Antigua. We walked, and talked, and walked and ate and talked our way through Antigua, where we discovered a common (and dangerous) delight in bookstores. I came away with books on the 1998 assassination of Bishop Gerardi, on Mayan spirituality, and on the Guatemalan Civil War, all in Spanish. It's a great joy to spend time with a friend from home!

Then this morning, we walked through the market in search of manzanilla and other herbs that will be used at the Clinica Maxeñia to make a tea that's supposed to confer immunity from the H1N1 flu sweeping through Guatemala. Schools have been closed a week early here, and today I saw people wearing masks for the first time. I've read that older adults (that would include me) seem to have some immunity from this flu, probably because we participated in earlier epidemics (I remember vividly the 1968 epidemic, which I managed to come down with on a very miserable New Year's Eve). I hope it's true.

Letting Go

This morning I put my sterling silver christening cup, with my name inscribed on it in flowing script and a few baby tooth dents, into my pile of Goodwill donations. I've been carting it around for all the many years of my life, and I've never been able to figure out a good use for it. At long last, I polished it, admired it, said goodbye, and put it in the donation bag. Someone at least can have some good out of it, if only by melting down the silver!

I'm pretty sure I'll never miss my cup or the other things I'm letting go. All that stuff, yes even stuff disguised as a sterling silver christening cup, is just a tether, a binding. Feels good to let it go.

But then, my real challenge is the books - while I've given up tons (literally, I'm afraid) of books in my lifetime, I still find it hard to part with a book and the possibilities it represents. I've cut my book collection by about 2/3rds and still have more than I can easily fit into my room here.