Faith and health unite at the center of Abraham Verghese?s redemptive and semiautobiographical novel,�?Cutting for Stone.?
This is the first work of fiction for Verghese, a medical doctor and professor of medicine at Stanford University and author of�?My Own Country: A Doctor?s Story,? the acclaimed account of his work with AIDS patients in Johnson City, Tenn.
In�?Cutting for Stone,? Verghese surgically exposes the personal, familial and cultural wounds that sever faith and health. Then he skillfully stitches them together.
Set first in Ethiopia, and later in the United States, it?s a story about a brilliant British surgeon, Thomas Stone; an Indian nun, Sister Mary Joseph Praise, who dies in childbirth; and their twin boys, Marion and Shiva. Both boys grow up to become surgeons.
The doctors practice their medicine in a Roman Catholic mission hospital, where diseased, war-wounded and starving Ethiopians stream through the gates, and where familial deceit and violation occur within.
Stone is an exquisite surgeon with unparalleled ability to cut and repair the human body. As Shiva says, the three men are skillful at�?fixing holes,? an apt metaphor for the surgical profession.
But as Marion says,�?There?s another kind of hole, and that is the wound that divides families? and tears apart communities. It is the wound of the human heart sickened by fear, mistrust, hatred and deceit. These spiritual wounds fester between father and sons even as they provide medical healing for others.
No matter how skillful a doctor, Stone?s surgery cannot repair these human wounds, especially the ones that he causes for his own sons. Grieving over the death of their mother and incapable of caring for the twins, Stone abandons the babies and flees to the United States. He buries himself in medicine, believing that�?work was his salvation,? until he and Marion meet years later in Boston.
Verghese stitches the plot across the gaping wounds caused by the father?s abandonment of his sons and, later, Marion?s betrayal by Shiva, who has casual sex with Marion?s beloved Genet. This violation leads to Genet?s self-destruction and simmering animosity between the twin brothers.
While the doctors heal others physically, their most elusive need is for reconciliation among themselves. This kind of health comes only through confession and forgiveness. They will not be whole until faith opens the way to forgiveness. As Marion says,�?No surgeon can heal the kind of wound that divides two brothers.?
Cutting for Stone brings us out of the operating theater and into the human theater, where faith and health flourish together. What lasting human value can come from a surgeon who performs exquisite surgery but fails to love his own children? Of what value is a repaired liver if the patient despises his brother? If the choice, as Stone?s medical mentor says, comes down to�?perfection of life or perfection of work,? which will you choose?
Stone realizes almost too late�?how completely work had failed him.? Only in the end, facing the threat of Marion?s death, does Stone ask�?to be redeemed for a lifetime of mistakes.?
In the New Testament, the Greek word for�?heal,? sozo, is the same word for�?save.? To be healed or made whole is to be saved. Such wholeness does not consist of physical wellness alone, though attention to the body when healthy and sick is an important aspect of faithfulness.
Here in Memphis, we are fortunate to be on the cutting edge of the growing faith and health movement.
Thanks to the important work of medical doctors and religious leaders of various faiths and institutions such as the Church Health Center, Methodist Healthcare and others, we are coming to understand that health is so much more than the absence of disease or the full functioning of all our internal and external body parts. Health pertains to overall well-being of body, mind and spirit, and the wellness of our communities.
For people of faith, this wellness flows from God. Wholeness, salvation, is a gift of God in which relations between self and God and between self and others are put right, reconciled. Only then can we say that we are healthy, redeemed.
That?s why�?Cutting for Stone? is a redemptive story worth reading. It wields a fine scalpel to cut away our illusions and cultural deceptions that full health is determined in the operating room or by the prescription pad. Then it points toward God, our only true source of faith and health.
Dr. Lee Ramsey is a professor of pastoral care and preaching at Memphis Theological Seminary.
Source: http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2011/nov/19/faith-and-culture-redemption-forgiveness-true-to/?partner=RSS
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