finding our 'Gloria'

i'm reading a great book.  Cutting For Stone.  i bought it on the way to ethiopia because i wanted to read something about africa.  and i found so much more.  there is medicine.  there is love.  there is the pursuit of meaning.  now i'm hanging on to it. savoring it. because it takes me back there. i don't want it to end.  i don't want to let go.

many of the characters are finding themselves.  finding their place. understanding their histories, their families.  separating themselves. asking the questions we all ask.  what is it that we were meant to do?  and where? and with whom? and why?

i must quote:

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"We come unbidden into this life, and if we are lucky we find a purpose beyond starvation, misery, and early death which , lest we forget, is the common lot.  I grew up and I found my purpose and it was to become a physician.  My intent wasn't to save the world as much as to heal myself.  Few doctors will admit this, certainly not the young ones, but subconsciously, in entering the profession, we must believe that ministering to others will heal our woundedness.  And it can.  But i can also deepen the wound.
    I chose the specialty of surgery because of Matron, that steady presence during my boyhood and adolescence. "What is the hardest thing you can possibly do?"  she said when I went to her for advice on the darkest day of the first half of my life.
    I squirmed.  How easily Matron probed the gap between ambition and expediency. "Why must I do what is hardest?"
    "Because, Marion, you are an instrument of God.  Don't leave the instrument sitting in its case, my son.  Play! Leave no part of your instrument unexplored.  Why settle for 'Three Blind Mice' when you can play the 'Gloria'?"

     "But, Matron, I can't dream of playing Bach, the 'Gloria'...,"

      "No, Marion," she said, her gaze soft, reaching for me, her gnarled hands rough on my cheeks.  "No, not Bach's 'Gloria'.  Yours! Your 'Gloria' lives within you.  The greatest sin is not finding it, ignoring what God made possible in you."

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that is the search we all face.  finding our Gloria.  and that is the hope we have for our children.  it is what we stop and think about when we are moved by something, shaken up by something. or when we are still.  when we get off the merry-go-round of life and take pause.  when we experience God.  when we get that dose of perspective that shoots us to the moon and we're disconnected instantaneously from our bodies and our little worlds and we remember that there is so much more and that we have so much more to give.