Nora Gallagher has written two memoirs about her Christian faith, and other pieces have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, the Washington Post, and Mother Jones. In Things Seen and Unseen: A Year Lived in Faith, she described her experiences at Trinity Episcopal Church in Santa Barbara, California, focusing on her involvement as a regular worker at the soup kitchen, as a member of a Thursday evening base community, as a lay Eucharistic minister, and as a participant in alternative liturgies. "Church is both familiar and a foreign planet," she wrote. In her second book, Practicing Resurrection: A Memoir of Work, Doubt, Discernment, and Moments of Grace, Gallagher reported on how her faith was challenged and stretched over a three-year period in which she dealt with the death of her brother, a discernment process to decide whether she had been called to the priesthood, and a study year at a parish.
In The Moonlight Sonata at the Mayo Clinic, Gallagher faces a health crisis that sends waves of fear, anger, and doubt rippling through her daily life and relationships. It all begins in 2009 when an eye doctor discovers a dangerously inflamed optic nerve. Since the professionals who examine her cannot agree on a diagnosis Gallagher enters the far country of disease where medical mysteries abound.
During an unending stint of examinations, tests, and procedures, the author worries about going blind, acknowledges the burdens of caregiving her husband is bearing, and deals with her growing impatience with the time it is taking to agree on a diagnosis and treatment plan. In addition, Gallagher admits: "I was embarrassed to be sick; I felt I had failed in some fundamental way."
Many readers will find themselves identifying with the author as she struggles through a two-year period of not knowing. Her eye gave her blurred vision and her faith was weakened during this spiritual emergency. By the end of this well-written memoir, Gallagher is reconfiguring her faith and seeing the world anew thanks to her long journey with illness.
"Yesterday I saw the evening light falling on the old oak trees in our park, their bark like the skins of elephants. This world is so beautiful, and not only can I still see it, I no longer pass through it quite the same way I did before."
