FRIENDS & BOOKS. My longtime friend, colleague Audie Hodges recently recommended THE EXTRAORDINARY LIFE OF SAM HELL, a novel by Robert Dugoni. It went to the top of the to-be-read stack.

If you are old enough to remember how absorbing John Irving’s THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP or A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY (“Simon Birch”, movie version) were, then SAM is like that, though perhaps a bit less ribald.

Most bedtime reading for me is in the 30-minute range before the Sand Man comes. It’s been a while since it was a two-hour page turning thing before a 2 a.m. lights out thing.

BOOK TIMING. Sometimes it’s called ‘book providence’, or ‘synchronicity’. Somehow a book shows up at a right, ripe time with uncanny connections with our lives.

LIFE STORIES. His name is actually Sam Hill, not Hell. From the vantage of his middle years, Sam looks back at how the parts, persons, and predicaments of his life have woven together. He tells the story pretty much as it unfolded from his birth.

Even though likely very different from our own lives, book life stories like Sam’s can have similarities to our own. Sam portrays basic issues for us all seeking some measure of meaning and self-acceptance for ourselves, so we will be more put-up-withable for people around us.

THE EYE THING. Sam was born with ‘ocular albinism’. This means no pigmentation in his pupils, irises. So, they appear pink-reddish. (Lots of pigmentation, we have brown eyes; moderate gradations, blue or green.)

Early on, all the way through, Sam’s life is his saga to deal with his weird eyes. At school kids call him ‘devil boy’…also Sam Hell.

It takes a long time for Sam to come to terms with his eyes. Maybe a bit of a spoiler: after all the ‘hell’, razzing, Sam goes through with his noticeably weird eyes, he eventuates a very competent, caring ophthalmologist.

Early on, they noticed something weird about baby Bill’s eyes. There’s a nice medical term, but the quick name is ‘crossed eyes’. That’s what the kids, probably most adults, called it.

Thanks to the unfolding results of several surgeries and strong lens, my eyes over time straightened up, and I received minimal flak for the funny alignment.

Mostly, I endured being called ‘four-eyes’ in a time when glasses were far from cool or trendy. Years later, it occurred to me why I had a hard time seeing, catching, or hitting the ball.

I have done a lot of time behind the phoropter eyesight tester gizmo – literally ‘eye guider’. Across the years, I have talked about Jesus as a phoropter or lens for us to better see, sort out, and make sense of those 31,000+ verses of the Bible.

Some verses don’t always play well with each other. The ‘eye guider’ Jesus helps us discern between the timeless and the timebound, not just cherry pick a verse or two to ‘prove’ what our pre-decided view.

BULLIES & FRIENDS. The role of a particularly brutal bully, David Bateman, casts a long shadow across Sam’s life, even into a decisive, momentous situation in adulthood. Too much to summarize, also a spoiler to tell much how David torments Sam and his friends.

But suffice it to say he makes life hell for them at their Catholic School. David’s friends, also loners, only black kid in the school Ernie and Mickie, a girl from a tough home situation, mutually look out for each other. Both play absorbing lifelong, well-told roles in one another’s lives.

Ding-ding! I instantly connected with Sam saying how he looked forward to the two-days of weekends to be free from being hassled by David.

During my 6th and 7th grades, there was a couple of bullies, especially, one named David! – though thankfully he did not measure up to the malevolence of Sam’s David. Still, when he took a notion to do so, David could really rattle me, maybe not quite as much as me, but also my buddies Johnny and Bobby.

It made all the difference when we decided to band together in the lunchroom, on the playground, after school. It was good to have the company of friends to ease the anxiety.

Then somehow in the 8th grade my spine grew enough for me to stand up to David. Mercifully, (because he WAS tough) no punches were thrown. He scoffed, shrugged, and walked away. Whew. We even became sort-of nod in the hall buddies.

If you ever experienced a bully, you know it is an unforgettable thing. You remember it when you encounter more subtle bully types in adulthood. Doxology for friends, then and now.

THE GOD THING. Interwoven with the dealing with the eye thing, bully thing, search for self-worth thing, and quest for real love relationship thing, is the question is there a God question.

“Life is either a collision of random events, like billiard balls careening off one another, or if you are so inclined to believe, our pre-determined fate, what my mother took great comfort in calling God’s will.”

Madeleine, David’s fiercely loving and strong Catholic mother – daily Mass, novenas, well-worn rosary – over and over assures Sam that his eyes were not some random joke played on him, but God’s way for him to have an “extraordinary life.” (Note the title.)

I don’t have space or intelligence to fully explore the enduring question: is the course of our lives mostly imposed on us OR mostly improvised by us? Is there some encompassing mystery we call God or are we pretty much responsible for our own lives?

In my words, not Sam’s, I think he figures out that it is both/and, not either/or. The God we experience in Jesus does not so much predetermine our lives but provides a connected world with a mix of freedom and constraints (I don’t have the eyes to be a pilot.). We weave together with a lot of love and grace lives worth living and dying for.

THE SELF-ACCEPTANCE THING. One reviewer speaks of the story as Sam’s life ‘quest for self-acceptance’. This means is coming to appreciate the bittersweet actual lives we have.

Overall peace or despair about our lives is in the balance.

One of the great scenes in the book is when Sam and Mickey, lifelong friend, finally wife, take Sam’s aged, ill parents to Lourdes, to bathe in the holy waters. No physical healing happens, but it gives great spiritual comfort to both of them.

Sam experiences a surprising peace that enables him to forgive all those who wronged him and finally look back on his life with acceptance and appreciation. The connections in life do not so much constrain us but sustain us.

As far as I can tell, acceptance and appreciation for our lives is not a once and for all thing that we do and then cruise control for the next 20 years. It is a daily practice.

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P.S. THE EYE THING – Part Two

There are connections we can’t fully explain but clearly experience in our lives. While reading the book, Dianne’s eye situation required immediate retina surgery.

Dr. Sam, about to do similar surgery, describes and explains retina surgery in a way I could understand. “The retina is the neurosensory tissue that lines the back inside wall of the eye…sort of like wallpaper on a wall or film in a camera…that transfers the light coming into our eye into sight.” P. 355

A little hole in the screen causes a blank spot in the vision, and call in Dr. Sam, or fine Dr. Martindale in our situation.

Dianne is coming along well. A bit more to go for the ongoing challenge of keeping an eye on me.

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Well, even with a lot of words here, I barely do justice to the good read of the book. Hope you will put your eyes to reading it.