Readers and Writers: A nonfiction sampler on the mind/body/spirit continuum – St. Paul Pioneer Press

Long distance running. A stem cell transplant. Christianity and the Galapagos Islands. Today’s nonfiction books are different, but all three are on the mind/body/spirit continuum.

“This Journey We Call Running: One Runner’s Anthology” by Brian James Siddons (To Excel in Life, $11.99).

On the cover of this slim paperback, Minnesotan Siddons describes himself as “Runner-Writer-Poet,” all identities that are woven into this book that explains some of the nitty-gritty of long-distance running and what it means to him.

“Running has, for over 40 years, been an outlet for me to vent frustrations and flush out some demons,” he writes. “It has also allowed me to meditate while being physically active and work through life issues.”

Siddons admits his running life has been “a roller coaster ride on the Potential Train.” He was a high school runner but his seasons were marred with running injuries, and it wasn’t until his early 20s that he found his way back while working in an athletic footwear store. It was decades before he would “commit myself to go to war in the battle of Potential versus Performance.” (Potential is the raw number that charts say a runner is good for, according to other times at shorter distances. )

After several attempts, Siddons qualified for the Boston Marathon, the Holy Grail of races, and in 2018 he and his wife participated. He writes that the four parts of any distance race, especially a marathon, are Patience (don’t “run like the wind” from the second you pass over the start line); Trust, in your training and stick to your plan; Fortitude, that has to be mustered to maintain pace for the toughest part of the race; and Courage to succeed.

Marathon runners will relate to this book, including the technical stuff about goal pacing, how your body behaves during a race, and the physical joy of running. Readers who have never put on a running shoe will enjoy the author’s enthusiasm, explanations of how hard he trains, and the love he feels for his running partners, his supportive friends and family.

Interspersed with the text are a few of Siddon’s poems in which he captures the emotions of running, including a long one, “Unrequited,” that encompasses his thoughts as he runs the Boston Marathon:

Under the blue one-mile overpass,
Boston Strong in bold gold.
I am so close, I am soaking up the
last miles as if I may never be back.
I turn to the crowd
as I come up from the last underpass, and
show my B.A.A. 5k shirt, it’s logo universally known.
They cheer for me and I am lifted again,
I am going to do this!…

(For information go to BrianJamesSiddons.com)

“How Steve Became Ralph” by Steve Buechler (Written Dreams Publishing, $13.99)

Buechler, who lives in Eden Prairie, “became” Ralph after he had a stem cell transplant from an umbilical cord blood donor: “Since I named my baby cord blood donor ‘Ralph,’ and I acquired his DNA with my transplant, I went with ‘How Steve became Ralph,’ ” he writes, explaining his book’s title.

Buechler’s memoir, subtitled “A Cancer/Stem Cell Odyssey (with Jokes)” is made up of email reports he composed during his treatments in 2016. Although these messages went to a large circle of friends, he admits writing them also “became therapy-for-me by bringing narrative coherence to chaotic experiences.”

The author was ending his 32-year career teaching sociology at Minnesota State University, Mankato, when he was diagnosed with life-threatening acute myeloid leukemia, and began chemotherapy. By mid-August his doctors recommended a stem cell transplant and the University of Minnesota Medical Center Blood and Marrow transplant unit began searching national blood banks for umbilical cord blood that might provide a match and lower the chance of rejection. By October he was ready for the transplant, taking with him “my tool kit of mindfulness, meditation, yoga, and various forms of exercise as well as the support, prayers, healing energy and good wishes…”

He certainly took his physical exercise seriously, including figuring out a way to do yoga while attached to a pole from which an IV bag hung.

“My so-called ‘transplant’ is really just another ”transfusion,’ ” he writes, explaining that the procedure does not involve surgery. After installing a Hickman central line in his chest, the umbilical cord blood was sent into his bloodstream. Afterward there was an infusion of drugs to ward off infection and other issues.

“The whole process is intellectually intriguing; it requires a blend of science, art and craft from a team of oncologists, nurses, infectious disease doctors and other specialists as needed,” writes Buechler, ever the sociologist. “I’d prefer to learn about it without my own skin in the game, but that’s how it goes.”

Buechler admits he had much going for him as a patient — a big group of helpers during the times he was home, physical ability to keep up his yoga practice, and few financial worries. Not that his year of cancer was free of problems. His wife, Susan Scott, was in the hospital for leg problems during part of his own hospitalization, and they didn’t see one another for weeks. A  storm damaged their house and surrounding trees, and the author spent lots of time in his hospital bed trying to straighten out that insurance mess while waiting for what sounds like endless medical procedures.

His story ends happily. Six months out from his transplant Buechler was able to accept that he had “weathered my treatments and … I was actually better.”

Written in the easy style of emails, “How Steve Became Ralph” is an interesting odyssey through a life-saving medical procedure. He prefers the word “odyssey” because he never liked the cliche about cancer being a “journey.”

“Perhaps the most over-used metaphor about cancer sees it as a war in which the heroic patient valiantly battles an evil foe,” he writes. “This also did not ring true for me. For starters, we have enough militarized aspects of life without extending the imagery to illness. This metaphor also concedes too much to cancer. It is not a conscious, willful antagonist. Cancer is just a biological process originating from within the body. … And although I felt like many things throughout my treatment, heroic warrior or combat victim were not amongst them.”

About those jokes: They are funny because they are really silly, which was probably the point. But Buechler’s correspondents loved them, so he kept them coming.

(For more information go to stevebuechlerauthor.com)

“The Galapagos Islands: A Spiritual Journey” by Brian D. McLaren (Fortress Press, $16.99.)

McLaren, a Florida-based author of a dozen books including “A New Kind of Christian,” gives readers a travel story and a meditation on science and faith in this paperback from a Minneapolis Christian publisher.

This former pastor sets the tone of his book in the early pages when he muses about “indoor theology,” created and promoted almost exclusively by privileged male human beings of European descent … “as opposed to a theology that arises in conversation with the wild world that flourishes beyond our walls and outside our windows and cities.”

The first half of the book is about McLaren’s week on the islands that make up Galapagos National Park, where he scuba dived among gloriously colored fish, took nature walks, and was awed by the protected wildlife, including land iguanas and the giant Galapagos tortoises.

The book’s second half is weightier, as McLaren focuses on the legacy of Charles Darwin and how Darwin’s teachings have so often been misinterpreted.

To the conservative Christians among whom McLaren was raised, Darwin was considered an “arrogant, faithless, Bible-denying, God-hating, religion-murdering monster.”  But when the author researched Darwin’s path to writing “On the Origin of Species,” he found that Darwin was influenced as a young man by a clergyman and he thought a lot about religion. McLaren writes that Darwin “was a dutiful man” who “felt the duty of loyalty to his family, his nation, his culture, his tradition — and to the actual observable data presented to him by the world itself, including his memorable trip to the Galapagos Islands.”

During McLaren’s time on Galapagos, he was hoping to see a guinea-fowl puffer fish and he caught a glimpse of one during his final dive. That fish, who darted in an out of an underwater cave, becomes an imaginary conversationalist as McClaren thinks his way through how a religious man can tolerate spoiling of the earth: ” ‘Why are you so disillusioned,’ ” the fish asks.  ‘What were you expecting? Might the problem be less about the realities of religion that are causing you such disillusionment, and more about your expectations of religion that are so unrealistic?’ ”

This is a physically attractive book that includes pictures. It’s too bad McLaren gets the title of Darwin’s book wrong, calling it “On the Origin of the Species” instead of “On the Origin of Species.”)

From saints to the Christian Bible, seal pups to Darwin, tortoises to steel head trout, this journey taken by a man who has always loved the outdoors might provide for some readers theological answers about how to respond in this time of the earth’s destruction.

(Fortress Press books are available at bookstores)