Running to Reconciliation and Self

I've never been an athlete. Sedentary by nature and choice, I can't recall ever running unless being chased by a bee. My brother, Rob, is different, however.  RenegadeBooks just published his premiere novel, The Pronator, last week.

Until I read his book, I didn't know what a pronator was. It sounded like something out of science fiction, or a role Arnold Schwarzenegger would play. However, I discovered that a pronator is one who pronates; that is, a runner whose foot turns slightly so that that the inner edge of the sole bears the weight. Rob's protagonist, Jay, suffers from pronation, but its literal meaning affects the story only slightly; symbolically, it is the flaw that each of us must overcome to reach our next level.

The action of The Pronator takes place during the running of a marathon. Jay wants only to beat his old time and come in under four hours. During that time, the psycho-physical changes that affect runners during a race such as this--intermittent flashes of memories, dreams, speculations--form the narrative as mile follows mile. Recurring themes of a Catholic childhood, nightmare schools replete with bullies, family dynamics, and the mysteries of spirituality reveal a dreamlike biography.

Being the writer's sister, it's obvious to me that Jay is a thinly disguised version of my brother. Further, I know the parts he left out. I don't know what the popularity of this book will be outside the family, but for me it was a revelation and a rare invitation to a sibling's inner life.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing

I am in word mode today. This happens occasionally when I come across a word I love and it leaps from the page begging for me to use it in a sentence. Today, it's gnosticism. Gothic to look at, difficult to spell and define. We all know (or at least use freely as if we did) agnosticism -- some sort of socially acceptable form of atheism  --  but what, pray tell, is a gnost? It doesn't sound good or look good, if you come from the gut-level response school of etymology. However, sounds and appearances are sometimes deceiving. (Enervate, for example, sounds like it should mean "stimulate." Doesn't, though. Just look it up.)

The root gnos derives from the Greek to know. This is actually where the English word know comes from, but for fun, we changed the the g to an k, though we retain it in prognosticate, ignorance and diagnose.  OK. But gnostic? Gnosticism? The ic and  ism of knowing? That seems a little all-encompassing --- and it should: Gnosticism seems to be not just knowing, but beyond knowing: the essential, the essence, the esoteric nature of spirit and spirituality. Gnosticism, in many of its incarnations, rejects the material world and in some cases, most notably A Course in Miracles, suggests that the material world and all of our supposed experiences are the soul's nightmare. Pain, greed and evil didn't arise out of sin -- we made them ourselves out of fear. The Course, its followers claim, is the word of a disappointed Jesus revealed to a pair of transcribing physicians at Columbia University.

Gnosticism isn't new. We can find traces of it all the way back to Zoroastrianism. Interestingly, for a term that seems -- to me at least -- quite innocent, gnosticism has a lot of detractors. It even has its own heresies led by "false teachers." Christians as far back as St. Paul are spooked by it ("knowledge falsely so-called" in 1 Timothy 6:20). You have to ask, what is so scary about gnosticism, this intuitive understanding of spirituality? Too much independent thinking outside the Book? Not enough rules? No support for Bingo nights or collection plates? It's certainly tempting to think so.

So, gnosticism. My word of the day. Maybe next time we'll do silhouette. I love how it's spelled, the little whisper of h, how it looks on the page, how ...