A Star That Burns Bright
Listen: “Rise Up” by Andra Day
I recently watched the new rock climbing documentary called The Alpinist (2021), which portrays the short-lived, but utterly amazing, climbing brilliance of Marc-Andre Leclerc. While I was watching and rewatching Leclerc, I was also studying about Jesus’ birth and the star of Bethlehem. I am drawn to both personalities—Jesus and Marc-Andre. At first blush, one might think the two people have little in common, but two figures kept mashing up in by brain.
I have always been drawn to nature loving characters who live outside mainstream norms and culture—people like Chris McCandless, John Muir, Jeremiah Johnson, Henry David Thoreau, and Jesus.
Marc-Andre Leclerc loved the mountains, and he loved climbing the mountains. He seemed to have a spiritual connection to the rock and ice of high alpine mixed climbing—free soloing alpine routes in British Columbia and Patagonia with unbelievable difficulty—where he seemed to be most free and at peace.
If you are unfamiliar with climbing documentaries or the climbing scene, you can watch my top choices and learn from the comfort of your own living room. My favorite climbing documentaries of all time:
1. Meru
2. The Alpinist
3. Valley Uprising
4. Free Solo
If you have not seen any of these climbing movies, start with Valley Uprising just to get a feel for the crazy history of the climbing scene in America. When I first started rock climbing, it was a fringe sport. The people you met climbing in the 70’s and 80’s were countercultural and all over the map spiritually. The rocks and mountains were their church—a fully immersive experience of spiritual oneness and transcendence with nature. I loved hanging out with this crowd, even while I was studying the Greek and Hebrew Bible in seminary (or Old and New Testament).
The first time I went rock climbing I was a teenager in Kansas City, Missouri, and I climbed some limestone bluffs off Cliff Drive. I was already a nature lover, a backpacker, and a hiker. There were no climbing gyms in the late 70’s and early 80’s. I fell in love with the sport quickly. While I was attending seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, I started buying rock climbing gear, and I would train doing door jam pull-ups and going “buildering” (climbing buildings in downtown Fort Worth). I would travel on the weekends to climb at Mineral Wells State Park, Enchanted Rock (west of Austin), and Wichita Mountains in southwest Oklahoma. I ended up climbing extensively in Colorado, Virginia (Blue Ridge Mountains), and a few other states. It was an intense hobby. By the time I hit my early forties, I had blown out the tendons in my elbows and had to stop climbing. I still climb occasionally, but I gave up serious climbing years ago.
I’ve climbed enough to appreciate talented rock climbing when I see it. Rock climbing has exploded as a mainstream sport due to the emergence of rock climbing gyms around the world. Indoor rock climbing in gyms is extremely safe, and outdoor rock climbing can be practiced with extreme safety—even safer than driving your car. However, the sport has always had an extreme edge. The best rock climbers in the world push the extreme edge by free soloing (no ropes) the hardest routes imaginable—the smallest slip means death.
I understand the draw of pushing the edge. I have free soloed difficult routes of several hundred feet in which one slip means falling to your death. Most of the time, climbers free solo routes they have already climbed on rope or routes that are well within their expertise. Even so, many climbers are constantly pushing the edge. I remember one particular climb I did in the Quartz Mountains of southwest Oklahoma. I was on a two hundred foot face climb, and I had never climbed this route before. The crux move (the hardest move on the route) was about one hundred and fifty feet off the ground. I was leading the route, and there was about a fifty foot run out on my last bolted protection. It was a tricky 5.10d move. I wasn’t prepared for the difficulty of the move. I froze momentarily and started to think about falling if I didn’t make the move. I was fifty feet out on my protection which meant if I missed the move I would fall over one hundred feet with the stretch of the rope. I wasn’t sure I would survive the fall even on rope. I thought about down climbing the whole route, but that was probably harder than attempting the crux move. I did some deep breathing and obviously made the move. After this edgy experience, I backed off putting my life on the line like that. I kept climbing, but stayed on the safer side of the sport.
While I was intermittently watching Marc-Andre climb and studying Jesus’ birth, I kept reflecting on why I like both people. What do Marc-Andre Leclerc and Jesus have in common, if anything? Why am I drawn to both people? Do I simply love Marc-Andre for rock climbing and Jesus for entirely different reasons?
The star of Bethlehem burned brightly over the birth place of Jesus. It signaled to the magi from the East the birth of a new ruler of a special kind. Jesus did not fit into mainstream culture. He loved nature, frequently withdrawing to the mountains, the lake, or the desert for prayer and meditation. He marched to the beat of a difference drum. His teaching turned the status quo upside down. Jesus was not a military commander. He didn’t force people to follow through military conquest or power. He was nonviolent. He was a servant. He practiced radical love and inclusion for the outsider, the marginalized, the sick, the morally inferior, the poor, and the oppressed. He taught forgiveness, and his short life ended as an eternal sign of redemptive suffering.
Certainly, Marc-Andre Leclerc was not of the same ilk as Jesus. Marc-Andre was a solo artist on rock and ice most of the time. But he still reflected on his experience with philosophical insight. After doing a winter solo ascent of Torre Egger, Patagonia, considered by some the toughest peak in the Americas, Leclerc shared his philosophy:
When you are in the mountains with a mission, it’s like all the superficialities of life just sort of evaporate and you can often find yourself in a deeper state of mind. And that can stick with you for a while after a big climb. You appreciate everything so much that you take for granted most of the time. The actual achievement doesn’t really change your life like you think it might when you are building up to it. But what you are left with is the journey that got you to that point. And if you have this big journey where you have to figure a lot of stuff out. You had to plan and it was more immersive and then you were somewhere really beautiful for a longtime and then had to work really hard and overcome some kind of mental barrier. You are left with so much more of a story or like a memory and an experience and that’s what I find is the most important.
I love thinking deeply about life. I love adventure. I love nature, and I love God. So I love it when people make me think deeply about life, about what’s important, and about embracing what is beautiful and meaningful. And I love it when people challenge the status quo and think outside the box. Jesus and Marc-Andre are stars that burned brightly, and both of them challenge me to think deeply about the spiritual adventure called life. Maybe its that simple, but it still haunts me.
Shalom
©realfredherron, 2021
