“He loved mountains, or he had loved the thought of them marching on the edge of stories brought from far away; but now he was borne down by the insupportable weight of Middle-earth. He longed to shut out the immensity in a quiet room by a fire.”
The Lord of the Rings
A letter from my Sherpa
When I was 37 my best friend and I were at a cross roads. We were close friends, best friends, since college. We both had the same core struggle that evil always used to pull us down and steal God’s beauty from us: Lust, Pornography and Masturbation. We were the worlds most reliable and unhelpful accountability partners: two great men with the same problem not really getting anywhere.
One year, during an annual retreat that we take, we both saw that the dumbest thing we could do is do the same thing we did for the past 20 years: keep each other accountable to a problem both of us had. OR we could change things up and take the courageous step of inviting someone older, wiser and who has been down this road to help us face our own sin in a lasting way.
In the course of my journey I had two “Sherpas”: My father and a professional Psychotherapist, John Stringer. Both men changed my life forever and both are where most the material in this study comes from.
The Letter below is a letter from my father, my first Sherpa on this journey. He wrote this to my best friend and I after we went “missing” and stopped showing up for meetings. We started the journey with a lot of excitement, but when it got really hard and our failures still were present, we started hiding. In the midst of hiding is when my father wrote me the letter below.
After we got this letter from my dad (sherpa) we resumed our weekly meetings again.
Enjoy. He had a blast writing it.
- John Miller, March 2020
The Story of the Sherpa and His Two Missing Disciples
There was once a wise Sherpa who had climbed many mountains. He had been through howling blizzards and come out alive. He knew the mountains like the palm of his hand.
One of his greatest exploits was when he was far up the mountain following a great Sherpa leader, the great Sherpa leader deserted him and left him alone to in a howling blizzard. All alone without any provisions or equipment he made his way back down the mountain and to safety. He was thankful for that experience because it taught him to listen to the Spirit of the Mountains. He wrote a book about that calling A Climbing Life.
Years later two young hikers named Slippery Road and Sharp Turn came to him and said, “We need your help to climb Mt. Pocono. Will you help us?”
The Sherpa said yes, but he also told them to show him where Mt. Pocono was. Sure enough, they pointed to Mt. Everest, the greatest and tallest of the mountains.
He told them, “I will help you climb that mountain that you are pointing to, but you must realize that you aren’t climbing Mount Pocono. The mountain you are pointing to is Everest. You must know what mountain you are climbing or you will be soon disappointed with how hard it is. They said, “Oh great Sherpa, you are so wise! That is so helpful. Maybe that is why we keep failing to climb Mt. Pocono. We’re really trying to climb Mt. Everest. Then we get discouraged and give up when we start seeing how hard it is.”
And then the Sherpa looked at what they were wearing.
They were wearing German Lederhosen hiking shorts with colored socks and suspenders. He looked inside their little knapsacks and they each had a bottle of apple juice along with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Obviously they thought this was a picnic. The Sherpa said, “You need much bigger packs.
Where we are going is very hard work. We are going to have to climb sheer cliff faces, and you can’t do that in those Lederhosen. In fact, if that is what you have in your packs you’ll soon look like this man who climbed Everest.
The two young men said, “Oh great Sherpa, we really need your help. We are learning so much from you.” One of our biggest problems when hiking the mountain is that we keep falling into crevices. We take for ever to get out of them.
The Sherpa said, “One of the things you need to get out of crevice is a J-curve hook. That is right. The J-curve.
With the J-curve, you learn to accept suffering and you don’t give into self-pity. That can get you out of any crevice. They said, “Oh that is just what we need.” With the J-curve you are drawn into Union with the Son of the Spirit of the Mountains. His suffering becomes your suffering. As soon as you stop running from suffering, then you can get out of any crevice.
The two young disciples, Slippery Road and Sharp Turn were so excited about learning from the Sherpa that they made an appointment with the Sherpa two weeks later to learn from him how to climb Everest.
He warned them again, “This is a long climb and it will take a lot of persistence. Don’t underestimate how much work this will be.”
“Oh Great Sherpa, thank you for being so wise and helpful, we’ve never heard that before. We can’t wait.”
But when the appointed time came, the Sherpa waited in vain for his two disciples. He looked high and low but he couldn’t find them. Finally, he decided to make up signs to see if others would help him find them. He made up many signs and posted them on the mountains roads in the hope that someone else would see his two disappearing disciples. If you have seen, either Sharp Turn of Slippery Road, please call the Sherpa. Of course the signs read, “Watch out for Sharp Turn” and “Watch Out For Slippery Road.”