Messner

Over dinner I watched a bio pic about Reinhart Messner--a famous mountaineering guy. He was the first to climb Everest without oxygen, alone, unaided, and unsupported. Kind of a different approach than the expedition with 100s of sherpas and tons of supplies.

I was listening to him, and at first he just seems to be a crazy German climbing hippie. But after a while, I could see that he has a very interesting character--humble, strong, slightly weird. There is a shot of Werner Herzog interviewing him naked beside a glacial pool he is using to bathe at 35:20. Or his interview about how his brother Gunther died in an avalanche and how he had to tell his mother about it at 27:20.

At one point Messner is talking about how man cannot really brag about much compared with animals. And--this is where it's going to get weird--I couldn't help but think of Moses 1:10 "Man is nothing" and Ether 12:27 "weakness becomes strength" as he was speaking at 41:40 in a thick German accent:

There is no heroic men in this world. We are all normal people and our possibilities are very, very small. And because our possibilities are very small we are running 100 meters--the best of the world--in 9 seconds and something. There are horses that are going double as quick. The polar bears can cross the Arctic Ocean without a tent, without a sleeping bag, without a coat, without GPS, without anything--they are much better than we are. Certain animals can climb up vertical overhanging walls without anything. Chh, chhh, chhhh, they go up. We are really not able to do any great thing. And for this fact--because we are not great, our skin is not thick, we have no long hairs against the cold, our lungs are nothing. There are birds that can fly at 11,000 meters in a huge velocity, because their lungs are able to handle it. We are not able to handle 8,000 meters, mmmm, for a few hours, but maximum. We are really not great built. But because we are so weak in many sides, we invented our intelligence. Especially because we were afraid--100,000 years ago, 200,000 years ago--when the lions and the tigers and the polar bears came, and we had to learn how to handle it. And the fires all over. So they learned to become intelligent, slowly. They feared in fact that they were not intelligent, that they were not able in an animalistic way. And with the intelligence we are able to handle everything. We became the strongest group of animals on this world.

I just want more lessons like this at church--"Hey, I am probably the best mountain climber in the world, but let me tell you how I learned that I am nothing." Or--"Look at how weak we were and how strong we became, isn't that amazing?" Really, I just want more crazies, more examples of how to be completely strange and still find a niche within your society.