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Ascending the Heights Session I: Preparing to Ascend

Session Summary
The two sessions below are designed to introduce the basic concepts with which the campers will be grappling for the rest of the week. As an introduction, the sessions seek not so much to lead to conclusions as to begin to get the campers thinking about such broad themes as preparation, motivation, team-building, and perseverance. This is important. Allow for the tension of unresolved questions so that subsequent sessions can fill in the blanks of the campers' knowledge and spiritual experience.

There is perhaps much more material than is really need for two one-hour sessions. However, it is more beneficial to have enough material at hand so that some part of it will connect with your study group. Look through the pages that follow and decide for yourself which parts you want to spend more time on than others.

You don't have to use all of the questions in each session, two or three will be sufficient. Let the campers/participants talk! Kids, ironically, learn by talking much of the time. The key points to convey in this study are:

  • Preparation is essential to success;
  • No one can go it alone, teamwork is required;
  • An experienced guide is also a must;
  • The view from the top is worth the effort;
  • Our spiritual life must be seen as an ascent into Heaven.

Orthodox Life Session 1: Preparing to Ascend
Preparation for Any Undertaking
Begin with, "Preparation is essential to any important undertaking. That is an obvious thing to say and yet I would be willing to bet that everyone in this group can name at least one time in the recent past when you found yourself in a situation for which you were not prepared."

Continue with, "Can you think of any instances in which you found yourself unprepared?" Have the campers/participants name a few recent incidences.

  • Tests for which they didn't study
  • Homework they forgot to do
  • Not enough gas in the family car to complete the trip
  • Missed appointments with friends
  • Failing to show up at work

What are other instances that call for adequate preparation? Continue with "The point is preparation is at least as important to completing a task as the task itself. Now, how about physically taxing activities? Would any of your consider running a 10k race or a marathon without first training for it? Have any of you ever had to undergo a physical challenge for which you were unprepared?" Allow time for discussion.

School Athletics Preparation Time Invested
Invite the athletes in the group to talk about how much practice time they invest before ever playing a game.
Football players; how much time do you spend in the gym on the off-season?
Soccer players; how many miles do you run every week before playing a game?
GOYA Basketball tournament players, how many hours did you spend practicing from September through January of last year before you got on the bus for Kansas City?
Why wouldn't we just run out on the floor and play the game? What's the deal with all this prep time?!

Wrap-up: Why Preparation is Essential to Any Serious Physical Undertaking
Allow the campers to discuss this and share some "war-stories" about school and sports and the basketball tournament so they have firmly in their minds the need for preparation.

More Specific Preparation: Climbing Mount Everest
Continue with, "Now, keeping in mind the basic need for preparation regardless of the undertaking, let's turn our attention to the theme for this camp: "Ascending Mt. Everest."

List of Specific Items Needed for an Assault on Everest
Consider the following: here's what you'll need to climb Mount Everest!
Note to the group leader: Begin this segment by reading the list as quickly as possible and keep reading until the kids start to get noisy and interrupt. Show them the list! Tell them this doesn't even mention the resources needed to reach Nepal in order to start the ascent.
Click here or see below for the Mount Everest Equipment List.


Deciding what is essential and what is superfluous
Discussion Questions
How do you decide what is necessary to bring?
How do you decide what to leave behind?
Who do you ask to help you determine essential from non-essential items?
What do you do if you're in the middle of the climb and discover you've forgotten something important?

An object lesson in mountain-climbing equipment
Note to the group leader: In order to demonstrate the difficulty of lugging this much gear up the side of a mountain, have a couple of volunteers take turn piggy-backing the biggest camper in the group around the circle or area in which you are sitting. After this exercise, continue with, "Now, having piggy-backed (name) around, can you imagine strapping him/her on your back and climbing a mountain with him/her? Would you want to add any weight to your pack that wasn't absolutely essential to the climb?"

Mountain-Climbing and other Extreme Adventures
Climbing Mt. Everest certainly qualifies as an Extreme Sport! Ask the campers the following questions:
What's the wildest Extreme Sport you've ever seen?
Have you ever been to the Winter X-Games?
What Extreme Sports do you enjoy participating in?
Why Extreme Sports? What's wrong with the regular ones?

Evaluating the risks associated with Extreme Sports
Have the group discuss these sports and risk-taking in general to set the context for the climb. Continue with, "Consider the following facts about climbing Mt. Everest. As you listen to them decide whether or not they make you more or less desirous to attempt a climb to the summit."

Everest Facts
Age of Everest: Everest was formed about 60 million years ago.
Elevation: 29,035 (it was found to be 6 feet higher in 1999)
Name in Nepal: Sagarmatha, meaning "goddess of the sky)
In Tibet: Chomolungma, meaning "mother goddess of the universe)
Named after Sir George Everest in 1865, the Brithish surveror-general of India; once known as Peak 15
Location: Latitude 27° 59' N; Longitude 86° 56' E; its summit ridge separates Nepal and Tibet
First Ascent: May 29, 1953 by Sir Edmund Hillary, NZ and Tenzing Norgay, NP, via the South Col Route
First Solo Ascent: August 20, 1980, Reinhold Messner, IT, via the NE Ridge to North Face
First Winter Ascent: February 17, 1980, by L. Cichy and K. Wielicki, of Poland
First Ascent by an American: May 1, 1963, James Whittaker, via the South-Col
First Ascent without Oxygen: May 8, 1978 by Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler, via the SE Ridge
First Woman to reach the summit of Mt. Everest from both the north and south sides: Cathy O'Dowd
Fastest Ascent from the South: Babu Chiri Sherpa 34, NP- 16 hours and 56 minutes, May 21, 2000
Fastest Ascent from the North: Hans Kammerlander May 24, 1996, 16 hours and 45 minutes
Youngest Person to Ascend: Temba Tsheri, age 15 years, May 22, 2001
Oldest Person to Ascend: Sherman Bull May, age 64 years, May 25, 2001
First Legally Blind Person to Ascend: Erik Weihenmeyer, May 25, 2001
Most Ascents: Eleven; on May 24, 2000, Appa Sherpa became the first person to climb Everest 11 times.
Best and Worst Years on Everest: 1993; 129 made it to summit; 8 died (ratio of 16:1); in 1996 98 made the summit; 15 died (ratio of 16.5:1)
Most Frequent Cause of Death: Avalanche; about 2:1 ratio over falls
First ski descent: Davo Karnicar (Slovenia) October 7, 2000
Longest stay at the summit: Babu Chiri Sherpa stayed at the summit for 21.5 hours
Largest team to ascend: In 1975, China tackled Everest with a 410-member team.
Fastest descent: 1988; Jean-Marc Boivin of France descended in 11 minutes by paragliding.

What is the motivation? What do climbers hope to find at the top?
After reviewing these facts with the group, continue the lesson. "Yet people risk their lives every year, spend outrageous sums of money, quit their jobs, and leave their family and friends behind to attempt this climb!"

Discussion Questions
What do you think it's like standing on the top of the world, even if only for a few minutes?
How might that experience, assuming you survived it, change the way you look at life thereafter?
How firmly etched in one's mind must be the goal of reaching the top in order to overcome the countless difficulties and challenges required to be successful?
Have any of you ever reached for a difficult goal and had to persevere to overcome the obstacles in your way?

Assembling Your Team
At this time the group leader will introduce the concept of assembling your team. Say, "Since you can't possibly make such a trip by yourself, you have to assemble an experienced team to help you make it to the top." This brings us to team-member qualifications.

Team-member Qualifications
How important is it that you find the right people for your team?
How disastrous might it be if you select even one wrong person for your team?
Might that wrong selection keep you from reaching the top?
Without being mean describe an experience you've had with a less experienced teammate on a school team.
So getting back to Everest, how do you decide who to take with you?
What will be the criteria for selecting team members?

Team-member Disqualifications
Who do you leave behind?
Do you endanger the mission and the other team members' lives rather than give someone the bad news they don't have what it takes to make the ascent?
How important is a guide to the expedition? Must the guide be someone who has himself or herself been to the summit before?
Would you recommend making the trip up the mountain without a guide? Why not?
Would you consider using a blind guide? What if he was a nice guy?
What if he had a whole lot of books about mountains, climbing, Nepal, geology, avalanches, Sherpa culture, local customs, the history of gore-tex, and other such things? Would he still be qualified?

Leave you hanging
Preparation, motivation, and teamwork are essential components of any serious undertaking. An assault on Mount Everest is but one example of such an endeavor. These themes are obviously applicable to other areas of our lives.

Make connections
How is making an assault on Mount Everest like our Christian life?
How is preparation required for both endeavors?
What do we put in our spiritual "back-pack" before starting the climb?
What kind of team do we assemble for our spiritual assent?

Think Ahead
In the session to follow these themes will be more fully explored as we go back and revisit some of the same questions but from a spiritual point of view. For now, spend some time between sessions pondering how the following can be seen and explained in spiritual terms: mountains, guides, team members, preparation, thrill seeking, supplies, training, perseverance, and the view from the summit.

Street Wise Session 1: Preparing to Ascend
This session continues where the first left off. The themes will be more fully explored as we go back and revisit some of the same questions, but from a spiritual point of view. The first question has already been discussed. The focus of discussion here should be those questions labeled "Spiritual Connection."

The Pay-off, "What is My Motivation?"
And yet people risk their lives every year, spend outrageous sums of money, quit their regular jobs, and leave their family and friends behind to attempt this climb! Why?

What do you think it's like standing on the top of the world, even if only for a few minutes?
Spiritual Connection: "Have you ever had a "summit" experience in your spiritual life?"

How might that experience, assuming you survived it, change the way you look at life thereafter?
Spiritual Connection: "Once you've had a summit experience in your spiritual life, how much mileage did you get from it, or in other words, how long did the positive impact of it last for you?"

How firmly etched in one's mind must be the goal of reaching the top in order to overcome the countless difficulties and challenges required to be successful?
Spiritual Connection: "How firmly etched must our goal be of reaching heaven if we are to live life to the fullest as children of God in this world? How can we maintain our motivation in the spiritual life if we don't have a clear notion of what heaven, eternity, and our relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ are like?"

Have any of you ever reached for a difficult goal and had to persevere to overcome the obstacles in your way?
Spiritual Connection: "Doesn't the goal of being a strong, vital, plugged-in Orthodox Christian seem really tough sometimes? What are some of the traps and pitfalls we have to watch out for in our spiritual assent?"

Teamwork is Essential to Our Spiritual Journey
Note that the first question is the original and has already been discussed. The focus of discussion here should be those questions labeled "Spiritual Connection."

Since you can't possibly make such a trip by yourself, you have to assemble an experienced team to help you make it to the top.
Spiritual Connection: "Why is the notion of a ‘lone-ranger' Christian fatally flawed? Why does St. Paul speak so often about the ‘Body of Christ' and what does that really mean?"

How important is it that you find the right people for your team?
Spiritual Connection: "Name three people, off the top of your head, who are on your spiritual team right now."

How disastrous might it be if you select even one wrong person for your team?
Spiritual Connection: "Have you ever been hooked up with someone who was a disaster to your spiritual life? What examples can you give of wrong team-members tripping you up?"

Might that wrong selection keep you from reaching the top?
Spiritual Connection: "What do you think St. Paul meant when he said; ‘Don't be unequally yoked together with unbelievers.'?"

Selecting team-members for our spiritual journey.
"Applying our Everest session to our spiritual life, how do you decide who to take with you? Again, the focus of discussion are those questions labeled, "Spiritual Connection."

What will be the criteria for selecting team members?
Spiritual Connection: "Is it o.k. to have friends who aren't practicing Christians? Is it o.k. to have friends who are hostile to your faith? When does hanging out with such friends start to compromise your own faith?"

Who do you leave behind?
Spiritual Connection: "When do you know that it's time to sever harmful relationships in you life? Is it more important to be well-liked and popular with your peers or to make a stand for your faith? How far are you willing to go to identify yourself with Jesus Christ among your peers?"

Do you endanger the mission and the other team members' lives rather than give someone the bad news they don't have what it takes to make the ascent?
Spiritual Connection: "Don't we sometimes endanger our spiritual mission of making it to heaven by the compromises we make to be with certain ‘friends' in certain situations? List three obvious situations that endanger our spiritual mission of reaching heaven."

How important is a guide to the expedition?
Spiritual Connection: "What term do we use for guides in the spiritual life? Do you have one, e.g. a spiritual Father?"

Must the guide be someone who has himself or herself been to the summit before?
Spiritual Connection: "What qualities should one look for in finding a spiritual father?"

Would you consider using a blind guide?
Spiritual Connection: "Give an example of a blind spiritual guide."

What if he was a nice guy?
Spiritual Connection: "How important is it for godparents to be strong, practicing Orthodox Christians? What precisely do people mean when they say someone is ‘A nice guy and doesn't hurt anyone'?"

What if he had a whole lot of books about mountains, climbing, Nepal, geology, avalanches, Sherpa culture, local customs, the history of gore-tex, and other such things? Would he still be qualified?
Spiritual Connection: "Is there really any substitute for experience in the spiritual life? How can we acquire experience in the spiritual life?"

Scriptural Examples of Spiritual Ascent and How We Can Make the Most of Them
Have the group close their eyes and consider the images that flash across their minds as they listen to the lyrics.

"Your steadfast love ascends to the heavens,
Your faithfulness reaches to the clouds,
Your righteousness is like majestic mountains,
And your wisdom like the depths of the sea,
And you come to me.
Filling my heart is Your loving kindness,
I find my peace in the shadow of your wings,
I eat my fill from abundance in your household,
And I drink from your springs of rejoicing,
You are my King."

Continue with, "Scripture uses the imagery of mountains quite frequently (130 times!) in describing our spiritual life." Read Hebrews 12:18-24:
"For you have not come to the mountain that may be touched and that burned with fire, and to blackness and darkness and tempest, and the sound of a trumpet and the voice of words, so that those who heard it begged that the word should not bespoken to them anymore. (For they could not endure what was commanded: ‘And if so much as a best touches the mountain, it shall be stoned or shot with an arrow.' And so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, ‘I am exceedingly afraid and trembling.') But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven, to God the Judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect, to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than that of Abel."

"Moses, Joshua, Solomon, Saul, David, Elisha, Isaiah, the Lord, Jesus Christ and His Disciples all resorted to mountains for relief, comfort, solitude, and rejuvenation. Why did they do this?" Continue the discussion with, "Describe what mountains mean to you, especially those campers who see them all the time."

  • Isaiah 56:7: "These I will bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer; their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples."
  • Isaiah 66:20: "And they shall bring all your brethren from all the nations as an offering to the Lord, upon horses, and in chariots, and in litters, and upon mules, and upon dromedaries, to my holy mountain Jerusalem, says the Lord, just as the Israelites bring their cereal offering in a clean vessel to the house of the Lord."
  • Jeremiah 50:6: "My people have been lost sheep; their shepherds have led them astray, turning them away on the mountains; from mountain to hill they have gone, they gave forgotten their fold."
  • Ezekiel 20:40: "For on my holy mountain, the mountain height of Israel, says the Lord God, there all the house of Israel, all of them, shall serve me in the land; there I will accept them, and there I will require your contributions and the choicest of your gifts, with all your sacred offerings."
  • Micah 4:2: "and many nations shall come, and say: ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and we may walk in his paths.'…"

Parting Thoughts
The Lord's frequent trips into the mountains are described in the four Gospels. There are at least three significant events described as having taken place on a mountain. Spend a few minutes in your bibles before the next session and find three times when the Lord was in the mountains in order to answer these questions.

  • How did He get there?
  • Who was He with?
  • What did He do?

Ask the group of they have any remaining questions or comments about the study. If not, encourage them to look up the Gospel passages.

End the session with a prayer.