{"id":741,"date":"2015-09-30T16:31:10","date_gmt":"2015-09-30T22:31:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/watchinggod\/?p=741"},"modified":"2015-10-04T12:56:17","modified_gmt":"2015-10-04T18:56:17","slug":"the-walk-a-high-wire-act-thats-not-about-faith-but-sort-of-is","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/watchinggod\/2015\/09\/the-walk-a-high-wire-act-thats-not-about-faith-but-sort-of-is\/","title":{"rendered":"The Walk: A High-Wire Act That’s Not About Faith (But Sort of Is)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

When I was youngish, a friend of mine and I went to check out the Black Canyon of the Gunnison during a camping trip. It looks something like this.<\/p>\n

\"0930<\/a>
Photo courtesy Wikimedia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Very pretty, yes? But it\u2019s also a long way down from the ridge of the canyon to its rocky, watery bottom. A really, really<\/em> long way down. So my friend and I\u2014brave, stupid fellows who once tried to break through the ice on a lake while standing on it\u2014literally crawled on our hands and knees to look over the edge. Heights are not really our thing.<\/p>\n

This made me, perhaps, not the best person to see The Walk<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The Walk<\/em>, for those of you who don\u2019t know, is based on the true story of Frenchman Phillippe Petit\u2019s illegal 1974 high-wire performance between World Trade Center towers. In real life, Petit spent about 45 minutes on that wire, walking and kneeling and lying down on a thin cable of steel 110 stories above the Manhattan streets. In the movie, it felt like a couple of weeks. It\u2019s intended, I think, to be a film saluting Petit\u2019s bravery, ingenuity and sheer stubborn will. Given my mild acrophobia, I just wanted the guy to get caught before he even started his walk. The ground\u2019s not so bad, Phillippe. Really.<\/em><\/p>\n

Had I been thinking about how this little tightrope stunt would impact me\u2014in 3-D IMAX, no less\u2014I would\u2019ve brought in a bottle of Tums.<\/p>\n

This is not a knock on the movie. Really, it illustrates just how effective it is. And even for me, the flick had some pretty beautiful moments in it.<\/p>\n

\"0930<\/a>
Joseph Gordon-Levitt in The Walk<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For instance, the moment when Petit (played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt) first steps onto the wire stretching between the two towers. Clouds envelop the scene, and the wire vanishes in a blue-cotton haze in the distance. Petit speaks of the comfort that comes from placing his foot on the wire\u2014how it supports him, how the towers support the wire.<\/p>\n

And in that moment, it felt like a picture of faith.<\/p>\n

Faith and tightrope walking, oddly enough, have a strange, shared history. Nik Wallenda, the tightrope walker who walked over Niagara Falls in 2012, is a Christian whose faith is instrumental in his work. \u201cI grew up in a born-again Christian family,\u201d he told QMI Agency at the time. \u201cThat\u2019s the way I was raised and I find comfort and peace in that.\u201d Loads of preachers have recounted the story of another famed French tightrope walker, Charles Blondin, who walked across the falls in 1860. He allegedly performed many great feats on that line, including pushing a wheelbarrow full of potatoes across it.<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you believe I can carry a person across in this wheelbarrow?\u201d he allegedly asked the crowd gathered at the edge of Niagara Falls. \u201cYes!\u201d the crowd shouted. But when he asked for volunteers, not a one of them took Blondin up on the trip.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an illustration, pastors say, of a weak faith: We say we believe, but do we? Do we really?<\/p>\n

I thought of that illustration as I watched the end of The Walk<\/em>\u2014Petit held up by this thin cord. Petit trusted. He had faith.<\/p>\n

It was not a blind<\/em> faith: He calculated the weight of the wire needed, the stabilizers it would require, all manner of eventualities. He\u2019d been a tightrope walker for years, even practicing on wires that his friends would tug and yank, replicating the high winds he might expect 110 stories up. He trusted his skills, his equipment, his friends.<\/p>\n

But the stunt required a severe, unblinking sort of faith even so. Any sensible man might still look at the wire\u2014stretched nearly 1,400 feet up in the air\u2014and grow fearful. I mean, how could a sensible man not? But Petit was taught by his mentor, Papa Rudy (Ben Kingsley), that fear and doubt mean death. When Petit feels an inkling of doubt during his training in the movie, the wire shakes and buckles. Sometimes, Petit falls. He has the skills to make it across, no doubt. But if he doubts his skills? Loses heart in the moment? If he lets the wire\u2019s height or length get to him? There\u2019s no way Petit would make it across.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s impossible,\u201d Petit says. \u201cBut I\u2019ll do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"0930<\/a>
Joseph Gordon-Levitt in The Walk<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I was reading a story the other day by Salon\u2019<\/em>s Darin Strauss<\/a> about how difficult it is, in this age of rationality, to have faith. \u201cHow, against a contemporary background, do you contemplate the almighty?\u201d he wrote. \u201cWho believes there\u2019s an oasis in 2015\u2019s scattered metaphysical sand?\u201d Some say that it\u2019s impossible to believe in God today. Foolish, perhaps. The ground\u2019s not so bad.<\/p>\n

But yet, those of us who believe in God feel our faith underneath our feet, holding us up. We feel the strength of what our faith is attached to. This is not a strange, frightening place; it is life itself. We believe. And we walk.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe wire is a safe place for me to be,\u201d Phillippe Petit once said. \u201cIt\u2019s a rigorous and simple path. It\u2019s straight. You don\u2019t have meanders like, you know, on the ground, in life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Funny how walking as a Christian is often characterized in the same way. Rigorous. Simple. Straight.<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t claim to be free of fears or doubts. If my faith is a wire, it sometimes shakes. I sometimes fall. But I do have faith\u2014faith that something special is waiting on the other side.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I was youngish, a friend of mine and I went to check out the Black Canyon of the Gunnison during a camping trip. It looks something like this. Very pretty, yes? But it\u2019s also a long way down from the ridge of the canyon to its rocky, watery bottom. A really, really long way […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2036,"featured_media":744,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[52,31,26,267],"class_list":["post-741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movies","tag-christianity","tag-doubt","tag-faith","tag-the-walk"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Walk: A High-Wire Act That's Not About Faith (But Sort of Is)<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"When I was youngish, a friend of mine and I went to check out the Black Canyon of the Gunnison during a camping trip. It looks something like this. 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