Lost in the Valley of Death: Seeking Justin Alexander Shetler
July 21, 2022
We speak to Harley Rustad about his book, Lost in the Valley of Death: A Story of Obsession and Death in the Himalayas. Then Barbara Bradley Hagerty considers the "mid-faith crisis."
Lost in the Valley of Death: Seeking Justin Alexander Shetler
July 21, 2022
Harley Rustad recounts the life of Justin Alexander Shetler, an American man who vanished in India’s Parvati Valley in 2016. Shetler, described as a sort of “lost boy” by his friends, was on a spiritual quest, one that caused him to push himself to greater and greater extremes and eventually, fatal danger.
Rustad recounts his journey to India to trace Justin Alexander Shetler’s footprints and describes how the 35-year-old embarked on a perilous hike as a disciple of a holy man he barely knew. In the end, two men went up to the sacred lake, but only one came back.
Some say it's like the common cold or a run-of-the-mill dry spell in an intimate relationship. There are times when people of faith feel, for a while, far from God. Former NPR religion correspondent Barbara Bradley Hagerty sits down with two spiritual scholars to talk about their experiences with "the dark night of the soul" and how they get through it. Hagerty's Christianity Today article on mid-faith ennui is here.
Mother Teresa famously experienced a spiritual dry spell for 50 years. In 2007, her private letters revealed that she felt that God had abandoned her. “If I ever become a saint—I will surely be one of ‘darkness,'” she wrote in September of 1959.
