Paraplegic Midgets

Sin City. It is one of the few cities whose neon lights make the city brighter at night than in the day. The enticing personality of the town itself draws people from all around the world to come and lay down their pride so they can selfishly enjoy their carnal pleasures for a weekend. Vegas is known for its gambling, women, greed, and bad choices. I have been there nearly half a dozen times in my short life thus far and have witnessed firsthand the great entertainment an oversized slot machine gives a drunken person. It is a place of total freedom for the time you are there, where our true “weekend warriors” get there workout.
Entertainment Capital of the World is not complete without, well, entertainment. All the great acts from around the world flock to Vegas to demonstrate six times a week that they are indeed the cream of the crop. Blue Man Group, Cirque du Soleil, David Copperfield, and even Santana. Yes, the Santana. Four rows from the front, my eyes beheld the living legend whose custom Gibson guitars gleamed with majesty. I understand that some of you may not appreciate music to the extent I do, but any man from anywhere in the world would agree that Santana is possibly the most talented, incredible, nearly perfect rock legend of our time. If you have never heard of him, I am first of all ashamed, and I would, second, tell you to venture on over to projectplaylist.com and type in Europa and allow the sounds of the song pierce your soul like a goth’s lower lip. With that tidbit shared, I will tell you about the concert experience.
Perhaps saying the concert was the best I have ever seen would be an understatement, but it was. I stood in The Joint at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino and nearly soiled myself when he walked out on stage. Santana is a rock god, if there ever was such a thing, and carried on the most incredible thing I have ever seen. You see, to him, it is so much more than a show. It is more than a few songs, more than crazy fans, and more to it than enjoying what he does. He is the music. It is hard to explain if you have never seen him in person because the passion he puts behind the music is so intense, I would have to say it was in the top 3 most passionate things I have seen. The other two would be The Passion of the Christ and watching Tyra Banks eat that one chick alive on Next Top Model (go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01eeF9FIYd8). Indeed, Santana was incredible. He made the audience dance and laugh and sing to the beats. By the time he got to Black Magic Woman, though, half the audience was boozed up and the other half was growing weirdly insane. For instance, one woman snuck her way to the front of the stage and began to rain dance beneath the band. I know- the things people smoke these days. Anyways, I suppose if I could make a wild accusation, however, I would say that only one, yes one person in the entire 2,400 of us fully enjoyed the evening. To my left sat the only true patron of the audience. He was a paraplegic man, dwarfed in size, unable to speak properly due to a speech impediment, and alone. Don’t feel bad, now; remember, he’s actually the only one who loved the concert to the fullest! In fact, he not only loved it, he relished it.
The majority of us danced. The others sang. A choice few just wanted to be back in their rooms watching HBO. This man beat us all. How do I know? His eyes. The man could barely move for goodness sakes, nor could he sing to the songs. His eyes did though. It was one of those things that you had to be there to understand, much like the way Santana lived through his music. And it was right then and there, in the gut of Sin City, I saw the most alive human being I have ever witnessed in my entire life. He was unflinching, unmoving, and totally and utterly captivated.
Why on earth am I not that captivate? What is holding me back, I wonder. Then it hits me- my arms, my legs, my voice. Life itself is not in any of those things. The air I breath, the songs we sing, the things we hear mean absolutely nothing for humanity. They are burdens that hinder us from understanding what real life means. I feel cursed in this flesh that binds me up. God bless a man who is too small to be noticed, to weak to run, too silenced to speak, and too humble to want to be noticed. Of the hundreds of people in that auditorium that evening, one, the only one who really understood the language of passion, was the one nobody wanted because his motor skills were sacrificed and he was not considered human. How inhumane of the rest of us to think that, but we did. That is not to say those other people didn’t feel passion in their hearts. I believe that no matter who you are, it is impossible the stand in the presence of a heart pouring itself out in the fullest and not get splashed with fervor. For goodness sakes, the rain dance woman made herself look like a stoned fool in front of thousands because of the music. But even she didn’t get it.
How many times do we do the same thing? In fact, I would venture to say I have only seen a couple of paraplegic midget in my entire lifetime both literally and figuratively. I have seen thousands of people dance around like fools and I have seen literally millions shout at the sound of our Savior’s name but I have seldom seen the sight of a person who really gets it. Only once have I seen a person who really got it and managed to maintain their motor skills as well. They were the only person I have ever seen who knew what “in this mess not of it” (John 15:19) means. It goes on in that verse to mention how hated we are in this world, how inhumane we are treated.
Life is a state of being, not a noun. God is a verb, an active one at that, not an idea. I dearly hope it doesn’t take us losing our basic rituals of reading, writing, speaking, singing, freedom, and communing to understand this. God, I hope I get it, I really do. I say this a lot, especially to people who say they desire to actually hear God’s voice. I tell them to read I Corinthians 13, namely the last verse, and not just commit it to memory, but start living it. I usually get a look that thinks it understands what I’m saying and I just smile back. I have tried doing this. I have barely begun to understand it. Men have done it for years, men who flung themselves about and let themselves be entranced by the music, but they too have yet to fully comprehend love. Yet every so often, I see a kid, a baby Christian, a stranger, or even a fleeting moment pass by where the light goes on. Where their eyes go aglow and they finally get the passion behind the song. They are brought down from wherever they were standing and given life again, life in once dead limbs, dead voices, and dead lives.
And so, just like that, for only a second, I saw the most passionate individual I have ever seen. Most would call him disabled or handicapped. I say he lived, nay, he soared. I think my eyes, if only for a second, glowed because I saw a man whose eyes blazed with awe and who lived longer than most any other human being on this planet, four rows from the front of a Santana concert.

KB