Portrait with a Stranger

Before the Statue of Liberty started modeling her coppery green gown for the hungry masses, before the Eiffel Tower pretended to pump oil from the ground beneath Paris, before Big Ben became London’s alarm clock – back when the Grand Canyon was just a mediocre valley on the undiscovered side of our pancake planet, the Greek historian Herodotus wrote a travel pamphlet telling the ancient world where they should spend their summer vacations. Shortly after it was published, the seven destinations listed in this pamphlet became widely known as the Seven Wonders of the World. According to Herodotus, even if your kids were screaming in the back of the chariot, even if the Motel 6BC was holding a reservation for you, even if you were down to your last doubloon, these were the seven stops that shouldn’t be missed. These were the vacation spots that Fred, Wilma, Barney, and Betty saved all their pennies and pebbles to see.

It would be nice to know which landmarks Herodotus held in such high esteem. Unfortunately, along with countless maps and ketchup packets, his original list has been lost in the glove compartment of time. We will never know exactly which wonders the historian chose for his own family vacations. But in the centuries since Herodotus, other world travelers have followed the historian’s example and written numerous other "wonders of the world" lists. We now have The Seven Wonders of the Natural World, The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, The Seven Wonders of the Modern World, The Seven Man Made Wonders of the World, and even The Seven Underwater Wonders of the World. Some of the more recent lists writers have even chosen to break with tradition and not limit themselves to seven wonders. Many of their lists are so exhaustive and list so many attractions and make our world seem so wonder full that it seems a wonder we don’t each have our own personal tourist attraction in the backyard.

In September 1999 a movement was made to update one of the traditional Wonders of the World lists. Because most previous lists had been compiled by committees of world travelers and other special interest groups, it was decided that the sight-seeing public should have some input as to the most important and impressive sights on our planet. Thanks to the modern wonder of the World Wide Web, starting in 2001 travelers were given the opportunity to vote online for the tourist attractions they felt were most worthy to be placed on the new list. The twenty finalists included the Statues of Easter Island, Greece’s Acropolis, Stonehenge in the United Kingdom, and the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

I had no idea we were having a planet-wide popularity contest until I personally visited Rio de Janeiro and saw their famous Christ the Redeemer statue. Christ the Redeemer is a 130 foot statue of Jesus that overlooks the city of Rio with his arms opened wide, as if he is offering Brazil an oversized hug.

I visited the statue with a group of teenagers during the summer of 2007 after we shared a week long missions experience in Rio. As we patiently waited for the cable car that would tow us up the mountain, my friends and I entertained ourselves by wandering through Christ the Redeemer’s gift shop and photo gallery. Ironically, very little of the tourist information we read on the plaques and posters at the bottom of the Redeemer’s mountain say much about the statue’s religious significance. They tell more about how the statue was built and who built it than why they chose the image of Jesus. Walking through its educational exhibit, it feels as if the monument is an attraction, but the Jesus is an afterthought. In fact, most of the tourists I saw on my visit didn’t seem to be flocking to Christ the Redeemer because he’s the redeemer. It seemed that they stood in line and bought their tickets to see the statue simply because it is over twelve stories tall, is featured in every Brazilian travel brochure, and had been nominated as one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

I wonder how Jesus feels about being a tourist attraction?

As we stood in line waiting and talking, one of my friends noticed that on each of our tickets a printed advertisement encouraged tourists to Vote No Cristo (Vote for the Christ). That’s all it said. "Vote for the Christ." In the US, it seems the religious right has been begging voters to do this in every recent election, as if Jesus has taken time out of his busy schedule to run for office in an attempt to set our country straight. But the advertisement on our tickets wasn’t a political statement. Instead, it was Brazil’s campaign for Christ the Redeemer to become one of the new Seven Wonders of the World. In July, 2007, Brazil succeeded. After eight years of campaigning, Jesus made the list. The votes were counted and Jesus was officially voted prom king.

When my friends and I stepped off of the cable car at the top of the mountain, I expected to climb a few stairs and turn a corner to see a grand statue of Jesus standing with his arms opened wide to the world, welcoming the tourists and camera carrying travelers that scurried beneath his enormous feet. I expected to see children holding their mother’s hands and old men wearing shorts and socks with sandals. I expected to see young people carrying backpacks and listening to MP3 players as they took pictures of this wonder of the modern world. I expected to see people either looking at Jesus, looking at the spectacular mountaintop view, or at least looking at each other. In other words, I expected to see people who could see the statue.

That’s why I was surprised by the blind man.

But there he was. Standing at the overlook. Tapping his red-tipped cane against a step. Smiling as the wind whipped his silver gray hair. A blind man.

In my travels, I haven’t encountered many blind sight-seers. The phrase itself seems to belong in a list alongside "jumbo shrimp" and "military intelligence." Maybe I am limited by my own sighted imagination, but I would assume that most traditional sightseeing destinations must have little to offer a blind tourist. Without the benefit of sight, the Grand Canyon must be an enormous disappointment. Sitting shy and quiet in her frame, the Mona Lisa couldn’t possibly live up to her reputation. To a blind traveler, China’s Great Wall probably feels just like every other wall in the world, only with fewer corners.

So why was there a blind man at the Christ the Redeemer statue? Short of climbing 130 feet up Jesus’ soapstone body and running his hands over Christ’s Volkswagen sized face, I couldn’t imagine that the statue could be as captivating to him as it was to me. Even if he stood on a chair with his hands stretched high overhead, the blind man couldn’t have tickled the bottom of The Redeemer’s feet with his red-tipped cane. And since postcards of mountaintop views aren’t usually printed in Braille, why would a blind man spend his day at the statue?

I mean no disrespect to the blind community or to those with friends or family who cannot see. It has just never occurred to me that a blind person might want to pay thirty dollars to ride a cable-car to the top of a mountain and see a statue that he cannot see.

But the blind man wasn’t alone. Holding the hand that wasn’t holding a cane stood a woman. Smiling, the woman guided her husband through the crowd, patiently describing every sight with an animated play-by-play commentary. She swept her free hand through the air in front of her like a game-show beauty showing off today’s fabulous prizes. Slowly, I worked my way toward the couple so I could hear what the woman was saying to her husband. Unfortunately, she spoke in a language I couldn’t understand, a language crafted with unknown letters, strange accents, and odd markings that made it much more exotic than my Tennessee English. But while I couldn’t understand the woman’s words, it wasn’t hard to imagine what she must have been saying to her blind companion . . .

". . . the boats below are so amazing. From here their white sails and gleaming hulls look like specks of sugar scattered across the blue . . ."

". . . over to your left the mountains tumble into the ocean, crashing themselves against the waves. It’s so magnificent! There are children playing on the beach . . ."

She turned toward the statue. "If you can believe it, we’re almost standing in his shadow! He’s the color of fresh baked bread and taller than our apartment building. Up there," she pointed toward the statue with a finger her husband would never see, "a group of gulls are resting on his head! Oh my! Jesus has birds in his hair . . ."

The woman paused for a moment.

". . . He’s not smiling, exactly, but his face is calm and pleasant, like a grandfather watching children play in the backyard. I wish you could see how straight and steady his arms are . . ."

The blind man may not have been able to see the boats below him or watch the waves or look at the statue, but at least he wasn’t alone. Standing in the breeze, he had someone next to him, holding his hand, describing the view, painting pictures with her words. These words could never be adequate, but at least the woman cared enough about her husband not to let him stumble around in the dark.

Armed with his red-tipped cane and trusting the warm touch of his wife, the blind man spent an afternoon tapping his way around the feet of Jesus, able only to guess at the real wonder of Christ the Redeemer standing right in front of him. But for those of us who are followers of the Christ we cannot see, aren’t we all essentially bind men tapping our way around the feet of Jesus? Don’t we all sometimes feel limited and alone, like we’re walking with our eyes closed, unaware of what seems obvious to everyone else? Aren’t we all feeling our way through a faith we don’t completely understand, searching for the wisdom to keep us from stumbling in the dark, looking for the God that we’re told is all around us?

I am ashamed to say that at this point my good-boy manners ran out and I was forced to let the adolescent idiot inside me run free. The beauty of the moment was lost to its irony.

On the crowded observation deck I stood shoulder to shoulder with the blind sight-seer and his wife as they talked about the statue. Thankfully, due to the crowd and chaos, I don’t think the couple noticed when I waved so my friend Joel would turn and see me standing next to them.

If he was listening closely, the blind man might have heard the click of Joel’s camera. If she was paying attention, his wife might have seen its flash. But neither the blind man nor his wife could possibly have known that the grinning tourist having his picture taken next to them didn’t care if Christ the Redeemer could be seen in the background. I didn’t care if the monument was visible behind us. I was much more concerned with the kind, unconsenting couple in the foreground who didn’t know that they were posing for a portrait with a stranger. I wanted to be sure that when the picture snapped, the three of us looked natural, like friends smiling next to each other in the sunshine. I wanted a photo I could put in a frame and talk about at parties.

"Are those your parents," people would ask. "I didn’t know that your dad was . ."

Joel clicked a single digital exposure. Unfortunately, the picture didn’t turn out very well. The blind man blinked.

Shortly after my trip to Rio I met a beautiful blind woman named Lisa who has continued to trust Jesus even after losing her sight as an adult mother of three. Even though she has been forced to deal with challenging new limitations, Lisa’s humor and grace are staggering. She peppers conversations with surprising little statements like, "Do you like my shoes? I think they're cute, don’t you?" Lisa is so confident and comfortable with herself that you find yourself answering her questions before you realize she’s never seen her shoes.

I told Lisa my story of the blind man at the Christ the Redeemer statue and asked her if she could explain why a blind person would spend an hour standing at the base of a statue he would never see.

She said, "You want to trust people when they tell you what they see. But even though you’re blind, you still want to experience things for yourself. You want to be able to say, ’I may not be able to see what’s in front of me. But at least I’m here.’"

I may have no idea of how magnificent and grand the big picture of God truly is. I might be blind to the stunning beauty of His greater plan for creation. Even with my arms stretched high overhead, I am sure I have no idea of how high and wide and deep is the love of God which surrounds me. In fact, most days I feel like I am stumbling around in the dark, tapping my way through a life of faith, blind and questioning, desperate for someone to take my hand and show me a better way, oblivious to the towering Jesus that stands right in front of me.

But at least I’m here.