Our church meets in a warehouse space, and a year ago we were renovating it to make it a home for our church services. There’s a big blank wall we wanted to have painted in a cool way. We started searching for a local graffiti artist and one day I got an excited call from an member of our little core group. She’s an aerialist in a Cirque show. “I think I found one!” she exclaimed. “I asked around the show and heard about a graffiti artist. I called, and he’s willing to do the wall, for free!”
     “That’s awesome!” I told her.
     “There’s only one problem,” she hesitated. “He’s colorblind.”
     “Colorblind?”
     “Yes, colorblind. But he brings his brother with him to tell him what colors he’s using.”

So I gave the guy a call. It started weird, then got weirder. The guy, or I think more appropriately I should call him the “dude” said, “Here’s my deal: I’ll show up with a smile on my face, joy in my heart, and a guitar on my back. And if I’m not welcome with you, I will leave in peace.”

     I didn’t know what to say.

So the day arrived to meet with the dude. He and his brother pulled up and got out of their car. It looked they had stolen their clothes off of passed out bodies at Woodstock. The dude did, indeed, have a guitar. And a cake. His brother carried in bongos. They walked in, bowed to us, and sat on the ground. The dude explained he had recently become enlightened and sat on the ground to be closer to the earth. And that he worked in a bakery and brought a cake as a peace offering. And that his father wouldn’t allow him to paint for free. He wasn’t sure, he had to check with the spirits and his daddy, but he promised he wouldn’t charge us more than a couple thousand dollars. Apparently the spirits were capitalists.

I informed him that I didn’t have a couple thousand dollars. I had a couple hundred dollars. Could the joy in his heart and the smile on his face, not to mention his father, allow him to consider doing it for that much? I was going to offer to pay him in cash, thinking the green of the money might tempt him. But then I remembered… yeah… colorblind.

Just FYI: We didn’t end up using the colorblind graffiti artist. But the cake was delicious.