If you meet one, you meet them all. That's how I feel about Carlos Martínez. Me? Matthias Keilholz, pastor in Lutherstadt Wittenberg. The first time I met Carlos was 26 years ago. In 1999, I was a kind of pastor trainee with the well-known German singer-songwriter and pastor Clemens Bittlinger. He in turn had often been on the road with Carlos on joint tours. My first encounter with Carlos was "on the Lord's behalf": I picked Carlos up at Frankfurt Airport at the start of a tour. And we've been friends ever since.
But why "meet one, meet all"? Carlos creates entire worlds before the eyes of his audience. Everyday life comes to life. And Carlos delicately weaves the work of God into his everyday stories, unobtrusively and yet unmistakably. Anyone who experiences an evening with him virtually encounters an incredible number of people in their everyday moments: the conniving trapper who sets up a blind man and ends up falling into his own trap, the man who hides behind his masks until he finds himself, King David who walks through his 23rd Psalm. Literary figures come to life when Carlos takes his guests into his magnificent library. I still smile when I think of Little Red Riding Hood suddenly appearing on stage. Just a moment ago, a father was telling his child the fairy tale as a bedtime story, and suddenly there they are: the girl, the wolf, the grandmother. One of my favorite pieces (perhaps because I was allowed to support Carlos at the "light switch" a few times).
But that's not all. Carlos brings the fragility of nature to the stage. He highlights the importance of human rights - both of which are more necessary today than ever. Those who see him may see the world more clearly through his keen powers of observation than in pictures and press reports. Those who meet Carlos also meet themselves to a certain extent. Whether it's the aforementioned masks or the feeling of being trapped in the famous box - the glass box from which there is no escape.
And for me as a Christian, the biblical stories that Carlos tells in a way that always touches me deeply - from creation to the Lord's Supper and the Lord's Prayer. Everything comes to life, vividly, without a single word.
A picture collage, which my photography hobby has seduced me into, expresses it for me: "The six from the bus stop". Whether newspaper readers, teenagers or mothers with babies in their arms - they are all there. And if you meet one - Carlos - you have the chance to meet them all: Happy, sad, grumpy, exuberant, powerful and powerless, desperate and rescued. But always: people like you and me!
Thank you, Carlos!
