That's How the Light Gets In

"Do you play out?"

"No," I replied.

I asked myself again what I was doing as I felt more and more out of place. In order to calm myself I brought to mind the image of two soothing men.

The first was Jason Mraz.

"Beginner"

Beginner, beginner - Jason needed a reminder that we are all beginners so much he had the word tattooed on the outside of his upper arm.

It is not shameful to be a beginner, I remembered, it is brave.

The second was Lewis Howes who said that he used to be afraid to speak in front of a handful of people. He would stutter and stumble. He joined Toastmasters to work on this, and now, if he didn't tell that story, I would assume public speaking came naturally.

I started writing a new song a week and a half ago. It has one string tuned out of standard tuning, really by accident, and so I couldn't figure out the chords for a bridge. I'd thought about checking out a songwriting group for years, but now I finally had something I could bring to them and I noticed that the group wasn't in the calendar at all in December. Maybe the group is just taking a break in December, but maybe it is disbanding altogether? If I want to check it out I need to go now.

So I sat in circle of six older men, later joined by a couple women, talking about Nashville and songwriters and things entirely above my head. We went around, each sharing a song. I didn't want to apologize about my skill level, but I did say, "I'm a rudimentary guitar player and I have a song that I need help to find chords for the bridge."

And then I played.

The response was that I didn't need a bridge. That the song was hypnotic like Leonard Cohen.

"There is a crack in everything, that is how the light gets in," Leonard Cohen

When I chose 'light' as my word of the year, I selected it because I wanted something like 'playful'. Light is playful, but also so much more. A person who is a light in a field is a shining example, light isn't serious, light is the opposite of heavy, etc.

However, these words did not describe my year.

It wasn't until a yoga class a couple weeks ago that "light" made sense to me. Light illuminates the darkness. It shows what has been hidden. When things are revealed they can be faced, begin to heal. Hmmmm, as usual, my word of the year pulled a surprising punch. I had to scrap all those other meanings and go with this one.

But tonight, when someone said my song was hypnotic like Leonard Cohen I felt something else there. I felt an opening.

"There is a crack in everything, that is how the light gets in."

There seems to be lots of cracks right now, lots of glimmers of light. Sitting in a group of nine people - half of whom, at the end, announced where they will be "playing out" in the next couple weeks - sitting there, I allowed myself to be seen. My beginning self. My illuminating the darkness self. My self
that is cracking open a door
to peer in.