More Shining Light

Last post I talked about how it’s hard to keep your light dimmed, since it naturally wants to shine. Then the very next day I heard a radio article about Django Reinhardt and it caught my attention.

If you don’t know, Reinhardt was a gypsy (really!) jazz guitarist who created a new sound, and generally blew away his contemporaries and continues to inspire generations of jazz guitarists today.

What I learned from the radio was that when 18 years old, Reinhardt was caught in a house fire that severely burned over half his body. A leg was badly burned (doctors wanted to amputate) and two fingers of his left hand were paralyzed. He refused the amputation and was walking with a cane within a year.

He also ignored those who said he would never play guitar again. With the new guitar his brother bought him, Reinhardt relearned to play guitar with his damaged hand, in the process creating a new, unique, and tremendously popular jazz style.

See, the talent was in there, struggling to get out. What if he had listened to everyone and stopped playing? He would have stopped the talent – not the fire. When he decided that not playing was unacceptable he became a musician again.

Life throws what sometimes seem like insurmountable obstacles in our way, and the tendency is to give up. But this is a lesson that nothing is insurmountable. Certainly the journey may not go the way you originally expected. Django didn’t expect to get caught in a fire. He didn’t expect to create a whole new way of playing a guitar either. All he knew at the time was that not playing was unacceptable.

Once he decided not to give up, his light found a way.

Sometimes all you need to do is get out of the way of your light.