To the Protege: Entrust Your Wounds
"Trust your wound to a teacher's surgery.
Flies collect on a wound.
They cover it, those flies of your self-protecting feelings,
your love for what you think is yours.
Let a Teacher wave away the flies and put a plaster on the wound.
Don't turn your head.
Keep looking at the bandaged place.
That's where
the Light enters you.
And don't believe for a moment that you're healing yourself." These are the words of Rumi, a 13th century Persian poet and Sufi mystic from who's letters and lyrics I love to learn and listen. In this selection, with it's raw imagery of a fly-besieged wound, perhaps you can see why. "A teacher" is the answer. A teacher is the answer to the mundane problem of not being able to heal one's self, protect one's self, and in this case even clean one's self from the aggravation of the natural world when we are down and just getting by with our loosely covered wounds. Into such wounds the poet sends a teacher. In mainstream American culture, where I grew up, wounds are very private matters. For all kinds of hygienic reasons, we cover our fresh wounds to protect him from germs… And of course, flies. However, some healing needs light. Some healing needs air. Some healing needs examination. Some healing needs management, from the outside. Into such wounds the poet sends a teacher. There is a kind of wound that is pregnant with learning. The covering of such wounds is not in the interest of medicinal hygiene but such coverings may be in the interest of shame, embarrassment, disgust, and failure. We ask ourselves "How could I have let this happen?! How could I have let myself get into such a mess?! Why didn't I think this through?!" Covering the wound also covers the answers that sting us with our imprudence, our poor judgment, our forgetfulness, our naïveté, our inability to always keep it together...our humanness. Into such wounds the poet sends a teacher. To all of this, the poet sees a teacher as near rather than far. It is assumed a teacher has the kind of access to our lives so as to notice we are not able to sweep away that, which buzzes about, aggravates, and complicates the difficulties through which we may be working our way. I love this poem for its intimacy, the clear lines of perspective between the one who has a need and the one who has an offer. As you progress on your journey as a protégé, as you progress on your journey as a mentor eventually, become a watcher of wounds. Know that they are useful. Offer yours to the wave of the teacher's hand so that the complicating infestation's that bug us in such times can meet their match. Should you find yourself as a teacher, do not look away from wounds, but walk toward them with hand uplifted offering relief, and shade, and healing. The wound is just one meeting place between protégé and mentor.
