Six hands,
one hidden light
On partial sight, the shards we mistake for the whole, and why no gaze — including mine — ever holds all of you.
There’s an old teaching, older than the poem below, that the light of creation didn’t stay whole. It shattered — scattered into fragments, hidden inside everything and everyone, waiting to be gathered back up.
The kabbalists called it Or HaGanuz — the hidden light. No one holds it whole. Every one of us carries a shard, and every one of us has, at some point, mistaken our shard for the sun.
That’s the whole poem below, six centuries before the mysticism gave it a name.
Six men, six honest reports, six confident conclusions — a snake, a fan, a tree trunk, a wall, a rope, a spear. None of them lying. None of them wrong, exactly. All of them certain. All of them holding one true piece and calling it the truth.
This is what I mean when I talk about the Witness posture, and why Adsit — showing up without an agenda for what I need to see — matters more than technical skill ever will. Every gaze that’s ever been turned on a body has been one hand on one part of the elephant.
The Industrial Gaze doesn’t know it’s only touching an ear. It builds a whole theology out of the ear. Calls the ear the entire animal — and everyone who doesn’t match the ear-shaped ideal gets treated as a deviation from truth, instead of a different hand on the same hidden, holy, whole thing.
Sacred Authenticity isn’t a claim that I see the whole elephant either. I don’t. No lens does. It’s the discipline of remembering that I’m one more hand on one more part — and saying so, out loud, before the camera ever comes up. That’s the beginning of actually seeing someone, instead of just confirming what I already believed about the shape of things.
To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the Elephant
(Though all of them were blind),
That each by observation
Might satisfy his mind.
II.
The First approached the Elephant,
And happening to fall
Against his broad and sturdy side,
At once began to bawl:
“God bless me!—but the Elephant
Is very like a wall!”
III.
The Second, feeling of the tusk,
Cried: “Ho!—what have we here
So very round and smooth and sharp?
To me ‘t is mighty clear
This wonder of an Elephant
Is very like a spear!”
IV.
The Third approached the animal,
And happening to take
The squirming trunk within his hands,
Thus boldly up and spake:
“I see,” quoth he, “the Elephant
Is very like a snake!”
V.
The Fourth reached out his eager hand,
And felt about the knee.
“What most this wondrous beast is like
Is mighty plain,” quoth he;
“‘T is clear enough the Elephant
Is very like a tree!”
VI.
The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear,
Said: “E’en the blindest man
Can tell what this resembles most;
Deny the fact who can,
This marvel of an Elephant
Is very like a fan!”
VII.
The Sixth no sooner had begun
About the beast to grope,
Than, seizing on the swinging tail
That fell within his scope,
“I see,” quoth he, “the Elephant
Is very like a rope!”
VIII.
And so these men of Indostan
Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right,
And all were in the wrong!
MORAL.
So, oft in theologic wars
The disputants, I ween,
Rail on in utter ignorance
Of what each other mean,
And prate about an Elephant
Not one of them has seen!
Six men. Six true reports. Not one whole elephant between them — and not one of them a fool for it.
If you’ve ever felt like someone’s gaze reduced you to the one part their hands could reach — ear, tusk, tail — and called it the whole of you: you’re not imagining it, and you’re not the problem. You’re standing in a very old story.
Want to talk about what it looks like to be seen as more than the part someone’s hands could reach?
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