For much of my life, I’ve seen searching for my story. I know that we are our stories, but I could never figure out mine.  I’ve driven countless thousands of miles to therapists, spiritual counselors, old colleagues, mystics, siblings to find out who I am, what happened to me, what I might become.  My search has taken me to so many places, including the country and Bedlam Farm, but the visits that touch me, change me, that help me to put the pieces of my story together, that speak to me are all in strange towns, on second floors, in back rooms, unseen alleys or quiet streets.

I went on such a journey yesterday, to Brattleboro, Vt. to see Patti Newton, who runs a shop called Silver Moon Adornments, and who is many things spiritual, including a Tarot Card Reader. I know Patti and we have connected with one another. She has done two readings for Maria and me. We are friends.

Why have you come?, she asked. What are you looking for? I was at ease there, as if I belonged, and I was safe, and I said I wanted to find my story, and I sensed it might be in the cards, there in Brattleboro, at her shop. So we talked a long time, and she took the cards out and her dog Buddy lay on the floor, putting his head on my shoe from time to time.  Patti laid the cards on the table, and she said here is your story. The cards told the story of the “Lion and the Lamb”, sometimes called the Lion’s Dilemma. In the story, a flock of sheep find a lion cub and convince him that he is a lamb. To keep them safe from predators, they conspire to keep him forever, to tie him up, withhold his true identify, keep him from his own life. They teach him only how to be fearful and live a small life, a diminished existence.This is what he sees, what he knows, how they live. He is never comfortable, never at peace but is unaware that there is any other way to be. These were the awful boundaries of life for him, borders of fear and confusion.

One day a lion comes  and is shocked to see him and he tells him who he is, and challenges him to come away from the sheep and live like a lion. This opens up the Lion’s life and triggers a period of great, sometimes terrifying transition for him. He is very fearful – he knows no other way to live. The cards, said Patti,  say that the lion is not naturally fearful, that is not a part of who he really is. Natural fear is not in his cards. But he has learned that other life, the fear woven into his identity, living among the small and fearful creatures who used him selfishly for their own needs and never encouraged him to live his life and know his strength. He knows how to be a sheep, but he does not know how to be a lion. The lion has many choices to make in life. Will he change? Find his strength? Forgive the sheep or kill them? He decides to forego anger, go on a long journey to find himself and his  real strength. He returns to join the lions and to live out his life as a strong creature and slowly sheds his fearful identity.

The lion’s dilemma is that he must decide whether to be a lion or a lamb.

The lion does not seek vengeance, but rather chooses a different passion: to make certain his life is never made small and frightened again, his potential never squelched, his soul never stolen or diminished. Slowly, and over time, his natural self emerges and he lives his life. He finds a partner who was also raised as a sheep, but who is also a lion, and they give one another strength. It is, say the cards, an powerful partnership. Life for him is not perfect, but joyous and full because it is his authentic life.

I left Patti and called Maria. I told her that I thought I had found my story.