Astonished By The Story
I posted photos I took at the Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA) to Facebook. Today I reviewed them and was astonished to find I told my story. Understand that I uploaded these photos on Facebook in a random order and then gave them a caption even more randomly. My story of truth, betrayal, hurt, realizations, hope, and acceptance is here, in all the images and words.
Seeing Through the Shadows
Love Hurts
Scarred for Life
Bouquet of Sunshine
A Promise
On My Own and Loving It
Indianapolis Museum of Art
The urge to roam is always strong. Where to today? I thought of my friend, Lucy, and her tales of the glorious blossoming of flowers at the Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA) so I packed my camera and headed out. The IMA grounds are stunning. People go there as if they are going to a park, not to a museum. I saw picnicking…two people up in a tree with a blanket draped over the branch even! I passed a therapy group discussing their major problems and breakthroughs (I didn’t listen in…I had no need to know their pains). The spring birds sang in the branches above me. Children ran and challenged authority by standing close to the edge of the fountain, glancing surreptitiously at their parents while they dragged branches through the water, rippling its serenity.
The Garden of Nine
I couldn’t help but think I was in the Garden of Eden with a sense of peacefulness all around me. And yet….and yet. An undercurrent of longing, of experiencing more than simple joy and peace, nagged at me. I envisioned the lovely Nine of Pentacles and thought of how blessed I am to have a sanctuary to retreat to for rejuvenation. But I was restless. I pulled out my camera and took some lovely photos.
Golden Enlightenment
But I was restless.
I sat on a bench and closed my eyes and meditated.
A Simple Promise
But I was restless.
I enjoyed the Three Graces, the most beautiful statue in all of Indianapolis.
The Three Graces
But I was restless.
I can’t shake the restlessness. I have a longing inside me. It is best understood as my spirit wishing to separate from itself and experience duality. I have long suppressed my spirit in a life of shoulds and have-tos, a life where others told me how to live and breath and die.
The garden in the Nine of Pentacles is a beautiful place to be. It is a Garden of Eden. But we are not meant to live forever in the Garden. The myth tells us so. We cannot know ourselves if all we have is beauty, peace, and loveliness. Creativity and life comes out of duality, of experiencing the other, of alchemical reactions and chafes and conflict.
So I left the Garden. Rejuvenated, yes. But with anticipation of something more.
The Search
It is time. Time to grow. I love the Robin Wood tarot deck, but it no longer serves me. I need something . . . . else. I can’t express what it is, just that I will know it when I see it.
So the search begins. At first I thought the Thoth deck would work. I had one available so I read it, read about it, and tried to use it but I couldn’t shake a sense of wrongness that came with it.
I was in Border’s Books when I saw a Tarot deck that looked promising. So I researched it online — a big “no” to that deck but I came across two other possible decks: The Gilded Tarot and Legacy of the Divine Tarot, both by Ciro Marchetti. The imagery in both of them looked promising.
I went to New Age People, a local new age store, to see if I could actually see and touch the cards. I held both decks in my hands, excited by both. Suddenly for no reason that I can fathom, the Gilded Tarot leapt out of my hands and skittered across the floor, thumping into a woman’s foot. She looks up at me and says, “That must mean something.” I looked at the Legacy of the Divine Tarot left in my hands and replied, “I think it means I’m left with the deck I’m supposed to have.”
But I’m still skeptical. I don’t want to spend almost $30 on a deck that eventually doesn’t work for me. So I ask someone there if I can open the box. Yes, I can open the box. But the cards were shrink-wrapped and I couldn’t open those. So I read about the cards in the enclosed book. It talked about a world that had been destroyed and that “Millennia have passed and only humankind has survived–through the divine gift of dreams.” That spoke to me.
So I took the plunge.
And plunge I did.
