There once was a sculptor working hard with his hammer and chisel on a large block of marble. A little boy who was watching him saw nothing more than large and small pieces of stone falling away left and right. He had no idea what was happening. But when the boy returned to the studio a few weeks later, he saw to his great surprise a large, powerful lion sitting in the place where the marble had stood.

With great excitement, the boy ran to the sculptor and said, “Sir, tell me, how did you know there was a lion in the marble?”

“I knew there was a lion in the marble,” said the sculptor, “because before I saw the lion in the marble, I saw him in my own heart. The secret is that it was the lion in my heart who recognized the lion in the marble.”

This story is inspired by Thomas Hora’s Existential Metapsychiatry, (New York: Seabury Press, 1977, p. 20) as found in Henri Nouwen’s Clowning in Rome p. 83-84.