Family comes rushing from the village to greet his tale. In his quiet return, the man carried as well, on his back, the grief that is a celebrated wounding that he agrees to bear in return for the food, tools, and clothing for his family.
In this movement….wholeness met wholeness…deep brown eyes met other eyes the same somehow …ask and response was the song of the offering. He returns carrying the weight of it all, and it’s place in life. This buck and this hunter go home with a fullness of pride and price….a dream of balance …of give and take.
Quietly, the hunter gently lifts his now still brother to earth and kneels with his body. Lowering his forehead to the cooling body, he prays…gives thanks and asks forgiveness for a life taken….forgiveness from the deer and from Great Spirit for this taking…and gratitude for the painful blessing of this life of eating one another.
Crumbled tobacco is rubbed into it’s tawny fur and smoke blown into it’s black still glistening nose. A drop of blood rolls out. The women and children watch with softly curious eyes as they hold their own dancing feet to solemn flowering Earth.
Here beauty is a state of being… grace unfolds…a meeting of a proud masculine…skill for skill and love against love…the balance is born and bowed to.
Shame has no home.