David quote

Quote from David's book for Solstice
by MF, Boulder CO


Light up the lights for this Winter solstice night.

Today I went to a friend’s house to work on deer hides to make drums. After soaking for days in a water and ash solution, the hides are tacked to a board. The fat and deeper layers of flesh are scraped off, and then flipped over. The hair is then scraped off. I was only able to help for a little while since it was a work day for me.

Since I came in the middle of the process and left after about 40 minutes, I didn’t think about a ritual honoring these deer. (My friend) got the raw hides from a taxidermist.. They would have been discarded. In any case I thought of the story that David wrote about Deer in his book “Mountains of Light, Pathways of Love”. After reading it, I remembered that I had wanted to share the quote about grief.

Today I felt the grief of David’s death, and just the pure missing him. So it seems appropriate…..

“There is a grief which weighs down the spirit and there is a grief which is the cry of the soul. When you have lost someone you truly loved, then your grief is a gift. This is the grief which reaches beyond this world and opens a doorway to the path of light. This path is the journey of the soul. Yours is such a gift, and I would ask for it in return for my fur.”