creative consumption

if you know me, you know i love to eat. (i didn't always, but being over that hiccup as a recovering perfectionist, i have made--i daresay--more than a full return to make up for lost time.) food is amazing and involves cooking and sharing meals with friends, God's grand design of the Feast.

and the Feast is more than overeating. it can become a celebratory, even incarnational act. as part of a consumer society, this is as foreign to us as the Fast.

i shared a related idea with my high school art students recently: that of the balance between consumption and creation. what, in the form of new ideas, are we taking in vs. what we are putting out? my art group helps me with this rhythm in my own life in terms of the creative cycle 1) ideating 2) creating 3) reflecting 4) resting.

i will typically have several projects of varying intensities going on simultaneously. and sometimes, the field of my creative output needs to lay fallow and Sabbath for a while.

in the meantime, i feast. lately i have found tasty morsels in the following:

-Oregon Symphony's performance of Sibelius, Prokofiev, and Wagner
-cds East Mountain South and Above the Golden State
-book "Here If You Need Me" by Kate Braestrup
-"Sleeping With Bread" (spiritual practice of examen)
-movie "Bright Star" about poet John Keats

what's feeding you lately and what are you cooking up for others?