Welcome to another Feasting Friday (Monday Edition).

This week's feast is brought to you by The Dharma Artist Collective; where Artist's go to focus and create.

Poem that brought me to tears:

​David Whyte is one of my spiritual heroes. He pairs depth and levity in a way I don't see often, and when I do, I feel relieved. His energy and his telling of David Wagoner's "Lost" brought me to a stillness deeper than all this week's meditating combined. Enjoy.

What I am reading:

​"Setting God Free" by Father Sean O'Laoire. I went to church once when I was 7 or 8. I came home with so many questions my Mom eventually said I didn't have to go again. For 20+ years I was a militant atheist. Psychedelics mellowed me, but I've never been able to jibe with canonical Christianity. This book is changing and healing and igniting something in me I haven't felt in a long time. Frankly, I think everyone should read it.

What I'm listening to:

​"The case for making art when the world is on fire | Amie McNee." A good friend sent me this TED talk this week and I was surprised at how hard and deeply I wept as I listened to it. I agree with Amie so deeply, and I admire the tenor of her voice, it's urgency and sincerity. God bless her and her message.

Quote I'm enjoying:

Caitlyn shared the following quote with me this morning and I shouted in resonances (from the preface of Tolstoy's Resurrection, written by Ernest J. Simmons:

While he was writing War and Peace, Tolstoy, troubled by the thought that the radical critics would attack him for failing to expose the faults of the privileged classes and the dark misery of the peasantry in his work, wrote to a friend to defend his avoidance of social problems:

“The aims of art are incommensurable (as they say in mathematics) with social aims. The aim of an artist is not to resolve a question irrefutably, but to compel one to love life in all its manifestations, and these are inexhaustible. If I were told that I could write a novel in which I could indisputably establish as true my point of view on all social questions, I would not dedicate two hours to such a work; but if I were told that what I wrote would be read twenty years from now by those who are children today, and that they would weep and laugh over it and fall in love with the life in it, then I would dedicate all my existence and all my powers to it."

Song I'm Listening on Repeat

Brought back a classic this week - Street League by Hucci ​

Weekly Journal Prompt

"What do justifying not creating, what project begs me to create it yet I refuse, because the world is on fire? Because I fear what the social critics will say? Can I at least admit it to myself?"

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