Bread and Blogs: Introduction

I ate a loaf of bread recently. Not one that you would buy at a grocery store, rows upon rows of white, wheat, or other tastes confections of some giant factory in another state somewhere. This was a loaf made by one of my associates, Andrew (who has the house I mentioned some blogs ago), hand made and baked in his own kitchen. The loaf had a row of cheese baked into the middle, and was infused with Rosemary, a spice I cannot get enough of. The aroma is enough to make me warm and comfortable, content with the world. Makes me wonder if it is not Prozac the world needs, but a good diet of Rosemary each morning. The thought occurred to me, "Why would someone make bread like this?" Certainly, because of its exquisite taste and superior quality to anything made in today's supermarkets. But there has to be something more than that. It surely would cost more to make it yourself, unless you grew the herbs and the wheat...etc... , than to simply go buy a loaf of bread, stick some spices and cheese onto a sandwich, and bingo.

The answer, I think, lies in the making of the bread. But of course, it is much more than just the bread itself, but of the creation of it. A good baker creates the bread, from ingredients that are totally "unbreadlike". Similarly, an architect builds a house out of wood, or stone, glass, any other natural ingredients, creating a structure out of Nature's resources to stand tall and firm in the sunshine. Imagine the feeling that a person would have, when, having pulled the bread out of the oven, or after driving the last nail, he stands back and marvels at what he created. What pride in his work! Or, take holding a book in the hands of one who wrote it for the first time, with the slick, illustrated cover, the words of pages flowing one to another from beginning to end. These are our creations, and it's this feeling I want to take a look at. This will take more than one blog, so I'll split it up as I have done before. Briefly, here are the questions I want to look at:

• What are the origins of "creation?" Or more specifically, what feelings make up the whole idea, and where do they come from?

• How do our religious beliefs encourage our need to create?

• Why do some people feel the need to "unmake," or destroy, while others are driven to create and to "make?"

• How does Creating drive our daily activities, the aspects of our lives, from birth to death?

• How can we create things in today's society? Or does society today encourage or dissuade Creating things?

I'll want to look at creating everyday items, such as the bread, as well as Literary works (especially Fantasy worlds such as Tolkien's or C.S. Lewis' worlds), and then the colossal creations of mankind, from Jerry Jones' stadium in Dallas, Texas to the Statue created recently in Senegal, Africa. So follow me, if you want to, and we'll see where this leads.