[Solved] Using Find with an exclude/exclude file

I am familiar with using tar and exclude/include files:

tar zcf backup.dirs.tgz --files-from=include.mydirs --exclude-from=exclude.mydirs --no-recursion

but was wondering if I could use find in the same way. I know that you can just specify the directories to exclude but my list is large. Tar is specific which I like:

find . -depth -ipath './.*' -prune -o -ipath './Downloads*' -prune -o -print

I have to backup specific files from several location and exclude the residual garbage. In my script I have it structure to use find and cpio together and wanted to minimally modify it. So what I want is:

find (read from and include file) (read from my exclude file) | cpio -oavc > somedir

??

find doesn't work that way. However, grep can.

find ... | grep -v -f excludefile | grep -f includefile | cpio ...

awesome