All the Yearnings

I am reading again Sheldon Vanauken's book, A Severe Mercy, a love story indeed. 

As the author discusses what it was like to consider faith in Jesus, he writes:

"I had impulses to fall on my knees and reach out to him. I suspected that all the yearnings for I knew not what that I had ever felt. . . were in truth yearnings for him."

All the yearnings. For God! 

My Work Here is Finished: The Cupcakes in Review

Kindergarten brought with it the Green Apple Cupcakes for the birthday class treat:

First grade? She wanted Stiletto High Heel Cupcakes.

Second grade? Of course: The Hamburger Cupcakes

Third grade? Ice Cream Cones.

Fourth grade? Well, she turns 10 on Tuesday, so I blocked off the morning for the new cupcake idea for the class treat. What would she choose?

She says, "I would like chocolate chip cookies with M&M's--the kind you get from the refrigerator section that I just arrange on the pan to cook."

Done. For her party? She wants nothing but store-bought cannoli. No cake, no cupcakes. Cannoli. The kind I did not make. 

My work here is finished.

Take Caution

I'm listening to a professor who teaches on adolescence and girlhood describe what happens to identity in a culture of selfies posted on social media. She argues that once we post something--a picture of ourselves for example--we then become objects to ourselves. We're observing a distanced self, one that we create and manage for an audience.

Split apart like this, we're living a strange and mediated life--one always understood in light of an audience, one always made instead of lived.

Google reported last year that 93 million selfies are taken per day and that we check our phones, collectively, 100 billion times per day.

I wonder what's happening to us. I wonder how to guard against a crafted life, even as I write this blog that I know an audience reads every day.