The other day my family and I were out to dinner and at the table next to us everyone was on their phone. For the entire meal, eyes were never lifted except to take a bite of food and words were never said except to share something from the phones. I know I struggle with […]
Christmas Eve, 70 Degrees, and Hail
Baby Jesus did you come like they say in all those songs and stories and books? Like a lamb? All quiet and unobtrusive? Little cries, little weak cries? Sleeping through the night from the start like a “good baby?” No struggle to fight out of those swaddling cloths? So subtle, you were, that the others never […]
Why I Deleted Most of My Music Library
The first time a middle school friend burned me a mixed CD my whole world got a little bigger. Suddenly, music was endlessly accessible. I spent weekends foraging and sorting through my parents’ CD collection and making my own discoveries and online purchases. Sometime in high school, my library had reached around 10,000 songs. And […]
Smartphone Rules
Like most people, I benefit greatly from the use of my smartphone– but sometimes I get the urge to throw it over a cliff. We all know how addictive smartphones are and how harmful that addiction can be to our physical, social, psychological, emotional, and relational health. After months of frustration with my own addiction […]
Is Every Girl Beautiful?
Every girl is beautiful. So say the many ad campaigns of the body-positive movement in an effort to end the epidemics of eating disorders, self-hatred, and low self-esteem among girls and women. And I agree. Every girl is beautiful. Every human being is beautiful. I believe we were created, and we are thereby works of art — […]
If Computers Replace Mozart
I recently watched a video that compared human composed music with computer composed music. I was sure that the computer music would be robotic and easily recognizable. I was wrong. The computers made symphonies just as the humans made symphonies and most people (including me) couldn’t tell the difference between the two. And this terrified […]