here’s life

I have to admit it: I am addicted. Usually, it’s only “other people” who have life-altering dependencies. But this time it’s me, addicted to food.
When I see people with addictive behaviors, I wonder, “Why don’t they just…stop?” Are they just so nebbish that they can’t just say “no” to their cravings? They know they should stop, they kinda want to stop, but they keep on going. But now, I realize how hard it is. And I’m not even going cold turkey—I’ll continue to be a social eater, have a few burgers with the guys, but what is a problem is sitting alone in my apartment, scarfing down food. I start with a plate of food—”one plate should do….” and I eat it, and then I get some more food, and eat it. And I know I should stop, but I still feel…empty. And then in a few hours, I get hungry again. It never lasts.
So, I’ve failed again. Got home at 10pm after spending the day at the pool, and then frisbee, and then evening service,,,and I keep from loading up on food until after my shower, but then I heated up some enchiladas and ate them, by the light of my computer monitor. And I’m still hungry, even though there is something in my stomach. Guess everybody is doing it. A little more food won’t be much worse, while I’m off the wagon already…I’ll quit—tomorrow… and what do you know? The Verse-of-the-Day from two places each say something pertinent:

1 Corinthians 6:19-20
“Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.”

and,

Hosea 7 : 5
On the day of the festival of our king the princes become inflamed with wine, and he joins hands with the mockers.

This page shows how many people in the world die of different things for different lengths of time. Kinda morbid, but it showed me some interesting comparisons. Take war, for instance: 460 so far today. Now, I am usually pretty much against people getting killed because they can’t get along, but maybe I should be more focused on helping my neighbors not feel the urge to take their own lives, since the suicide count is at 2,348. Or malaria, at 2,451. Or maybe I should drive more carefully—traffic accidents clock in at over 3K. But, the big killer is still cardiovascular, which just crossed the 45,000 mark. That’s forty-five thousand people dead. How can I help reduce that? Encourage people to go get some exercise, by building a park, or inviting someone to come out and fly a kite with me? I don’t see “old age” on there, so maybe that is mixed into the other numbers. Maybe the “heart stopped when he was 110″ skews the cardiovascular number some. But still, there are a good many people dying.

But is death all that bad? Everyone dies eventually, and I’m not dead-set on living to be 110. And it seems that how you live is more important than how long you live. Of the 150+ thousand people who died thus far today—how many of them were really alive? Living life for something more important than their next meal. Having a goal deeper than, having a good time during their [short] life? It would seem that helping people not die, may be dwarfed by the task of helping those remaining people to actually live. There are 6,612,897,237 of us who would benefit from hearing an encouraging word, being shown Christ’s love, and being guided into better relationships with God and people.

The good news is that those two goals are not in competition with each other. We don’t have to help people live, at the cost of people dying, but as Jesus brings health and joy to our current existances, His plans for us can reduce our death rate, as well as ultimately make death not really even worthy of the name. And we can share this with others, until we all join in one song of “Salvation to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.“

We staged a protest today. Couple people from town, one guy came down from Reno county.
It was fun. Cool to see all the different reactions on people’s faces. The Pro-Casino slogan is “Yes, Yes, Win-Win” (summarizing how they want you to mark your ballot, and who they think it will benefit). So, we started out with:

Yes
Yes
Pave this Library

People looked at it and wondered what we were saying. We also brought out “Gamble with the Future”. Grey made “FUN before Learning” and “Bookworms never made MILLIONS” and taped himself in between. We had a “Libraries are for Loosers” [sic.] sign, and Jason drew up “Books R 4 fools” and put it on. But, after talking to people we realized that we were acting on some obscure and faulty premises—it turns out the “remove the library” proposal had been withdrawn two weeks ago, and it was just one idea out of many, so people didn’t know about it. Of course, everything is still a possibility because the counsel won’t decide until after we vote, but we were satirically protesting an idea that wasn’t forefront in people’s minds. So, maybe our “Gamble with the Future” sign was the most fitting. Anyway, we decided we needed a different angle.

Grey thought up “Casinos Now, Progress Never” so we split it onto two signs and stood side by side. It wasn’t as anti-library, so we felt more comfortable, but I think it drew more criticism from the passersby. But some people were cheering for us—probably because they saw the word “Casino”.
See, protesting with satire is hard–usually you only have time to convey “I’m on your side” or “I hate you and all you stand for”—which makes protests largely useless, because people either already agree with you, or already have written you off. So, when have a complex message, they see a key word, and use that to determine what side you are on. Really all you can get across is what camp you are associated with, not a whole message. But, maybe with a Burma-Shave style multi-message it would work. That way, you could have time to transmit a whole sentence. As it was, our message was pretty well hidden. The few people who walked by and talked to us needed to have it explained to them, so I am guessing that the people in cars really didn’t get it.

But, even just watching people drive by for a couple hours was instructive. I saw many different types of people, and it gave the city a face and showed me that you can reach a vertical slice of the social classes from the side of the road. Also, I learned about people’s reactions to this sort of thing. Some people waved and gave us a thumbs up. Some smiled and gave us a thumbs down. (down with us? down with casinos? the library?) Some people acted like they didn’t see anything, but most people wore confusion. It was a good trial run to know how things work. When I have a real message to get across, I’ll know how to do it.

You should try protesting sometime. It is fun. Even if what you say mostly gets confused stares, all the looks are worth a laugh or two.