Paid $9 for a Pepsi the other day.
Granted, it was a HUGE Pepsi. But still.
I actually tried to spend less on my drink. I initially ordered the smaller size at the Enterprise Center concession stand … but the gal pointed out that for one buck more, I’d get much more soda. And that logic somehow made sense in the moment. It might even save me a trip back to the concession stand once the game got going, I figured.
I’m not even sure how much Pepsi I got for nine bucks, but it was a lot: 24 oz? 30 oz? Way more than I needed, as it turns out. I never did finish the thing … not in the two-plus hours I sat in the stands watching my Beloved Billikens put a whuppin’ on the vaunted Mizzou Tigers.
My taste for a sweet victory was sated that evening, to be sure. But my desire for something to drink? It turned out to be a bit overdone. And that happens a lot in this day and age, doesn’t it? “Excess is best,” our consumer culture screams at us almost every moment of every single day.
Weekends tend to be the worst. That’s when the games occur, our modern-day gods. Arenas and stadiums are full … loud and large and lusty. It’s easy to get caught up in it all, the game-day energy, the pseudo-community … the alternate reality where it somehow makes sense (even for a moment) to pay $9 for a Pepsi.
Perhaps a well-honed sense of sabbath can offer an alternative to this madness. That’s what I find my heart being called to, two days after paying way too much for a Pepsi. I notice that SLU’s big win already feels a bit stale, fading from view. It satisfied for a moment, but inevitably leaves me restless. Overserved, yet still desiring more.
And so, I turn to sabbath scripture – the Psalm verse we recite at Mass today – for an insight into my overindulgent appetites, and maybe even a cure:
My soul is thirsting for you, O Lord my God.
O God, you are my God whom I seek;
for you my flesh pines and my soul thirsts
like the earth, parched, lifeless and without water.
My soul is thirsting for you, O Lord my God.
Let us pause now…to recall that we are in the presence of the Holy & Merciful One.
IHS
