I believe in a higher power. I believe that this same higher power creatively cast the stars into being and uniquely made each one of us. I believe this same power came as a man and paradoxically lived as both human and God on one of these very floating planets he spun into space. I believe there's a really big picture that we only slightly comprehend and that there are forces we can't see waging war all around us every moment of every day. I know-one of them lives in our washing machine. And for that matter, in my car's radio, my iPod when I'm on an airplane and most computers.
When we got married, Mary and I painstakingly went through the process of dividing up the chores around the house. Some of them just made sense-like me taking out the garbage, and Mary doing the cooking (because she's really good at it and enjoys it)-and others we had to test the waters on to see what worked. As for the laundry, that decision was made from day one. Mary has very particular ways of washing clothes (bless her heart) that should prolong the life of each article by at least 40 years, so we're in good shape there. I, naturally, have been delegated the task of folding.
Most folding times are accompanied by the TV to distract from the monotony of socks and t-shirts that seem to multiply like loaves and fish. With the distraction, I'm not always watching for details, rather just trying to get the job done. It so happened a few months back, must have been during a commercial, that I noticed a strange phenomenon with some of my shirts. I know for a fact that when I added them to the dirty clothes pile, they were properly outside-in (the way they should look when worn). I also know for a fact that when it came to folding, I found them inside-out. Hmm. I started mapping the patterns (flowcharts, spreadsheets, pie charts) and found that in random fashion, my shirts were turning themselves inside-out between the time they left my body and the time I folded them as clean items. I've watched it for months now and can't find any logical pattern for what is going on between the invisible forces and our laundry.
No, it's not the end of the world-and as I've talked to other folders, I have heard similar experiences-and they have survived.
Even so, as the man who experienced life as both human and deity, perhaps the greatest paradox-we are a collection who live at once amidst the mystery of possessed washing machines and the vast questions of life and eternity. We (I) tend to make really big deals out of situations that in the big picture really don't mean much. And therein lies the other side of the creator's coin: he has the capacity to engage us both in the menial mundanes of daily life and the eternal question of what really happens when we die. Sometimes I think those washing machine demons only hope to distract us from reaching further, digging deeper-while we look silly wearing our shirts inside-out.
Life is full of paradox-statements or propositions that seem self-contradictory or absurd but in reality expresses a possible truth. Often we can't wrap our minds around the seeming polar opposites of paradox. Like that God could be a man, too. That omniscient forces could also inhabit our appliances. That we are capable of so much love and so much hate. These are the questions that lead to more questions...like what is the deal with deer crossing signs?
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