Today I think I will clean inside the refrigerator so that tomorrow it will look like I did not clean it at all.
One month ago I washed the windows so that one month later it would look like I didn’t.
I also make our bed, re- (and then re-) organize the kitchen cupboard that provides temporary housing for snacks that quickly disappear, and on rare occasion I have been known to fold and sort clothing and accessories belonging to my daughter’s dolls (under her direction and supervision).
All of these chores can be filed together under the letter “A” for absurd. These are absurd ways to spend time. I know my work will be unnoticed by most everyone but me, and my efforts will be undone rather quickly.
Yet for a brief moment there is order where there had not been. Like God speaking into the chaos and nothingness at the start of God’s first day on the job, it all makes sense for just long enough to take it all in; to believe that order might be possible after all.
And then someone raids the refrigerator, or soaks the windows when he meant to water the grass, or confuses the drawers that belong strictly to the doll’s stockings with the drawer designated for headbands.
What order?
Like a day that does what it does instead of what you expected it to. Like kids for whom you dreamed one dream who now occupy their own quite different dream. Like you, who woke up ready for this day and now you feel as undone as the formerly-organized snack cupboard; as dis-orderly as my refrigerator will be by the time the sun tucks itself beneath the horizon.
We are meant to be both done and undone, we human creatures. To be both orderly and dis-orderly, both lost and found, both “W” for wise and “A” for absurd. You have noticed the order God once pronounced long ago for the very first time did not stick. But God stuck around; kept speaking as stubbornly as the mom who continues to do the absurd chores. Even when it doesn’t look like we did them at all. But we did. We sure did.
Lisa Lewton 