Liturgy of everyday life

Eight in the morning. The coffee is barely lukewarm in the palm of your hand. He rolls out of the corner. A small, white, humming god beginning his monotonous ritual. His world is perfectly simple - a floor plane to be made clean. He has no doubts. No questions. The goal is as clear as the laser beam he now uses to dissect the darkness under the dresser.

I watch him and feel like a heretic looking at a believer. His faith is an algorithm. His prayer is the monotonous hum of the engine. Every turn around the table leg is a precise liturgy. He sucks in the dust and I suck in the silence that is left behind. Gray, heavy, full of unspoken words. I wonder if God is not the same? Having created a universe with clear rules of physics, having set it spinning and now watching from the sidelines. Without emotions. Are we just dust on the space floor?

It hits my slipper. It stops. Calculates a new trajectory. Goes around For him, I am just a temporary, insignificant obstacle. Item. Or maybe we are like that for God? Temporary, moving obstacles in his grand cleansing plan, ending in a perfect, sterile void. Nothing. Absolute cleanliness.

The pump twists the tuft of hair, sucks up yesterday's crumbs. Destroys the past, leaving only the shiny now. His work seems meaningful because it has a clear, visible result. What about my days? They simply fall into the past, turn into dust that no one collects. They accumulate in the corners of the soul, under the furniture of consciousness. And no white god is coming to clean them up.

He finishes. One last quiet beep and it returns to its altar, the charging station. Mission accomplished. The room is clean. The silence becomes deafening.

The cup in his hands got completely cold.

And now what? What, when perfect cleanliness is achieved? When there is no more dust to collect and sins to atone for? What's next after that?

Just one more lap?