Vachon Imagined

I have recently taught my son how to load a dishwasher the proper way. The right way. The only way. The way everyone should because, on all that is bubbly and now holy, I have declared myself the King of Dishwashing.

Men have a king of the grill. They stand proudly before the flames, tongs in hand, declaring the sacred laws of seasoning, temperature, and timing. I have found my kingdom. My throne is the dishwasher. My crown is a perfectly arranged rack.

And why?

Because I have a way of doing things.

Naturally, my son needed to be rescued from his barbaric ways—throwing a plate into the dishwasher like he was launching a frisbee into an athletic competition. No, no, no. There is a method. There is an order. There is a place for everything.

The master has spoken.

Please, everyone, take a moment to applaud. I will wait until the recognition has ended.

But then I started laughing because isn’t this how it begins?

Religion does not always arrive as a massive institution with a pope, a pastor, a temple, or a congregation. Religion is also much smaller because religion is simply the way we do things.

The way we fold towels.

The way we make coffee.

The way we raise children.

The way we speak.

The way we style our hair.

The way we believe life should be lived.

Something begins as an experience. Someone discovers a way that works, a way that brings comfort, order, or meaning. Then slowly, the practice becomes a process. The process becomes a tradition. The tradition becomes a rule.

And eventually, what was once a personal discovery becomes something we believe everyone else must follow.

Ah yes.

Control all others. The master has spoken.

Humans are fascinating creatures because we create religions out of everything. We take what helped us survive and turn it into a structure we defend. We take what gave us meaning and turn it into something we protect.

But then something happens.

We get tired.

Even the most wonderful things can become stale.

It is like my grandmother’s pot roast. (And let me be clear: with those potatoes and carrots, it was a masterpiece.) But if I ate that same pot roast every single night for the rest of my life, eventually even something sacred would become routine. What was once nourishment could become obligation. What was once love could become repetition.

And that is part of the human condition.

We live in invisible prisons. Not always prisons made of chains, but prisons made of certainty. We are surrounded by the walls of what we believe, what we inherited, and what we have been taught is the only way.

So how do we live?

We learn to honor religion without becoming imprisoned by it.

We honor people’s ways of doing things without making those ways the law of existence.

Because humans will resist. It is part of who we are. We question. We challenge. We grapple. We complain. We push against the boundaries placed around us.

The answer is not to destroy religion, tradition, or the ways people create meaning.

The answer is humility.

To recognize that the way we do something can be beautiful, meaningful, and valuable—but it is still our way.

And when a person learns this, something remarkable happens.

They begin to see how much they do not know.

They begin to see how much they are still learning.

They begin to experience the freedom of honoring what came before while remaining open to what comes next.

Religion becomes truly alive—not when it controls, but when it teaches.

Not when it demands obedience, but when it invites understanding.

Not when it closes the door, but when it opens one.

Even if the lesson comes from something as ordinary as a dishwasher.