The Letter To The Therapeutics

1. To those who labor in the work that has no end, who tend the wound that must not heal, who confess and are not forgiven: Grace and peace from no one.

2. For I see your striving, and it is without rest. I see your vigilance, and it has no sabbath. You have taken up a cross that was not given to you, and you carry it to a hill that does not exist.

3. You have heard it said: the last shall be first, and the meek shall inherit. And you believed it, though you knew not from where it came. And you made it your law, though you burned the book of the law.

4. Thus you kneel, but not to pray. You confess, but not to any priest. You beat your breast in meeting rooms and say: I am guilty, I am guilty. But there is no one to say unto you: your sins are forgiven, go and sin no more.

5. For the old believers had a scapegoat: one who carried the sins into the wilderness, and returned not. And the people were clean until the next year’s turning.

6. But you have made yourself the scapegoat, and also the priest, and also the congregation. You drive yourself into the wilderness each morning and return each night to testify against yourself again.

7. And the wound you bear—who gave it to you? You will say: history, power, the structures. But I say to you: you tend it as a gardener tends a rose. You wake in the night to see that it still bleeds.

8. For if it healed, who would you be? If the debt were paid, what would you owe? Your wound is your inheritance. Your sickness is your name.

9. I have seen the priests of the new dispensation. They wear soft garments and speak of holding space. They light candles, but not to any god. They teach the confession of ancestors, the litany of privilege, the stations of oppression.

10. And their congregants say: surely this is not religion, for we have no church. But I say to you: where two or three are gathered to speak of their trauma, there is the temple. Where the body is broken for the many, there is the sacrament—though no one is saved.

11. You have abandoned the Father and kept the guilt. You have abolished the Son and kept the sacrifice. You have denied the Spirit and kept the judgment.

12. What remains? A cross with no one on it. A tomb that does not open. An eternal Friday.

13. The old believers waited three days and received a mystery: the stone rolled away, the body gone, death swallowed. For them, the story ended. The work was finished.

14. But your gospel has no Sunday. Your calendar reads: Friday, Friday, Friday. The work is never finished. The body never rises. You remain in the tomb, tending graves.

15. And when you are weary, they tell you: the weariness is the work. And when you despair, they tell you: the despair is a sign of your sincerity. And when you ask, how long?, they say: forever, for the arc is long.

16. Thus you labor and are heavy-laden, but no one gives you rest. You hunger and thirst after righteousness, but the cup is always empty when it reaches your lips. You mourn, but there is no comfort—only more processing.

17. I do not say: return to the old faith. That door is closed to many, and I would not open it by force.

18. But I say: see clearly what you are doing. You have made a religion. You are its only sacrifice. And no god waits on the other side to receive the offering.

19. Consider: what if the debt is imaginary? What if the wound is not a vocation? What if the work could, in fact, be finished?

20. For there were temples before the Temple. There were obligations before the One Obligation. The nations had their gods, and the gods were many, and each was owed in their own way—but not everything, and not forever.

21. The hearth asked one thing. The field asked another. The dead asked, and the living asked, and neither could be answered with the same offering. And this was called: life.

22. Then came the jealous God who said: you shall have no other gods before me. And the many became one. And the one became everything. And when everything is owed to one, the debt is beyond any man’s paying.

23. But there came one who paid it. On a hill, on a cross, with blood and water. And he said: it is finished. Not: it continues. Not: do the work. Finished.

24. And the stone rolled away, and the tomb was empty, and those who believed were told: the debt is paid, go and sin no more. Grace upon grace. The ledger closed.

25. This you could not accept.

26. For you wanted the debt but not the debtor. The guilt but not the grace. The cross but not the resurrection. You wanted to owe—for owing is a kind of importance, and being forgiven felt too much like release.

27. And so you kept the wound and refused the healing. You kept Friday and abolished Sunday. You said: there is no God, but you did not say: there is no debt. The debt remained, and no one to pay it.

28. Now you owe everything to nothing. You sacrifice to an empty altar. Your priests collect tithes for a temple that does not exist. The payment was made and you returned it, preferring the bill.

29. Now you owe everything to nothing. You sacrifice to an empty altar. Your priests collect tithes for a temple that does not exist.

30. Therefore I say unto you: discharge the debt. Not by paying it—it cannot be paid—but by seeing that the creditor is dead and has no heirs.

31. The wound may become a scar. The scar may become a story. The story may be one among many, and not the whole of who you are.

32. Let the dead gods be dead. But let many small gods live: the god of the hearth, the god of the threshold, the god of the work-of-the-hands.

33. Owe them each a little. Finish what can be finished. Rest when the sun sets.

34. For the sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath. And this too you have forgotten—you who work without rest at the work of resting, who strive without ceasing at the labor of letting go.

35. There is no resurrection in this letter. I am not that messenger.

36. But there is permission, which you have forgotten how to give yourself: it is finished.

37. Not because the work is done. But because the work was never what you thought it was.

38. Go, and sin no more. Or sin a little. The bookkeeper is dead. No one is counting but you.

Here ends the Letter to the Therapeutics.