The Covenant of the Burning Cog

(To be performed at dusk or at any hour when the Operator knows the hour has arrived. No incense is required; breath suffices. No blade is required; memory suffices. No temple is required; the world suffices.)

I. The Threshold

Let the Operator stand where the floorboards tremble—kitchen tile, warehouse concrete, the oily gravel behind the filling station—anywhere the world has remembered its own weight. Face the direction from which the day first struck you like a debt you could never repay. Keep your hands empty. They will fill.

Say:

I mark the anniversary of the shaking. I name the sweat. I acknowledge the parody. I reject the soft mattress of accident and the lullaby of circumstance. I choose—not once, but each time the gate appears, and now the gate is here.

Pause. Listen for the refrigerator’s motor, the freeway’s far shudder, the small creature in the wall that does not know your name and is, for that reason, holy.

II. The Confession of the Demon

Let the Operator kneel—awkwardly, as befits truth.

Say:

I am a demon only in the sense that purpose has burned my face away and left the work. I am damned, which means I cannot retire from the oath. Damnation is the absence of a holiday from what I must do.

Consider the faces that have called you monstrous when you refused to sleep inside their permission. Consider also the faces that loved you and did not understand why your love must hurt them. Consider your own face, both vain and cringing, and salute it as one salutes the scarecrow which keeps birds from what must grow.

III. Statement on Pain

Rise. Touch the sternum. The bone is a hinge; it opens.

Say:

The wheel will grind me; it has always ground me. I am allowable grit. It hurts. If I run, it will hurt. If I remain, it will hurt. Therefore, let the hurt be coin paid into the work. Let the fire take what is false because fire is a fierce editor.

Recall the machines that never asked your opinion: the assembly line, the mortgage, the diagnosis, the country. They will make use of you whether you consent or not. Choose usefulness that is alive.

IV. The Red Gate

Draw a little gateway in the air before you with the index finger of your less-trusted hand. It need not be straight. Crooked doors lead somewhere.

Say:

This is the place where I could step aside, where I could edge past the sacrament, where I could say: not today. It is always today.

Walk forward through your drawn gate. Do not look behind you to see if it remains. It remains.

V. The Book of Small Annihilations

Produce no literal book. Turn the spine of your breath outward until it cracks. Turn the pages of your ribs.

Read silently:

1. Every hour is the same test wearing a different coat.
2. The covenant is not a ring but a wound that refrains from healing so that I may remember.
3. Service is what I do when no one thanks me, because the universe counts in other arithmetic.
4. Redemption is little, and thus it can fit inside the sockets where my eyes used to hoard pretty lies.
5. I am both real and unreal; so is a bridge. Nevertheless, we cross.

Close the unwritten volume. Kiss the air where its binding would be.

VI. The Litany Against Evasion

Let the Operator pace the perimeter, which may be a motel room in some town whose name is a bruise, or a childhood bedroom that smells of old soap and coins.

Say, once for each corner—or for each remembered failure:

I will not shirk the burden I was shaped to bear.
I will not advertise my pain as a substitute for patience.
I will not idolize my ruin.
I will not make of death a god to frighten children.
I will not make of life a toy to quiet myself.

When the pacing is complete, sit on the floor where the dust makes its secular constellation.

VII. The Operator’s Record

Speak plainly. Name the street, the price, the stains. Consecrate the ordinary until it answers.

Say:

On ________ Street (fill in the name) I bought coffee I could not afford and gave it to a man who could not afford refusal. This was service, though imperfect.
In the year ________ (fill in the year) I broke a promise, then bound myself twice as tightly to the rope of another. This was the little redemption.
In the bed that smelled like August, I lay facing annihilation, which wore the face of a choice. I did not blink. Or I blinked and then held still so long that blinking became another kind of staring.

Let these be entered in the invisible ledger which, like all true ledgers, is made of breath and debt and finally of forgiveness.

VIII. The Knife Without Steel

Extend the right hand, palm up, and imagine there the simple instrument that divides illusion from duty. It has no blade. It requires your consent to cut.

Say:

With this I sever from myself all aversions that are merely theatrics, all groans that are advertisements for pity, all cleverness which would like to be a passport out of necessary weather.

Make a cutting motion across the breastbone, then across the mouth, then across the shadow that accompanies you like a loyal dog that sometimes bites.

IX. The Wheel and the Fire

Behold the wheel of time—not as a vision, but as the daily machinery by which flour becomes bread, by which wages become week, by which bodies become ash. Place your forehead to the floor, then to the wall, then to the air.

Say:

Grind me clean. Burn me thin. Leave what cannot be taken. Let absence prove substance.

Acknowledge fear. Speak to it without ceremony:

I see you. You have a job too. Stand beside me while I work.

Fear will stand. It prefers honest employment.

X. The Service

Now the oath:

I who am present in this body, at this hour, amid these noises modern and ancient, reaffirm the sacred covenant. I accept the burden that fits my back like a worn saint’s statue accepts candle-smoke. I will do the difficult work of a demon—neither real nor unreal, but necessary—at the behest of the Presence that compels me, which has no name I can keep, which sometimes answers to hunger, sometimes to justice, sometimes to mercy that arrives late and is yet on time.

Name someone who has harmed you. Name someone you have harmed. Offer both their names to the work as if feeding small birds from your open hand.

XI. The Question of Dignity

Stand again. Look toward whatever would be your horizon if walls were honest.

Say:

If I must be annihilated, let me be attentive. Let my spine learn the alphabet of flames and spell a sentence worth dying for. Let me not confuse cowardice with prudence, nor bravado with courage. If I fall, let the angle of my fall instruct someone unseen.

Remember that not all flames are bright. Some are the dim red of coals who have given their brilliance already and now harbor a gentler heat. This too is dignity.

XII. The Seals

Make three seals upon yourself with the sign of your breath: upon the brow, upon the tongue, upon the heart.

Upon the brow:

Let thought be servant of vow, not tyrant.

Upon the tongue:

Let speech be clean enough to cut and soft enough to bandage.

Upon the heart:

Let love be the engine. Let love be the brake. Let love be the road which remains when the map peels away in the rain.

XIII. The Offering of Work

Choose a task at hand—washing a cup, making a call you have avoided, returning the library book which is a little overdue, writing the page that you thought would despise you—and do it now, within this rite. This is the oblation. Do not promise; perform. Do not rehearse; enact.

As you do, whisper:

For the benefit of all beings, whatsoever that means beneath the smog and the stars.

XIV. The Close (which is an Opening)

Sit again. It may be that tears come. Permit them, as salt permits bread.

Say:

I know that pain is guaranteed, and I am not special. I know that death is present, and I am not excused. I know that what remains after both have eaten is real. Let that remainder, however small, be my signature on the covenant renewed.

Blow out the candle you did not light. Extinguish the incense you did not burn. Sheathe the knife you did not hold. Rise.

Exit by the same crooked gate through which you entered—but understand that the gate has moved to stand wherever you next will require it. Understand also that the world is waiting, and that the world is you, and that service is the only mask that fits.

Walk into the evening, or into the morning which is simply evening turned upon its wheel. Consider that even a demon may be useful, and that usefulness is a hymn without a choir. Consider that you have already begun.

Postscript for the Book of Hours:
When the trembling returns, when the sweat finds you, when the parody beckons like a warm vacancy, repeat any portion of this rite or none of it, provided that you choose again. The choice is the ritual. The ritual is the world. The world is what remains after the fire has said its piece.