Almighty Lord,

1. Forgive me for daring to intrude upon Your impenetrable thoughts, but it is my sufferance that entitles my action.
2. I am a young man suffering from AIDS, a walking shadow, helpless and wretched.
3. My friends are shunning me, my fellows lend no ear to my cry, the dead do not yet admit me as one of their own, and above all, Heaven itself is set against me.
4. This illness is far more ruthless than the pains Your Son has experienced.
5. AIDS is a cross of torment, which allows no liberation despite all bursting iconostases, and all the clouds obscuring the face of the world,
6. a stake that burns you, but offers no easy consummation, a perfidious death which endlessly kills you and brings you back to life.
7. Were they to suffer from such a disease, the stoics would have burned away their treatises and Job himself would have attempted suicide.
8. My days are growing less, and the earth is about to gulp me down in its relentless Leviathan gut which is too narrow to hold the universe I shall descend with, and yet too spacious for a handful of flesh defiled by the claws of this disease, as if by the claws of a bird of prey.
9. I am young, my Lord, and my voice is fading out, my feet are growing weak and my mouth is embittered.
10. My chest is burning and flames are scorching my throat.
11. Why do you send me to my grave in the prime of my life? The world is dear to me and I do not wish to die!
12. If I do not disturb the peace of your heavenly abode, why do You not allow me to enjoy my earthly ways?
13. Let the pyre of my pain find consummation on the pyre of the world!
14. In breezy levitations let me soar above the oceans to cool my greenish flames.
15. Were I to drip only a drop of the venom that You gave me, it would suffice to kill Your universe.
16. The very serpents are queuing up to quench their thirst thus in my venom.
17. Crushed between heaven and earth, celestial morning stars keep twinging at my skull and grass is sprouting on my entrails.
18. Oh Lord, despite my ever-clenching fists, life is still slipping out of my hands like a slimy fish.
19. Exhaustless spring of feverish waters is my forehead, and death has nestled in my face.
20. Oh, God, set the azure afire!
21. Clouds of soot, funereal birds are flooding Your suns and mine.
22. Reach out, oh Lord, Your right arm to one wallowing among despised, a body tattered with leafy and foul-smelling wounds;
23. for, Your punishing fire is burning me beyond endurance.
24. If only I had been a sun wandering on the azure, and no one would have dared to meet my glow;
25. if only I had been a wild tree, and no one would have bitten of my bitter fruit; or a wild whirling water, to have the covetous drowning in my waves;
26. an edelweiss on edgy cliffs or an eagle, to fly and behold the approaching peril.
27. If I have sinned, it is because You made me powerless.
28. There shall never be justice between the two of us, for I am a handful of ashes, whereas You – an infinite uncreated cosmic giant who stands beyond pain but freely distributes it to mortals at the desk.
29. For how long will You still mock this fistful of clay, are Your cheeks never wet?
30. Do not grow angry with Your servant, for You have endowed me with reason.
31. As long as I am awestricken by Your infinity, I shall not cease asking You questions.
32. Why do You keep revealing Your hands but never unveil Your face?
33. Why would You wreak Your wrath upon a blade of grass, which is already bent by dewdrops and twisted by the wind?
34. You have attired me with corruptible coats of skin, whereas Your own is a woven garb of shadow.
35. I know myself to be mortal, but still allow me to die with dignity, let me in my very death feel Your goodness.
36. My eyes have ceased to be of service, they have lost their brightness, like two wrinkled almonds they are hiding in my rotting orbits.
37. Oh Lord, do not deprive me of my sight, for I still need it to sense Your Heavens!
38. If by yesterday, I kept filling the world with graces, and women were so ready to feast their eyes on me, today not even ravens would defile their beaks onto my carcass.
39. The pendants of heaven keep swaying, the world is shattered to its very foundations, and You are unbending in Your wrath.
40. The flesh on my bones is coming loose and my wounds are reeking.
41. Will the stench of my body ever reach Your senses?
42. I wither with thirst for life at the gate of Your house, and cannot understand why You enjoy the music of my wailing.
43. Have You by any means not forbidden Satan to touch the soul of Job? So, why am I forsaken to the will of the evil one?
44. Oh God, AIDS envenoms the soul, gnaws off the brain, rusts away the spindle of the spirit.
45. Why have You called me into being imperfect and free, and if so, why do You still judge me?
46. If You have known me to use my freedom wrongly, why did You bestow it on me?
47. Oh Lord, are we not both powerless, me as unable to act and You as unable to eschew from acting?
48. Oh, sun above all suns, in what fathomless depths do You soar?
49. The gleam flickering between us is the gleam of powerlessness, and my mind cannot tell who is more powerless of the two.
50. Why have You poured out the utmost of Your love into Your creatures? Did trinity love not suffice?
51. How can a good God create an evil world? If You are the absolute wholeness, how can the abysm exist beyond You?
52. How can You behold Yourself in my mirror reflection and stand Yourself in this condition, or am I not indeed after Your image?
53. Why do You thrust thistles at my body that is itself now but a thorn?
54. Why do You work in darkness, You that have called Yourself “Light”?
55. I do not accuse You, Lord, of having infected me with AIDS, but am instead wondering why have You tolerated such a thing to happen,
56. do not the reigns of this world belong to You to the very end?
57. Your absence from my life during the night when I caught the disease proves to Your lack of care for Your own creatures.
58. Your interference equals thus coercion, for I did nothing beside what You knew I would do.
59. Oh God, am I indeed to blame for the sin I have committed?
60. You knew that AIDS would bring my death even before I was begotten in my mother’s womb.
61. Thus, I could not but die of this disease, for Your design is for once and for all times,
62. and if by any chance, my life had triggered second thoughts about my ending, You knew from the very beginning that You would reconsider Your decisions and also in what manner.
63. So, was my freedom simply my ignorance of what my God had known?
64. You did not force me, but knew what I would choose. While bringing me into being, the choice was already made.
65. By calling me into being, You have essentially encouraged my choice.
66. In order to accomplish Your design, and what You knew that I would choose, You have guided me from the very womb of my mother by giving me a sensuous character, then You have awoken my drives by creating images that aroused my lust.
67. Even if You had not known beforehand, for Your thoughts are beyond time, when seeing me simultaneously as baby, student and then suffering from AIDS, You would still deny me my freedom.
68. You should not see my actions, but ignore me, for me to be indeed free.
69. Full freedom includes also awareness. As long as I have no foresight of all paths, I am not free to make my choice.
70. During the evening when I caught the disease, I had a number of possibilities ahead of me:
71. a friend had invited me to dinner, mother asked me to stay at home, I wanted to take a stroll through the park,
72. yet something had induced me into entering the nightclub that I had seen several weeks before – but never thought that I would ever visit.
73. It was there, during that night, that I met the being that would share with me untimely death.
74. Only now do I realize that my first seeing the club was not haphazardly.
75. You showed me the place, for me to know the path leading there, where only a few weeks later, death would await me.
76. You had known all along – otherwise You would not be All-knowing, and I did exactly what You knew I would do.
77. I might have stayed at home, yet ever since the beginning of time You had known my bed to remain empty during that night.
78. I should have been aware of all the real circumstances that concerned me, including the fact that I would die of AIDS, for me to have been truly free during that night. Had I but known this fact, I would never have entered the club, and consequently had been able to make a free choice.
79. It is said that although You are All-knowing, You do not force us into obedience, like a doctor who, although aware of the fatal disease, does not force the patient into dying.
80. Indeed my Lord, but the doctor only assesses the disease, he is not involved in its production; while, on the other hand, You are the absolute wholeness and the entire causal chain is known to You.
81. Though having knowledge of all things my Lord, why do You not determine them too?
82. Is it indeed within my power to act beyond Your infinity?
83. Being free means being able to make a choice guided by reason and not by lust.
84. What am I to do furnished with a cartful of freedom, a mountain of pleasure and a grain of will when faced with woman’s irresistible beauty?
85. The honeycomb You seeded into her body entices me to drink now of its sweetness.
86. Why have You conveyed her trembling breasts so alluring and her eyes so full of abyss?
87. Why have You sown in men the hunger of one another, why should we ravenously bite of each other as is feeding on ripe fruit?
88. Were it not better to have been two roses, and lovingly to open our blossom to each other and then to keep thus blooming forth?
89. Now that I have to leave this earthly paradise and to descend into the depth, my soul is freezing and my heart keeps thumping at my chest as if a hammer.
90. Allow me some more time, my God, for I have not yet settled my deal with the world.
91. I am young, my Lord, and do not wish to die.
92. My Lord, I do not know yet how to die. If only You could die my deadliness!
93. Enlighten the minds of the learned to find a cure to this disease, for terrible is my torment in its claws.
94. Command them to inspect the sand of deserts, the dust on the moon, the caves’ intestines,
95. the entrails of the earth, sarcophagi of pharaohs, the serpents’ venom, the blue of the sky and the morning dew.
96. Angels, Archangels with swords of fire, Cherubims, Dominions, Thrones, Principalities, Powers and Flights, many-winged Seraphims,
97. you, who abide around the Almighty’s tent, ask Him to take pity on his being.
98. Help me my God, for we cannot go on one without the other. You need to exist and I need to witness Your existence,
99. You need to help me and I stand in need of Your help.
100. I can neither live, nor die without You, my thoughts are like sprouting leafs of Eschaton.
101. I can already hear the knocking hammer that sews up my coffin and myriads of spades are digging me down.
102. Maybe the next toll of the bell will swallow up my last of smiles. Yet there is fire ahead, and behind there is only water.
103. My Lord, You have dumbly tied us to the pillar of existence. Are You not touched beneath Your mantle?
104. You are thus bathing Your feet in the azure, while my very entrails are rotting.
105. Do not put me into the ground!
106. Had I but known my fate was thus to rot, when playing in the mud I would have made friends with the maggots, but as it is, now I am but a stranger to them.
107. Dear God, the cherry trees are blooming, the osier is now green while I begin to rot.
108. Please die in my stead or at least descend with me in the ground and protect me from the maggots,
109. and if the graves – the broad, the narrow graves – cannot so hold You, then bury me under Your throne of stars.
110. And thus, from time to time bring my self back to life, with my one arm to slap You and with the other to caress You – just as You do to Your creatures of clay.
111. I am dried up my Lord and pale as wax.
112. Let thunderbolts from heaven lighten me up.
113. Under Your very eyes and the eyes of angels that contemplate from heaven’s balconies, I shall burn out like a candle of sacrifice.
114. Now, at the end of the road, allow me God to approach Your Heaven.
115. Break up the window of my being with the shafts of Your endless love!
116. I wonder, might Your overflowing infinite love be yet hindered in any way by my finite freedom?
117. Mourn for me, oh Heavens, you grieving maidens mourn for my soul.
118. I weep like the woman who had sinned, I utter the robber’s words on the cross,
119. forgive me, You Who love men, Jesus, Son of God,
120. deliver me. Bestow on me the gift on endurance and wisdom, and then let my body bend under the burden of my pain.
121. Almighty, You Who have seen Your Mother wailing at your cross, You know that there is nothing more cruel and unnatural in this world than the offspring dying before their parents.
122. And if I die, I beg of you descend on tardy nights and whisper in their ears that I am indeed alive in Your Heaven.
123. Do but stay in my stead and watch them in their old age!
124. You have been on the cross for few hours, while my disease is gnawing at my body for years on end, and every moment is a Golgotha.
125. Jesus Christ, Son of God, You Who at the wedding in Cana have turned the water into wine, for the guests to continue in their mirth,
126. descend even now from above and witness the wedding of my sufferance.
127. I do not ask of you to turn the water into wine, my vine has borne enough and I have far too much drunk of its fruit.
128. Transform yet, if you will, my wine into some water.
129. How very small my torment would appear to me when I behold it in Your Light, how very soon my torment would thus thaw when meeting the warmth of Your Being, yet far away I stand from You, and so Your star flickers of death on the sky of my wandering.
130. Awaiting thus an answer, I burn and bow before what is above my understanding.

Humbly yours,
ONE THAT SHALL BE NO LONGER































Beloved being,

1. I am the depth of Light for Whom time itself is a mere fleck of dust.
2. When facing me, the ageless intelligence of angels cannot but awe, for they find their origins, their rest, their sight and ecstasy in the music of My infinity.
3. Nothing that has spirit may thus enter My heavens without already existing within Me.
4. Nothing can find its balance and its drive beyond Me.
5. In My presence not only time, but the abyss itself is embarrassed by its pettiness.
6. I play with time as a child would with a flake of snow – lest his smile were as enchanting as not to crush it.
7. The restless abysm does stand still in My presence and the gorge, endless in its chasm, finds its peace.
8. In order to cast what is beyond any shape, I have ordered the hidden structure of the world in spheres whose secret consonance is known only to angels.
9. My inner Self is an ocean of love, yet love which is overflowing and in its fathomless depth freely creates heavens, eons, spheres, time, light, angels, men, butterflies.
10. In the centre of the world, I have placed Adam, mediator between heaven and earth, animals and angels, body and spirit – in whom the entire creation was brought together and who bore in his depth My ineffable Image.
11. The universe was a vast chord in which the visible and the invisible harmoniously resounded, alike to atoms and constellations, the blade of grass and the progress of suns?
12. Man suffered from blessed ignorance, not knowing of hatred, possession, repulsion, sickness or death.
13. The cosmos was transparent to the light by which I revealed the abyss of My love, all things facing the unfathomable inward of My Being.
14. From the highest of abodes, an angel around the throne of Infinity turned his face away from Me, estranged the eye of his spirit from the Light of My Self, choosing instead the wasteland of madness and destruction.
15. His fall turned him into a fiend, to Me but also to himself.
16. Still, it was only through Adam that sin could touch the very foundations of the cosmos. Had he resisted the temptation of knowing evil, creation would have remained undamaged.
17. Not one being can resemble Me in My knowledge of good and evil, for no one can know what is inside and what is outside, lest endlessness be within himself.
18. Evil had so deeply pervaded the human nature – that I Myself had to descend in time in order to deliver it from the tyranny of darkness.
19. I have chosen you from the very womb of your mother. Then I have let you enjoy the light of day, to grow and be strong and to rule the world.
20. Do not feel overwhelmed by My endlessness and do not ignore the light that burns its flame inside you.
21. Behold the fire-flies and you will see they do not wail over their short-lived glow when faced with the moon’s splendour on the sky.
22. Are you indeed much greater than they are, and is your sparkle so much brighter?
23. Lest I did care for you, you would at once return so to the nought whence you were brought to life,
24. but I have begotten everything for life, not to enjoy the dying of the living.
25. My fight is thus set not against you, but against the evil within you.
26. I have admitted sufferance not to kill you, but for you to be akin to Me.
27. Not I, but you want to kill Me by doubt, rebellion and negation.
28. Oh, human being, when shall you understand your calling?
29. So far you have looked at the world and squandered prodigally in its company.
30. Now you have turned your sight to Me and now you gather the fruits of benefit.
31. I thus have set an order which governs the world of nature, and do not interfere in the progress of all things.
32. It was not I that punished you, I am not human to bear you any grudge,
33. but it was your own self who has chosen the circumstances that led to the disease.
34. Although I am your God, I cannot force you into acting right, for I have endowed you with free will,
35. but when your choice is wrong, I suffer for your sorrow.
36. Human suffering is not alien to me, for through My Son I have experienced your life from cradle to the very grave.
37. Why do you weep for your bones when you know their fate?
38. Why are you dismayed when you see flesh going the way of all things?
39. Is its destination not the same despite your over-worry?
40. Why do you keep traversing time, when I have designed time to traverse you?
41. Even when you raise your fist against Me, I still do love you.
42. I envelop your face with kisses and my kiss does scorch you.
43. I cannot bear the evil, and when it enters your life, I try to turn it into goodness.
44. Bear your disease with dignity and patience and with My help, you shall transform it into a liturgy I shall attend without delay!
45. Life is a gift that you return to Me sanctified on the cross. I accept your gift with joy and My resurrection shall turn you into a son of eternity.
46. You are light from My Light. My One Reason is undividedly divided into your reason.
47. Who called you powerless?
48. Within you my power rests, stronger than storms at sea and thunderbolts slitting the air.
49. You man, are not a handful of ashes but a chosen vessel, a God-cub.
50. In My Being Almightiness and Will are one. I can do anything I wish to, yet I do not wish to do as much as I can.
51. I am unable to do evil, yet evil stands not beyond my power.
52. Being powerless means not being able to do good.
53. Freedom rests at the bosom of my infinite Being and thereby its mystery stands within Myself.
54. Beyond Me there is only eternal bondage.
55. The ultimate proof of love is offering freedom, thus I have given man the most precious of all gifts and he has fallen into sorrow, for no freedom can bear being lost if limited.
56. Freedom could not find consummation but in Myself, for I am boundless.
57. And where would you be free unless you had space?
58. And where would you find this space, if beyond Me there is nought?
59. My cognition is not temporal, mediated or fragmented.
60. I do not think, I do not know, I do not see the way you do, but in a manner that is beyond you, that are born of flesh.
61. I am the Being of absolute freedom, the pure Indeterminate, yet in spirit – that grain of eternity which I have sowed into your being – I have called you as well to enjoy this freedom.
62. You cannot share my freedom, for you are a created being, and the limits of creation are the very limits of your freedom.
63. My freedom is not only a freedom of choice, but is beyond any choice.
64. I do know everything beforehand, but My cognition is beyond time.
65. Past, present and future are concentrated in one instant, a perpetual present time.
66. Although I foreknow your actions, I am not the cause of your deed, which stands within the power of your will.
67. I knew you would be infected with AIDS, but I have not forced you into it.
68. The reality of your actions does not depend on the fact that I know them, but my cognizance is determined by your acts.
69. I foresee your deeds simply as outcome of your absolute freedom.
70. If I know that some shall be redeemed while others will be doomed, this is due to my foreknowledge in eternity, and does by no means determine you to choose evil, for you act at a different level in my Omniscience where for one moment you are absolutely free to choose.
71. If you direct your steps unawares toward something that might cause you harm, I enlighten your mind to comprehend the consequences of your deed, but I do not coerce you neither into your good actions, nor into your faulty ones.
72. You are truly free only when your will is in accord with Mine, when you accept the bondage of goodness, of love towards Me.
73. You ask of Me, beloved creature, to ignore you, to turn My face away from you when you act, in order not to deface your freedom.
74. Oh, if only you loved Me, you would ask Me to come closer, so much closer that I Myself could act within your self.
75. And still how could you be completely free when clothes of clay burden your body?
76. Why do you keep craving for that freedom you cannot bear? My freedom would scorch your garb of flesh.
77. Your earthly life is a ceaseless fight, a trial, a passage to eternity, an instance of choice I have bestowed on you. It would be absurd for this dream, this mere fume to be your ultimate existence.
78. True life begins with that slumber that you call death.
79. I have not created death, but a free being who has turned his face from My Own by choosing instead the darkness of night.
80. In suffering and dying for you, My Own Son has vanquished death.
81. By becoming One with Him, you also partake in His Resurrection, and, like His death, your death will also be a slumber from which you shall awake again to eternal life.
82. Why do you see the handful of ashes but not the sheaf of beams?
83. Why do you tremble at the voice of the earth which is asking for its right, but do not lend your ear to My Word which summons you wholly.
84. Being born again in Me through death, you cast off the heavy mantle of your corruptible body, and with this spiritual being you will traverse the Heavens and find rest in the world of pure beings.
85. Not wanting to tell apart the physical nature, I have not created the human pair from the very beginning, but have first called into being man.
86. I have created woman not out of mere clay but out of your own rib, for you to keep looking for each other, you for the rib, she for the spot of her origins.
87. I have given you the woman to help you, to prevent loneliness and to offer you fulfillment in love, for true love is exchange of being. Neither am I, your God, an only person.
88. Woman has been given unto you to fill the world with her smiles and candour, and like flowers to cheer you up at all times.
89. You said My torment had lasted a few hours, but do you indeed know the nature of time?
90. Do you indeed know at what times I have suffered?
91. Can you at least suspect that in those hours were compressed and embraced all seconds of the world’s sorrow and all the instances of your anguish?
92. Should thus the artist be scolded for his work of art?
93. Is the work of his hands not to be honoured?
94. Have I not embellished the Universe as the bride trims the house while waiting for her groom?
95. Why do you judge me in your ignorance, as if you yourself had set the foundations of the world?
96. Why do you wish to split the rays of the sun with your mind instead of delighting your eyes with their light?
97. Who are you, man, to take to task the One Who makes all things perfect? How will you judge Me if you have never seen Me?
98. Do you by any means sharpen the blade of grass that breaks through the earth’s crust and spreads over the ground?
99. Do you command the clouds to gallop from one end to the other of the sky?
100. Have you been present when I separated the ground from the water, or have you perhaps smoothed out the expanse of the sea?
101. Have you placed the skylights above the earth, and have you ever strolled beyond My heavens?
102. Do you quite know the range of My overflowing Spirit?
103. Do you support the planets on your shoulders and prevent their fall on the earth, what about men, is it you who stops them from falling into the sky?
104. Who breaks loose the rain in midsummer when the ground keeps cracking in the heat and the mouths of all creatures are scorched with thirst?
105. If you have done none of this, why do you raise your voice against Me?
106. Take heed, My son, and talk to Me! Have you perhaps given Me something that I have to return?
107. Have I not given you life as a gift and created all the things around you to your delight?
108. If you are now in pain, this is a sign of My love for you.
109. My love is not hampered by the briefness of your life but by its very eternity.
110. Could I love you in any other way but eternally?
111. Do not despair, beloved creature, lift up your mind toward your Creator, break you heart for your trespasses, for I will send My Spirit to protect you.
112. I shall put on your head a crown that is more brilliant than gold itself, and out of bolts of thunder shall I weave your garment.
113. Thus shall you enter My heavenly abode and rejoice unto ages in Me.
114. I am your good willing and loving Father who never deserts you in pain and sorrow.
115. When you seem to be alone, I simply disappear from the horizon of your finite understanding. Moreover, when you are in times of trouble I hold you in My arms, and maybe this is why you cannot see Me.
116. Even if you had not been ill with AIDS, at some time you should have died your death.
117. Your thirst for being cannot be quenched but in Myself.
118. The more you approach Me, the deeper I shall rest into your bosom, until our mutual Love shall turn Me into man and you into God.
119. Do not stop weeping, beloved being, for in your tears My Spirit perspires within you,
120. all heavens are melting and dripping through your eyes.
121. Weep on, for your tears fall onto Me like a fertile rain ascending from the ground to the very heaven.
122. I shall count your tears one by one and fashion a halo of morning stars around your head.
123. The begetting of this world has been planned since the very dawn of time, and out of love have I arranged its path towards redemption.
124. How could I now turn My Face away from My creature?
125. I have devised the world with laws for the entire creation to follow, yet if I find it necessary, I shall raise My right arm above the laws of nature,
126. light from above shall descend upon the minds of the learned and at the given time their wisdom shall discover the cure of this murderous affliction.
127. Has there ever been any pestilence ravaging the earth, which did not mark My heart? Do not despair, for once again I shall not let My creature perish.
128. Sufferance, sickness, death are your mere limits, but keep in mind that, where there are limits, there must also be something beyond.
129. Are the seeds of trees afraid of the handful of earth covering them, as the commanding voice of the sun calls them forth to radiant light?
130. If they did waver the way you do, no oak trees would open their crowns to embrace the sky?
131. If I have not answered your questions, it is either because it would have been of no use to you, or because the truth would have been overwhelming to you, for your mind cannot comprehend My infinity and your ear is not accustomed to My thunderous words.
132. Lest for the answers, your very questions would not have been possible.
133. Keep looking for Me in your very sufferance, in your questions, and beyond any answer you shall find Me wholly in all My glory and mystery.
134. Until we meet again in heavenly abodes, where your body cleansed of all wounds shall bathe into My Light, I bless you in My peace and hold you to My fatherly bosom.

With endless love,
THE ONE THAT ALWAYS IS