Before the sacred, people lost all sense of power and all

Host: The wind whispered through the cracked window of an abandoned church on the edge of the city, its wooden beams groaning with the weight of forgotten prayers. A single candle burned on the altar, its flame trembling as if afraid to be seen. The moonlight bled through the broken stained glass, scattering colors across the dusty floor like fragments of lost faith.

Jack stood near the pulpit, his hands buried in the pockets of his coat, his grey eyes scanning the shadows. Jeeny sat on one of the pews, her fingers tracing the grain of the old wood, her face caught between curiosity and sorrow. The air smelled of stone, wax, and something ancient—something that once demanded worship.

Jack: “You ever notice,” he said softly, “how empty a place feels when people stop believing in it? All this—” he gestured to the altar, the cross, the light—“used to mean something. Now it’s just... decoration.”

Jeeny: “It still means something, Jack. Maybe not the same thing, but something.”

Jack: “No, Jeeny. That’s the illusion Stirner was talking about. ‘No thing is sacred of itself.’ It’s not holy because it is holy—it’s holy because we say it is. And the moment we stop saying it, it’s just wood and stone.”

Host: The candle flickered violently, as if offended. A faint gust of air from the open door stirred the dust, swirling it like a ghostly dance between the two.

Jeeny: “So you think there’s no sacredness at all? No mystery beyond what we invent?”

Jack: “Exactly. Everything sacred is just an agreement—a contract between people too afraid to stand alone. God, nation, law, love—they all start with someone deciding to bow. The moment you stop bowing, the whole illusion collapses.”

Jeeny: “You make it sound like reverence is weakness.”

Jack: “It is. Reverence is just fear with better manners.”

Host: His voice echoed through the hollow church, bouncing off the stone walls like a challenge thrown into eternity. Jeeny’s eyes flashed, her small frame tensing like a drawn bow.

Jeeny: “You mistake humility for fear, Jack. They’re not the same. Reverence isn’t submission—it’s acknowledgment. It’s the heart recognizing something greater than itself.”

Jack: “Greater? What’s greater, Jeeny? This building? The people who built it? The words carved on its walls? We made all of it. We gave it meaning. Without us, it’s nothing.”

Jeeny: “Without meaning, we’re nothing too.”

Host: A long pause followed, the kind that carried weight. Outside, the wind moaned through the trees, and a bell, long forgotten, gave a single rusted chime. Jeeny rose slowly, her voice low but fierce.

Jeeny: “You talk about Stirner like he was a god himself, but even he couldn’t live without symbols. He spoke of conscience—his own conscience. That’s his sacred, Jack. His inner measure of worth. He didn’t destroy meaning; he claimed the right to define it.”

Jack: “So now everyone’s their own priest? Their own church?”

Jeeny: “Maybe that’s the point.”

Host: The flame steadied as if listening. Jack walked closer to the altar, his boots creaking on the floorboards, eyes fixed on the cross that still hung there—its edges chipped, its wood blackened with time.

Jack: “I see what you mean. But if everyone makes their own sacred, doesn’t that make nothing sacred at all? If everything is holy, then nothing is.”

Jeeny: “No, it means holiness stops being a prison. It becomes a choice.”

Jack: “Choice. The word everyone worships now. But choice without truth is chaos.”

Jeeny: “And truth without choice is tyranny.”

Host: The tension snapped like a string pulled too tight. Jack turned sharply, his jaw clenched, his eyes burning with something between anger and grief.

Jack: “Tell that to the ones who killed in the name of their truths. Crusades, inquisitions, revolutions—every era soaked in blood by people who ‘knew’ what was sacred. They all thought conscience was on their side.”

Jeeny: “And the same is true for those who believed in nothing. The wars of greed, the age of apathy, the hollow idols of power—they were born from disbelief, from forgetting what’s worth kneeling for. The absence of sacredness is just as dangerous as its excess.”

Host: The candle bent in the draft, its light trembling across their faces. For a moment, both looked haunted, as if they could see the long procession of centuries walking through that crumbling church—priests, soldiers, dreamers—all arguing over what deserved to be sacred.

Jack: “So what do you kneel to, Jeeny?”

Jeeny: “Not to gods or idols. To life itself. To kindness. To the mystery that I can’t explain but still feel in my bones.”

Jack: “And that’s enough?”

Jeeny: “It has to be.”

Host: Her eyes glistened, not with weakness but with conviction. Jack stared at her, his breathing shallow, his expression softening. He turned back toward the altar, his fingers brushing the wood lightly, almost reverently.

Jack: “You know, Stirner said the sacred exists only because we declare it so. But maybe the problem isn’t in the declaring—it’s in forgetting that we’re the ones who do it. We bow and then pretend something else made us.”

Jeeny: “Exactly. It’s not the act of bowing that enslaves us—it’s the lie that we didn’t choose to.”

Host: The candlelight danced across Jack’s face, catching the glint in his eyes. For the first time, he smiled—not mockingly, but with quiet understanding.

Jack: “So maybe it’s not about destroying the sacred, but reclaiming it.”

Jeeny: “Yes. To make the sacred human again—to make conscience the altar.”

Host: The wind outside began to fade, replaced by a deep, surrounding silence. The moonlight fell squarely on the cross, illuminating it not as a command, but as a reminder—fragile, human, and chosen.

Jeeny stepped closer to Jack. Their shadows merged on the wall, long and trembling, as though the past itself bowed to the moment.

Jeeny: “Maybe that’s what he meant by conscience. Not guilt. Not submission. But the power to declare—to say, ‘this matters, because I say it does.’”

Jack: “And if no one else agrees?”

Jeeny: “Then it’s sacred for one.”

Host: A soft silence filled the room, deeper than any sermon. The flame burned steady now, a single, unwavering point of light amid the darkness. Jack and Jeeny stood side by side, no longer arguing but simply being, the echo of their words dissolving into the vast stillness of the forgotten church.

Outside, the first light of dawn crept across the sky, spilling through the shattered glass and painting the altar in gold. The dust glittered like a thousand tiny worlds suspended in midair.

Jack’s voice broke the silence, quiet and almost tender.

Jack: “You know... maybe that’s all sacredness ever was—a mirror. We kneel, and what we see kneeling back is ourselves.”

Jeeny: “Then maybe the divine has been human all along.”

Host: The sunlight grew brighter, filling the space with a soft, forgiving glow. The candle finally went out, its duty done. And in the stillness that followed, the church seemed to breathe again—not as a relic, but as something reborn through them.

Two figures standing before the remnants of belief—no longer powerless, no longer humble, but fully awake.
And in that awakening, the sacred found its true shape: not in stone, not in heaven, but in the quiet courage of a conscience that dares to declare.