FOOLISH GRACE
FOOLISH GRACE
By John Tuft
I have reached the point in my life where all my earthly possessions fit into three suitcases and a computer bag. That’s it. This is not a parable or metaphor; it’s the simple truth. Some clothes, a couple of jackets, toiletries, a computer, important documents, and a phone. Oh, and pills. Mustn’t forget the bottles of pills. More often than I care to remember over the past nine months I have reached the end of my income before the month is half over and gone for days and days without eating. Why does this happen? Because someone else needs the money more than I do. Now, before you go anointing me “Preacher Boy” is some kind of radical Jesus follower, let me disabuse you of any such notions. Do I approach life with a certain set of principles and adages? Yes, of course. We all do. Did I set out on some pie in the sky esoteric mission? I did not.
In this time of the National Grievance War going on within the United States, I find myself oddly detached from all the urgent appeals for my attention. We live in an age when a nighttime rocket launch from Florida brings innumerable TikTok videos about alien UFOs conspiracies. “Why is it going sideways?” is the battle cry of those who dare not try to understand the nature of existing on a spinning sphere that exerts the force of gravity on trajectories. “He died for free speech” vs “He was killed for hate speech” really does not interest me. The red-capped people who throw in their lot with a malignant narcissist are surprised when his psychopathy steamrolls them and their interests simply because they want to be ruled rather than governed with their cooperation. “He hates the right people” is silly, preadolescence magical thinking on full display.
The Church is pretty much a useless affectation any longer as malignant Christianity consumes an entire age of those who have a Project to make this country theirs and only theirs, “as God intended.” While others have dedicated themselves to becoming spiritual coaches, an oddity in a time and place that so easily surrenders spirit to corporal. If you want to know what matters to you, look around the space in which you are reading this, and you’ll have an answer. If you want to know what you would die for, look at what’s in your will and last testament. If you want to know what you would live for, pull a Fred Rogers and spend a minute thinking about someone who had a positive influence on your life, and go and do the same.
Am I writing this from a position of moral superiority? Hell, no. I have laid out my humanness as one of the perishables, over and over, in this space. But I can tell you this, from my own experiences, beware of foolish grace. And all grace is foolish. Or else it would not be grace. I had a friend by the name of Dennis Benson. Perhaps you know of him. He was a radio guy, and a writer, and passionate speaker to young people trying to find the way forward as thinking, feeling, stumbling, bumbling believers. I knew him from his Pittsburgh days. And as I began to write these stories, he followed me and read each one and left a note of encouragement below the story. One day as I was riding in the car, he accidentally butt-dialed me over Facebook messenger. And I heard him lamenting to his wife as to how “John is getting attention from publishers and movie people” while he was languishing in the decline of health brought on by age and the debilitating need for kidney dialysis. I loved him all the more for that accidental glimpse into his spirit. He was a real perishable who fought fiercely and loved fiercely.
You may have noticed that over the summer months I posted a couple of stories that were co-written by myself and Jennifer Aniston. Yes, that Jennifer Aniston — Friends, The Morning Show, Marley, etc. etc. Behind the bright, unyielding lights of fame and being a celebrity with wealth and position and influence, I discovered someone with the soul of a poet. And a damn good writer. As much a perishable as any one of us. Wanting to be seen, acknowledged, loved. Why is she writing with me? Because I asked her to write with me. The Great National Grievance War insists that we divide into class and race and entitlement and political affiliation and color of caps that we wear. Grace insists that we be foolish. Or else, it isn’t grace.
Words are magic and writers are wizards.
