By Grace and Not Goodness

It’s been a great but difficult day, mostly because I have forced myself to stay put. Also because I have an emotional hangover from some unskillful behavior yesterday. I didn’t leave the house all day except to go out and walk around the property for some fresh air. Oh wait, that’s not true. I did drive over to Jack’s for some healthy dinner.

I got some good writing done today and have had lots of quality conversation via text, email, phone, conference call, Skype, WhatsApp, Scruff, and telekinesis. People from all over the world have been giving me love, good counsel, gentle support, and firm redirection. God’s not nearly finished with me yet. Most of it, I’m coming to realize, is in preparation for my trip coming up in two weeks. It’s time for me to go, as I do annually, to prayer ceremony in Texas. This is all about getting ready. It’s important to me and I take it very seriously.

Yesterday, I vibrated at about as low a frequency as I have in a while. I was acting like I haven’t done any personal work at all and meeting the most loathsome people I know on their level. I was doing the emotional equivalent of what we call in the Marine Corps “spray and pray.” Hopefully that’s the end of all that. It’s toxic and doesn’t serve me at all. Part of it is, I think– and don’t think I’m trying to squirm out of my blog commitment– but I think maybe some of my ultimate irritation was because when one lives his process so publically, there inevitably will be some asshats coming out of the swamps to project all their insecurities onto the person who’s putting themselves out there. And even the best of us, when the gadflies continue their gadflying, will eventually say, “Get the fuck away from me you fucking little gadflies, go gad your fly somewhere else. Let the people who are really accomplishing something real in this life be about their business.” Or, as I put it yesterday in a text message, “Go fuck yourself you fucking murderer.” (Yes, I really said this.) And the person I said it to really is culpable for someone’s death and I am one of a very, very few people on the planet who knows about it. And when this person opened up to me about it, it was an exercise in great trust when he almost never, except when he was blind drunk, had ever opened up to anybody about anything. Now, by throwing what he’d said to me in sacred confidence back in his face, I am making it even more difficult for him ever to trust anybody with his darkest, ugliest secrets. And if he doesn’t eventually come clean about it all, his conscience (what tiny amount is actually there) is going to drive him into insanity, the pits of addiction, or death. Now who’s the murderer? Do you see how toxic that is? Do you see how vicious and hateful I can be? I’m so embarrassed about this. I’m praying to whatever benevolent forces that may be still on my side to help me never to take away someone’s chance at survival like that again and as far as this one poor chap goes, I’ll just never contact him again. He has a terminal disease and lives in another country so I doubt I’ll even hear about it when he dies. Still think Jeff Key is such a “good person?” That’s what I thought.

Luckily for me, my salvation depends solely on grace and not on my worthiness based on action. I pray for forgiveness for my unskillful action and also for the ability to do better in the future.

See y’all tomorrow.