It has been a long time since I was able to read a 240 page book in 4 sittings. Going to bed early to get up at 5:30 to read again… Weird, because I know I am culturally late having just now read Blue Like Jazz.
Friends, foes, family, liberal believers, conservative believers, non-believers (liberal or conservative), modern, postmodern, Gen x, hippies, moms, dads, laypersons, clergy, skeptical, frustrated, missional, emerging, emergent, reformed, dispensational, coffee drinking, beer drinking, Southern Bible-belter, Northern ?!, college kid, high school kid, city-monger, rural farmer… have I missed anyone? Please give this a read. Give Donald Miller’s words a chance, all of them. Read, and read on. Or maybe just read him because he’s from Portland. Cool.
I am not saying that it is the best book I have ever read. Not that it is the perfect book. Not that I agree with every last word. But that they are real words. Words that made me laugh and stunned me and led to worship or repentance or introspection. They are Donald Miller’s words… and even though it is impossible to hear all that he is saying, I have heard something profound.
From his final chapter:
I was watching BET one night, and they were interviewing a man about jazz music. He said jazz music was invented by the first generation out of slavery. I thought that was beautiful, because, while it is music, it is very hard to put on paper; it is so much more a language of the soul. It is as if the soul is saying something, something about freedom. I think Christian spirituality is like jazz music. I think loving Jesus is something you feel. I think it is something very difficult to get on paper. But it is no less real, no less meaningful, no less beautiful.
The first generation out of slavery invented jazz music. It is music birthed out of freedom. And that is the closest thing I know to Christian spirituality. A music birthed out of freedom. Everybody sings their song the way they feel it, everybody closes their eyes and lifts up their hands…
This book is about the songs my friends and I are singing… ((p.239)
Interesting enough, I feel like singing.
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Addendum. I would be remiss not to pass this quote along to you, especially for those of you who know that I am inching forward in my book-writing adventure. ‘Bout a hundred pages in and here is how I feel…
Now, I am not a real writer as is Miller, but his words made me laugh.
Writers don’t make any money at all. We make about a dollar. It is terrible. But then again we don’t work either. We sit around in our underwear until noon then go downstairs to make coffee, fry some eggs, read the paper, read part of a book, smell the book, wonder if perhaps we ourselves should work on our book, smell the book again, throw the book across the room because we are quite jealous that any other person wrote a book, feel terribly guilty about throwing the schmuck’s book across the room because we secretly wonder if God in heaven will notice our evil jealousy, or worse, our laziness. We then lie across the couch facedown and mumble to God to forgive us because we are secretly afraid He is going to dry up all our words because we envied another man’s stupid words. And for this, as I said before, we are paid a dollar. We are worth so much more… (p.187)
When you are writing without a contract, you feel as though everything you say is completely worthless (technically it is, until you get a contract). You can write all day and still not feel that you have done anything. (p.188)
And that, my friends, should tell you how I feel about the progress I am not making in my ‘project.’
Grace.
weak Christian 