Blue like jazz

[grateful]

I finished reading BLUE LIKE JAZZ, by Donald Miller this afternoon. Have any of you read it? What did you think?

The cover calls it "Nonreligious thoughts on Christian spirituality," and because of all the Oprah-fied "spirituality" out there, I hesitated reading it until experiencing a bit of religious burnout myself. I found it to be unsettling, but in a good way. I would love to discuss it.

[Katharine]

Unsettling? Very! I might even say unexpected. It's been a couple of years since I read the book, but my introduction to it was quite moving.

I was at a Mothers of Pre-Schoolers (MOPS) convention, and they put on an excellent "show" (meant in the best way) for the 5000 moms who attend. During one of the large sessions, the president of MOPS started to read from Blue Like Jazz. A couple of minutes into her presentation, a stagehand quietly brought a music stand and a light to one side of the stage. Then an unknown man came out and took his place at that stand. By this time, the audience was wrapped up in the reading and no one paid a lot of attention to these distractions. Elisa kept reading, and then the man took over. He sounded like he knew the book well, and it was a pleasure listening to him because he made it an engaging conversation rather than a simple "reading."

That man was Donald Miller, and I can still hear his voice. He was just a guy, just a student at Reed College, just himself, but his clarity of thought and his communication of Jesus are absolutely compelling. The courage he and his friends showed to set up the confessional booth on campus was inspiring but also scared me spitless. I mean, I can picture starting to think about something like that, but then I'd begin thinking about the "what thens" and "what ifs" and I would probably try to fix the results somehow.

Maybe what impresses me most is how comfortable he is in his own skin -- even when he's not comfortable in it, he's got faith in Jesus to keep moving his life ahead. That's assurance, and that's living in faith.

Tell me more about your impressions, Grateful.

[grateful]

Interesting that you placed your first experience with the book in the setting where you met it. Me, too.

We've been functioning as volunteer chaplains for four years, but I've just finished an intense four-month stint of being the only chaplain on three prison units. I'm only a volunteer chaplain so being charged with keeping it together meant I REALLY needed to have an authentic relationship with God.

At the same time, during the four years we've been doing this, we've been confronted with much of what Miller questions and objects to in conventional, institutional religion.

So much of the time I was reading the book, I wanted to stand up and say YES YES YES! EXACTLY.

Toward the very end, he made one light reference to the fact that HE judged the conventional church people himself. I guess that's the only thing I might have wished he'd discussed a bit more.

It was a very important book to me, especially now. I have renewed hope and joy.

Elaine

[Katharine]

Huh... interesting. My husband is a jail chaplain, too. I can see why you've felt confronted with the conventional, institutional junk. IMHO, it's always so much easier to conform to whatever the current model is. If there's a list of expectations for "spiritual" behavior, it's appealing to just use that grocery list and tick off each thing as I do it. It's much, much harder to be authentic, to relax from the norm and consider what is right to do.

I sometimes feel judgmental about some of my fellow pew-sitters, too. But then I think about the few stories I know -- the dad who's finally coming clean with his young kids about doubting God's existence, or the parents whose son can't stop using drugs, or the person who has sunk deep into depression -- and I realize that some people are just trying to hold their lives together. Yes, it would be great if I could sit down and talk with them at length, but that's not always possible or it's not the right time. I'm trying to pray more (not just on Sunday when I see their body language as they sit in church) and model approachability and openness. That's a start, anyway.

Making this personal, my current challenge is how to talk about my own son, who has been admitted to an inpatient drug-treatment facility. How much do I say, and to whom? How much of his story can I tell? It's not that I have to hide it, but there are times that I don't want to dredge up my emotions. That is the challenge.

Elaine, I am so glad Blue left you feeling refreshed. I had the same response.

[Cymrugirl]

I adored this book. It made me laugh - think - re-evaluate - and so forth.

Since reading it and his other title, Searching For God Knows What, I have been constantly working out my salvation with fear and trembling. A good thing I think. He brought me to a place I was already journeying toward - a place where I had to ask if I was on cultural auto-pilot or performing good works from my heart toward a God I adored. I've learned to really look at church as its own culture and listen to that culture differently.