Blue Like Jazz

“I was coming out of the Bagdad Theatre in Portland one night, and I saw a man playing the saxophone. He kept his eyes closed the whole time. You could tell he just loved playing that music. Before I saw him, I didn't like jazz music because I thought it didn't resolve. It didn't seem to go somewhere or have a conclusion. But I watched this guy playing the saxophone. He loved it so much that I found that I liked jazz music. It is not uncommon for people to see somebody else love something and it helps them love it themselves.
The more I thought about it, the more I liked this as a metaphor for my spiritual journey. I used to not like God because I felt he didn't have resolve. I couldn't figure him out. Faith seemed to contain a lot of paradoxes that I didn't want to hurt my brain thinking about.
Also, jazz music is just a language of the soul that you can't say with words. That's very much like Christian spirituality.” (Donald Miller in an interview about his book Blue Like Jazz)

I just finished reading Blue Like Jazz, a great book written by Donald Miller. If you don’t want to read ‘another typical Christian book’, Blue Like Jazz might be just the book for you. I especially appreciate Miller’s vulnerability, openness and honesty about his spiritual walk. It was both fun and uplifting to read his story and I really like his style and sense of humour. Highly recommended!

Donald Miller about his book, “I never believed it would be published, and so I was pretty open in this book. My career was dead when I started this thing, so I felt like I was just talking to myself, or to the little reading group that met at my house.” source

Just one quote as an appetizer:
I really knew I needed Jesus like I need water or food, and yet it was frightening because Christianity is so stupid to so much of our culture, and I absolutely hate bothering people about this stuff.
So much of me believes strongly in letting everybody live their own lives, and when I share my faith, I feel like a network marketing guy trying to build my down line.
Some of my friends who aren’t Christians think that Christians are insistent and demanding and intruding, but that isn’t the case. Those folks are the squeaky wheel. Most Christians have enormous respect for the space and freedom of others; it is only that they have found joy in Jesus they want to share. There is the tension. (Blue Like Jazz, p 114)
I really like the story about the confession booth that Donald Miller and his friends put up in the middle of campus with a sign saying, ‘Confess your sins’. But I am not going to spoil it for you, just read this book!