My Favorite Book: Excerpts

Blue Like Jazz

One of my all-time favorite books is Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller.

Donald is a thirty-something single guy who writes about his life journey with searing honesty–so much so that I find myself laughing or sighing out loud and sometimes closing the book to have a good cry.  His writing frees me to see my own wackiness with acceptance and hope.

Here are quotes I love (by chapter):

ROMANCE: Meeting Girls Is Easy

Donald grew up in a single-parent home with his mom and sister. He learned to navigate life on his own and, while he’d like to find a wife, he fears marriage is “like a prison door clanging shut.”

I can just see myself standing there watching her take her makeup off in the bathroom and thinking, “She really isn’t going to leave. All her stuff is here now.”

(This makes me laugh!)

COMMUNITY: Living With Freaks

The most difficult lie I have ever contended with is this: Life is a story about me.

LOVE: How to Really Love Other People

The problem with Christian culture is we think of love as a commodity. …I used love like money. The church used love like money. With love, we withheld affirmation from the people who did not agree with us, but we lavishly financed the ones who did.

Nobody will listen to you unless they sense that you like them.

LOVE: How to Really Love Yourself

Donald’s girlfriend broke up with him, he says, because of his inability to receive love. He always needed more from her and that finally drove her away. After suffering for some time, he was cleaning the toilet one day when God spoke the verse,”Love your neighbor as yourself” to him.

He (God) was saying I would never talk to my neighbor the way I talked to myself, and that somehow I had come to believe it was wrong to kick other people around but it was okay to do it to myself.

And so I have come to understand that strength, inner strength, comes from receiving love as much as it comes from giving it. …God’s love will never change us if we don’t accept it.

WORSHIP: The Mystical Wonder

I need wonder to explain what is going to happen to me…when our shift is over and our kids’ kids are still on the earth…I need to be somewhere else after I die, somewhere with God, somewhere that wouldn’t make any sense if it were explained to me right now.

JESUS: The Lines on His Face

I carry around a section of this chapter in my heart all the time. Donald imagines walking up to Jesus’ campfire and being asked to sit down.

He (Jesus) would tell me the truth, and I would sense in his voice and in the lines on His face that he liked me. He would rebuke me, too, and he would tell me that I have prejudices against very religious people and that I need to deal with that; He would tell me that there are poor people in the world and I need to feed them and that somehow this will make me more happy. I think He would tell me what my gifts are and why I have them, and He would give me ideas on how to use them. I think He would explain to me why my father left, and He would point out very clearly all the ways God has taken care of me through the years, all the stuff God protected me from.

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And now I go to sit and cry…