Blue Like Jazz

I also read Blue Like Jazz (but haven't read any of the new ones) a while back and remember thinking he did a pretty good job of talking about faith in a relevant way.  What were the specific things you liked about it? 

I heard Blue Like Jazz is going to be a movie...I have no idea how they are going to do that. I liked the book (though its been a while since I read it), and hope they movie doenst mess it up.

I'd love to hear what parts resonated with you too.

There are many specific things I like about Blue Like Jazz, but overall what I like best is that Miller expresses things I’ve thought about and struggled with myself. The only other contemporary author I’ve felt this kinship with is Anne Lamott. I don’t hear many voices like Miller and Lamott when I look for examples of people following Christ.

Some of my favorite parts of the book are stories about his friends at Reed College (I wanted to go to Reed, but was too intimidated to apply). I felt convicted when reading one of these friend’s description of some of her encounters with Christians. She sensed some shame behind their proselytizing, “They felt like they had to sell god, as if He were soap or a vacuum cleaner, and it’s like they really weren’t listening to me; they didn’t care, they just wanted me to buy their product.” I don’t want to be like this. I don’t want to be ashamed of Jesus or love others only if they identify as Christian. That’s easy to say, but if I’m honest, sometimes not so easy to do.

Another part that resonated with me is when this same friend describes her investigation of who Jesus was:

“We started reading through Matthew, and I thought it was all very interesting, you know. And I found Jesus very disturbing, very straightforward. He wasn’t diplomatic, and yet I felt like if I met Him, He would really like me. Don, I can’t explain how freeing that was, to realize that if I met Jesus, He would like me. I never felt like that about some of the Christians on the radio. I always thought if I met those people they would yell at me. But it wasn’t like that with Jesus. There were people He loved and people He got really mad at, and I kept identifying with the people He loved, which was really good, because they were all the broken people, you know, the kind of people who are tired of life and want to be done with it, or they are desperate people, people who are outcasts or pagans. There were others, regular people, but He didn’t play favorites at all, which is miraculous in itself.”

I can’t say I’ve never identified with the people “He got really mad at,” but this realization that Jesus might like me if he met me, and the possibility of love and acceptance, totally resonates with me.

I also like when he and his friends build a confession booth on Reed campus, not to accept confession, but to confess that, as Christians, we have not been very loving and have misrepresented Jesus. I could go on-and-on. I like how he talks about faith sometimes being believing and not believing at the same time. How Christian Spirituality “cannot be explained, and yet it is beautiful and true. It is something you feel, and it comes from the soul.”

Well, that’s some of my thoughts. Sorry for the blabbering on. Please tell me what you think. Thanks. daphne

I love that passage about how Jesus would like me if he met me.

For the life of me I cant remember where I read this (maybe it was Ann Lamot), but I remember reading someone say that they though in Heaven, we would have church every single day, and the for the first thousand years the message would be the same : Jesus loves you, Jesus likes you, Jesus wants you here. I'm sure there are Christians who would feel nervous about that - as if you could hear about Jesus' affection for us too much - but I think it might take 1000 years of hearing that sermon for it to sink in.

The thing that I dont get about Miller is that he goes to a church where they wont affirm women who are gifted to lead. I think he really gets it right with a lot of his observations, and that one just doesnt seem to fit.

I didn't know that about Miller. I agree that that doesn't seem to fit. Has he ever addressed this issue? Is this the same church in Portland that he talks about in Blue? I think it's called Imago-Dei.

i like Blue Like Jazz because i feel like a lot of the stuff he talks about, the general attitude, IS where so many of us in our generation are "at" as believers in various ways. Even if you don't want to use the label "emergent" (although I don't mind it) it is a really reflective work. Someone will be able to read it in 30 years and see "OK, so that's the orientation a lot of people of that generation had" towards life as a believer, towards the Church (both institutionalized and reviving).

3mily

OK, I think we need to figure out how to get people on here and talking about stuff. It's really unfortunate that this isn't being used. I'm going to be leading the mothers' book group (eventually hopefully more the "womens' book group") and i think overall we need to make a space to be able to talk about our individual reading and studying around Christian literature. "let's talk about books" and about why books should matter to us as Christians. I think this forum tool should be our place. i'm going to try starting a thread in the next few days and encouraging people to get on it.

your sister in Christ,

3mily

---wife of Nathan, mother to Ethan---

*praise be to God the Father of our Lord, Father of compassion and the God of all comfort who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with th

Great idea Emily!  And thanks for taking an active role in getting the forum going.  I've created a new forum called Books & Ideas as a place for you to post your first thread.  Also, to make it easier to keep track of when someone posts a new topic in the forum I've added the New Posts and New Comments RSS feeds on the side.  Let me know if you have other ideas for how to make the forum better.

 -Jason