We gather as citizens with the saints to learn to love like Jesus by practicing discipleship through peacemaking that works for justice.

Thursday, April 26, 2012

Donald Miller---Blue Like Jazz

Donald Miller is perhaps best known as the author of Blue Like Jazz, a New York Times-bestseller that’s inspired many to reexamine the way they think about religion, Christianity, and the nature of a relationship with God.  The book is made up of Miller’s “nonreligious thoughts on Christian spirituality,” as well as his invitingly honest tales and his wry sense of humor.  The book is certainly about how Miller learned to relate to God, but his relationship is decidedly outside the bounds of “traditional” Christian perspectives.  He’s the type of person to explain his view of God in terms of metaphors about penguin sex and cartoons  starring Don Rabbit and the Sexy Carrot.
It’s very appropriate, though, that Don Miller is coming to speak at a Youth Gathering called Jesus, Justice, Jazz, because in a lot of ways, the book presents itself like jazz music.  I’m looking forward to arriving in New Orleans, the birthplace of jazz, and hearing from a man who reflected:
There is something beautiful about a billion stars held steady by a God who knows what He is doing. They hang there, the stars, like notes on a page of music, free-form verse, silent mysteries swirling in the blue like jazz.

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