Book Review: “Blue Like Jazz” by Donald Miller

I read “Blue Like Jazz” following “Storyline 2.0” by Donald Miller as I like how the communicates. They made a movie about it (I haven’t seen it…yet).

I like the way he writes… he mentions something in the book about getting frustrated about how there writers write great and such. I felt that way early in reading his book… I’m jealous.

Donald takes you on a journey jumping here and there in his Christian walk – learning how to love, accept love, follow God, know Jesus, etc.

It’s a wonderful journey of honesty and being human: totally depraved, lost, struggles and selfishness.

I appreciate how he questions so many things and doesn’t accept institutions and such at face value. I fear a little how some people might read it and take it the wrong way. However, that’s up to God and I’m thankful Donald wrote what he did.

 

 

Here’s my notes on certain pages of the book for my future reference…

 

pg 20

“I AM THE PROBLEM!”

our sin nature is the cause of it all

 

pg 21

C.S. Lewis poem

As the Ruin Falls

 

All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you.

I never had a selfless thought since I was born.

I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through:

I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn.

Peace, re-assurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek,

I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin:

I talk of love –a scholar’s parrot may talk Greek–

But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin.

Only that now you have taught me (but how late) my lack.

I see the chasm. And everything you are was making

My heart into a bridge by which I might get back

From exile, and grow man. And now the bridge is breaking.

For this I bless you as the ruin falls. The pains

You give me are more precious than all other gains.

 

pg 100

“Blue like jazz” – talking about stars

“They hang there, the stars, like notes on a page of music, free-form verse, silent mysteries swirling in the blue like jazz.”

 

pg 173

Loneliness is something that happes to us, but I think it si something we cam ove ourselves out of. I think a person who is lovely should dig into a community, give himself to a community, humble himself before his friends, initiate community, teach people to care for each other, love each other.

 

If loving other people is a bit of heaven then certainly isolation is a bit of hell, and to that degree, here on earn, we decide in which state we would like to live.”

 

pg 182

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

 

pg 203

All the wonder of God happens right about our arithmetic and formula. The more I clive outside my pat answers, the more invigorating the view, the more my heart enters into worship.

 

pg 206

At eth end of the day, when I am lying in bed andI know the chances of any of our theology being exactly right are a million to one, I need to know that God has things figured out, tha if my math is wrong we are still going to be okay. And wonder is that feeling we get when we let go of our silly answers, our mapped out rules that we want Go dot follow. I don’t think there is any better worship than wonder.

 

pg 220

I didn’t have to judge anybody, I could treat everybody as though they were my best friend, as though they were rock stars for famous poets, as though they were amazing, and to me they became amazing, especially my new friend.

 

pg 232

And so I have come to understand that strength, inner strength, comes from receiving love as much as it comes from giving it.