Blue

This past weekend I finished reading Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller. Now, I know people who have loved his theology and others have put it down disgusted by his beliefs. So I wasn't sure what to think when I started it. In the end, I liked it. For one thing, Miller sounds like my best friend from high school. So fun to hear that again. For another thing, this was a memoir. I don't think it was intended to be a theology book. All of us have a unique story about how we came to our own set of beliefs. Miller just happened to get his published. I thought I would share two of my favorite quotes from the book. The first is serious. The second one is definitely more light hearted and makes me want to be his friend. Enjoy.

"The first thing I had to do after God provided a church for me was to let go of any bad attitude I had against the other churches I'd gone to. In the end, I was just different, you know. It wasn't that they were bad, they just didn't do it for me. I read through the book of Ephesians four times one night in Eugene Peterson's The Message, and it seemed to me that Paul did not want Christians to fight with one another. He seemed to care a great deal about this, so in my mind, I had to tell my heart to love the people at the churches I used to go to, the people who were different from me. This was entirely freeing because when I told my heart to do this, my heart did it, and now I think very frondly of those wacko Republican fundiamentalists, and I know that they love me, too, and I know that we will eat together, we will break bread together in heaven, and we will love each other so purely it will hurt because we are a family in Christ."

"I understand you can learn a great deal about girldom from Pride and Prejudice, and I own a copy, but I've never read it. I tried. It was given to me by a girl with a little note inside that read: What is in this book is the heart of a woman. I am sure that the heart of a woman is pure and lovely, but the first chapter of said heart is hopelessly boring. Nobody dies at all. I keep the book on my shelf because girls come into my room, sit on my couch, and eye the books on the adjacent shelf. You have a copy of Pride and Prejudice, they exclaim with a gentle sigh and smile. Yes, I say. Yes, I do."