Reading “A Million Miles…” is like talking to an old friend, one you used to love and spend a lot of time with but for whatever reason haven’t seen for a long time. This friend used to captivate you and you would enjoy being in their presence so much you wondered if you were smothering them (sometimes you probably were). But in the years between then and now you’ve forgotten just how warm and exciting being with them was.

When I sat down to read A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life I had fond memories of Donald Miller’s surprise best-seller from a few years ago, Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality (see my blog posts about it here). By the time I was 20 pages in, I remembered BLJ as that old friend, one that I forgotten I loved so much. One that made me laugh out loud in public places, despite my best efforts to appear completely sane. One that had changed my life in a few ways.

Review continued below…

And it makes sense that I was so reminded of BLJ because “A Million Miles…” is mostly about BLJ. It’s about the book, and how Miller’s life was changed by the success of the book and how – which is most exciting for an artist – his life was positively affected by his own art.

The best thing about this book and BLJ is that they throw you into a torrent of self-reflection with the strangest of motivation. There are no commands here, no guilt trips, just Don Miller taking a brutally honest look at his own life and writing about it. And somehow this inspires us to do the same. We see the character making progress, we see his life improving as he very intentionally crafts his own story and we know that this is also possible for us.

“Perhaps one of the reasons I’ve avoided having a clear ambition is that the second you stand up and point toward a horizon, you realize how much there is to lose.” – Donald Miller

Searching For God Knows What

Memoirs are such fun to read, and when Miller is writing in memoir mode he is among the greats. When not in memoir mode, however, he can come across as simply another disgruntled Evangelical, as was clearly evident in Searching for God Knows What (blog post here).

In truth, the same theology runs through all of his writing, but in the form of a memoir it seems less agitating. Much like any other friend who has theology I disagree with, in conversational form it is so much more tolerable – actually, it’s enjoyable. It’s like we’re sitting in a room together discussing our differences, each willing to hear the other, each convincing the other on some points, and being convinced on others.

I was pleased to read on p222 Don say “I didn’t say these things, and I’m glad I didn’t, because those are the things people who have never been married say.” Another issue with “Searching For God…” was that he kept saying unwise things that were exactly what only an unmarried non-parent would say. In the margins of my copy of that book I wrote things like “Hey Don, get back to me once you have children and let me know if you still think this is true…”.

A Million Miles…

I digress… “A Million Miles…” is not just an entertaining read, it calls you to a brutal honestly about your life. In the language of the book itself, it calls you to write and then live a better story with your life, while acknowledging that there is a Writer above you also writing your story:

“So as I was writing my novel, and as my characters did what they wanted, I became more and more aware that somebody was writing me. So I started listening to the Voice, or rather, I started calling it the Voice and admitting there was a Writer. I admitted something other than me was showing a better way. And when I did this, I realized the Voice, the Writer who was not me, was trying to make a better story, a more meaningful series of experiences I could live through.” – Donald Miller

Fellow writers/authors will love this book because so much of it is about the process of writing. Others may find his analogies of God as a writer/literary being a bit of a stretch. They are a bit of a stretch, but often, as in this case, the stretch makes the art more powerful.

If you enjoy Miller’s writing and would like to read more in the same vein, his writing is reminiscent of authors like Anne Lamott (read: “Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith“) and Madeleine L’Engle (read: “Two-Part Invention: The Story of a Marriage” or “The Irrational Season“) in all the best ways.

One other byproduct of reading Miller’s work: it inspires me to write, which is why this review is getting so long! Well, I reviewed BLJ in six lengthy posts, so one post for this book is actually pretty short.

A couple of weeks ago I was contacted by a journalist named Jessica Clark for a quote on Donald Miller’s new book. Here’s the piece she wrote:

Million Miles author stops in LR

JESSICA CLARK ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE

A New York Times bestselling author says he knows the ingredients to a meaningful life and he’s sharing them Tuesday in Little Rock.

Recently, Donald Miller hit the road to talk about his newest book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life, which chronicles Miller’s discoveries. The book tour will span two months and tens of thousands of miles, during which Miller will visit 65 cities.

Miller will make a stop in Little Rock at Mosaic Church of Central Arkansas to share what he says makes a worthwhile life, which he learned from screenwriters while working on turning Blue Like Jazz into a movie which will premiere in 2010.

“Screenwriters have discovered what makes life meaningful because they have to put it on-screen in a movie. I’ll share what it is they’ve discovered and how I applied those principles to my life and what happened because of it,” he said.

Mosaic Church was contacted by Miller’s executive assistant with the idea of being a host for the book tour. Mark DeYmaz, Mosaic Church’s directional leader, said it was a good fit because the church and Miller have a “missional mind-set” and live out their faith.

“It’s not about attracting people to the church, it is about motivating the church to go to people where they are in bars, college campuses or wherever,” DeYmaz said. “Miller lives out a missional lifestyle and is authentic with people that wouldn’t step into a church.”

Miller, 37, had been writing since he was a child, he said. His first book, Prayer and the Art of Volkswagen Maintenance, was published by Harvest House Publishers, but it wasn’t until he wrote Blue Like Jazz that his writing career took off. Published by Thomas Nelson, a Christian book publisher, Blue Like Jazz has sold more than 1 million copies and made The New York Times best-seller list 45 weeks since it was released six years ago. It is a book made up of essays about spirituality and his reflections about Christianity.

Miller says his new release offers readers a different perspective. “In other books I was asking a lot of questions, in this book there is more hope,” he said.

“His early stuff is like unedited journal writing, but he gets more controlled and precise as he goes,” Christianity Today freelance writer Patton Dodd said. “He expertly and naturally captures the young evangelical zeitgeist [spirit of the age], but he pushes on its borders.”

“The best thing about Miller’s books is that they throw you into a torrent of self-reflection with the strangest of motivation,” said Michael Krahn, a Canadian minister and blogger. “There are no guilt trips, no commands, just Miller taking a brutally honest look at his own life and writing about it and somehow this inspires us to do the same.”

In his new book, Miller adapts the elements that make a good movie into his own life to make it more interesting.

“In studying the elements of a screenplay and editing a movie based on a memoir [Blue Like Jazz], I was editing a fictional version of myself. I wanted my own life to be more like the fictional version of me so I made some changes in my own life and rode my bike across America.”

Miller spent seven weeks riding his bike across the United States raising money for Blood: Water Mission. He also found his biological father whom he hadn’t heard from in 30 years and he hiked the Inca Trail in Peru just to impress a girl.

“A Million Miles is probably Don’s most mature book, yet it is classic Don Miller in that it offers readers an entertaining, one-of-a-kind experience,” his publisher, Brian Hampton, said.

The focus of Miller’s book tour is to get people to realize that “we can live better stories, and when the credits roll in our lives we can have a sense of fulfillment and meaning because of what we’ve experienced,” he said.

After the tour, Miller will work with his nonprofit organization, The Mentoring Project. The Portland, Ore.-based group mentors children growing up without fathers.

“We’ll be releasing a revised edition of Searching for God Knows What next spring and further down the road there will be another book,” Hampton said.

“I believe my best stories are ahead of me. I don’t think I’ve told many good ones so far,” Miller said. “Since I’ve understood the power of a story, the power of a good protagonist wanting something noble and overcoming conflict to get it, I haven’t been able to go back to a normal life.”

“An Evening With Donald Miller” will be 7 p.m. Tuesday at Mosaic Church, 6420 Colonel Glenn Road, Little Rock. Tickets are $15. More information is available at amillionmiles.com.

Reading “A Million Miles…” is like talking to an old friend, one you used to love and spend a lot of time with but for whatever reason haven’t seen for a long time. This friend used to captivate you and you would enjoy being in their presence so much you wondered if you were smothering them (sometimes you probably were). But in the years between then and now you’ve forgotten just how warm and exciting being with them was.

When I sat down to read A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life I had fond memories of Donald Miller’s surprise best-seller from a few years ago, Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality (see my blog posts about it here). By the time I was 20 pages in, I remembered BLJ as that old friend, one that I forgotten I loved so much. One that made me laugh out loud in public places, despite my best efforts to appear completely sane. One that had changed my life in a few ways.

And it makes sense that I was so reminded of BLJ because “A Million Miles…” is mostly about BLJ. It’s about the book, and how Miller’s life was changed by the success of the book and how – which is most exciting for an artist – his life was positively affected by his own art.

The best thing about this book and BLJ is that they throw you into a torrent of self-reflection with the strangest of motivation. There are no commands here, no guilt trips, just Don Miller taking a brutally honest look at his own life and writing about it. And somehow this inspires us to do the same. We see the character making progress, we see his life improving as he very intentionally crafts his own story and we know that this is also possible for us.

“Perhaps one of the reasons I’ve avoided having a clear ambition is that the second you stand up and point toward a horizon, you realize how much there is to lose.” – Donald Miller

Searching For God Knows What

Memoirs are such fun to read, and when Miller is writing in memoir mode he is among the greats.  When not in memoir mode, however, he can come across as simply another disgruntled Evangelical, as was clearly evident in Searching for God Knows What (blog post here).

In truth, the same theology runs through all of his writing, but in the form of a memoir it seems less agitating. Much like any other friend who has theology I disagree with, in conversational form it is so much more tolerable – actually, it’s enjoyable. It’s like we’re sitting in a room together discussing our differences, each willing to hear the other, each convincing the other on some points, and being convinced on others.

I was pleased to read on p222 Don say “I didn’t say these things, and I’m glad I didn’t, because those are the things people who have never been married say.” Another issue with “Searching For God…” was that he kept saying unwise things that were exactly what only an unmarried non-parent would say. In the margins of my copy of that book I wrote things like “Hey Don, get back to me once you have children and let me know if you still think this is true…”.

A Million Miles…

I digress… “A Million Miles…” is not just an entertaining read, it calls you to a brutal honestly about your life. In the language of the book itself, it calls you to write and then live a better story with your life, while acknowledging that there is a Writer above you also writing your story:

“So as I was writing my novel, and as my characters did what they wanted, I became more and more aware that somebody was writing me. So I started listening to the Voice, or rather, I started calling it the Voice and admitting there was a Writer. I admitted something other than me was showing a better way. And when I did this, I realized the Voice, the Writer who was not me, was trying to make a better story, a more meaningful series of experiences I could live through.” – Donald Miller

Fellow writers/authors will love this book because so much of it is about the process of writing. Others may find his analogies of God as a writer/literary being a bit of a stretch. They are a bit of a stretch, but often, as in this case, the stretch makes the art more powerful.

If you enjoy Miller’s writing and would like to read more in the same vein, his writing is reminiscent of authors like Anne Lamott (read: “Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith“) and Madeleine L’Engle (read: “Two-Part Invention: The Story of a Marriage” or “The Irrational Season“) in all the best ways.

One other byproduct of reading Miller’s work: it inspires me to write, which is why this review is getting so long! Well, I reviewed BLJ in six lengthy posts, so one post for this book is actually pretty short.

I think Donald is one of, if not THE brightest of “our” writers. Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality deserves a place on the highest shelf of that genre… I’m thinking of Madeleine L’engle and Anne Lamott here… and maybe a bit of P.J. O’Rourke. Honestly, Blue Like Jazz changed a few parts of my life, and that ain’t hyperbole.

However, I was equally disappointed with Searching for God Knows What. You know how musicians who are Christians are saying things like “Hey, I’m not an authority on stuff. I just write and sing about living my life as a Christian. Don’t hold me up to be higher that you.”? I feel like Don turned that around in SFGKW. He’s a great writer, but in that book he tried to be a theologian and the effect was just the opposite of BLJ. He came off as an arrogant, left-of-liberal theologian instead of the regular guy reflecting on life experiences he was in BLJ.

I can tolerate a lot of theology that doesn’t match my own in a work like BLJ, or Lamott’s Traveling Mercies, or any number of L’Engle’s books. What I find hard to stomach is a writer like Don trying to be definitive on matters in which he is not an expert. I’m not either, BTW.

“Write what you know”, right? Either that or explore what you don’t know humbly and with an open mind.  Don repeatedly uses analogies about marriage, raising kids, and to a lesser extent sports to make his theological points. In those first two categories he has no experience on which to draw – which isn’t to say those categories are completely off-limits for him.

So I found myself writing in the columns of the book a number times – writing things like “Hey Don, try this line of reasoning again after you’re married and see if it still rings true to you” and “Hey Don, get back to me once you have some kids and have thought through this in real time.”

I guess the annoyance was exacerbated by the fact that I loved BLJ so much.

Sorry for riffing on Don so much. Its been a blog post sort of waiting to happen so I guess this was my rough draft.

Rick McKinley (Imago Dei – Portland) doesn’t blog much, but if this post is any indication he should make an effort more often. A summary of his six points in this post:

1. The subversiveness of love is the primary work of the pastor.

2. There is disaster awaiting the one who gets bogged down with doing good, and not dwelling in the excellent. It is our job to pay attention to God and life and to help  others to do the same, this is the heart of the work as pastor… many times we exchange important things for urgent things and the important things never get addressed.

3. Theological and biblical inquiry is essential to discovering the depth and Glory of Jesus.

4. Though the experiences of Christ and the Spirit may be ever satisfying, and the word be life giving, the blessings of family and the fruit of ministry be ever present, the longing for heaven and the violent reality of its absence will leave you with a broken heart that will express itself in and empty and sour stomach feeling… It is this knot in our stomach that will keep you an honest preacher in a sea of compromised men.

5. If you want to be a pastor you must learn obedience through suffering just as Jesus did, (Heb 2:10-18, 5:8-10).

6. It is the primary objective of my faith and ministry to apprehend such a vision and faith in Jesus, as revealed by his Spirit through the Scripture, that I would follow him not only in his life but also in his death…  I aim to believe this with such conviction that I could encourage and lead my people in such a faith for their day when they will suffer their own death and by grace do so in faith.

Full post here.

Or if you’d like to read one of his books click here, click on the image at left or follow the link

This Beautiful Mess: Practicing the Presence of the Kingdom of God

A couple of weeks ago, Driscoll was in the New York Times, now it’s ABC’s Nightline. (*UPDATE: here is a direct link to the segment or watch below)

Driscoll is getting a lot of attention because of his recent sermon series on The Song of Solomon called “The Peasant Princess” (see series website)  in which he preaches on and discusses issues of sexuality.

The characterizations in the recent wave of media attention are somewhat dated in that they focus on Mark’s reputation as a punchline-loving jock. This is still true to an extent, but if you are a member of Driscoll’s church or a regular listener you know that such characterizations are more representative of an earlier version of Driscoll.

Unfortunately, the old title “Cussing Pastor”, made famous in Donald Miller’s Blue Like Jazz, still gets thrown around, even though what may have led to this title happened a decade or more ago and no audio of Driscoll actually cussing has been delivered. His language can be harsh, and has occasionally been unnecessarily offensive, but a label such as “Cussing Pastor” is misleading.

Driscoll has repented of things he’s said before,  and he’ll probably give himself occasion to do so again. But listen to a more recent sermon – you’ll hear the heart of a young, fiery, maturing pastor who is more concerned with evangelization and tending his flock than with delivering punchlines.

Download and listen to a recent Driscoll sermon called “Trial: Trial and Sin” or listen to it below.

Download audio file (20090111_trial-and-sin_audio.mp3)

The ABC writeup does include this quote from Driscoll at the end of it:

“I think, to be honest with you, humility is something that, by God’s grace, I’m learning,” he said. “I would not pretend to be an expert in humility.”

For those familiar with Driscoll, this quote is where the real story is.

**These are some additional thoughts on my review of the book found here.**

I don’t agree with the entire book but at many places I found myself elated that this is out there “in the wild” being read by many non-Christians.

I realize how many people around me are against the book, but I don’t think ANY (or many) of them have actually read it.  I have determined not to come out strongly against some books based on the word of others. I just finished Rob Bell’s latest so I’ll be putting something up about that shortly as well.

But this should tell you how much my mind changed on the book by reading it.

I have a tolerance for fiction and personal reflection books, which is why I can read Donald Miller and Anne Lamott and Madeleine L’Engle, etc. and totally disagree with some of their views while still gaining a lot from their writings.  Same goes for The Shack.

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Ok, I’m done now… I told Anne Marie not to let me go out again.

Here’s the academic stack:

…and the other stack. You’ll notice I out the Bell and Pagitt books between some more solid theological works.  I tried to put them closer to MacArthur but there were sparks.

By the way, we’re going Rob Bell’s church (Mars Hill) tomorrow morning. I’ll put up a post about that sometime next week.

When I find a worthy author I engage that author intensely and exhaustively until I can articulate what they are and are not about.  I’ve done this with CS Lewis, Thomas Merton, Marshall McLuhan, Mark Driscoll, Douglas Coupland, Madeleine L’engle, and I am now doing it with John Piper.  Many people sip on these authors and then quote them out of context to make a point that the authors themselves never would have made.  So you end up with people who are vehemently anti-Catholic quoting a high Anglican like Lewis, or more absurdly, they’ll quote GK Chesterton, who was a convert and great champion of Catholicism.  But quote Thomas Merton to them and they’ll point and cry “Anathema!” in your direction and then leave the room.

At any rate, Piper is the stream or phase you’ll find me in now, but by phase I do not mean fad.  None of the people I mention have been fads for me; they have been extended engagements that have turned into my foundations.

In time my focus on Piper will subside because he will take his place in my foundation, along with seemingly disparate others like Merton and L’engle.  How is this possible?  It’s not supposed to be… I guess that’s what makes me Emerging/Emergent to the extent that I am – I can live with the paradox and invite others to join me there..

So I don’t know what you’ve heard about Piper but I’ll vouch for him as one of the keenest expositors of scripture who also has a loving heart and a truth-hungry mind.  I don’t agree with everything he says but he has the following in common with all the other authors I mentioned: he lights up my brain, helps me to understand things I’ve struggled to understand for years.  He is far more compatible with my brand of Emergence than most suspect. He is sure of many things but unlike your typical American Baptist pastor he doesn’t attempt to snow you if he doesn’t know the answer.

This is a different conversation altogether, but I’ve come to believe that much of the Emergent movement grows not out of having read the Bible and found it lacking, but from not having read the Bible at all, or at least picking and choosing the passages that fit – which we all do, but I don’t see why it should be sanctioned in one movement and not the other.  The same goes for politics… Donald Miller stumps for Obama, and today Tony Jones (former national coordinator for Emergent Village) did a national interview promoting Obama.  I say that’s a double standard.

Anyway, I am not someone who buys someone else’s systematic theology and then tries to force it down other people’s throats.  I believe in reading widely and stopping for an extended examination of ideas when I come across something compelling.

Here’s a 5-minute Piper segment that illustrates my point.  The format is a daily Q&A podcast : audio or text transcript

***You might want to read part1, part 2, part 3, part 4 and part 5 first***

“I wish Ani DiFranco wasn’t a Lesbian.” 

So begins Miller’s chapter on love.  It’s another fine example of why this book would never have shown up in Christian bookstore even a decade ago.   At any rate, Don continues (if you don’t know anything about Ani DiFranco you won’t find this very funny.  Personally I think it’s hilarious:

“I am listening to her right now, and I think I would marry her if she’d have me.  I would hang out in the front row at all her concerts and sing along and pump my fist and get angry at all the right times.  Then, later, on the bus, she would lay her head on a pillow in my lap, and I would get my fingers tangled in her dreadlocks while we watched Charlie Rose on television.”

Don has some interesting fantasies to say the least – this one seems like the artist’s equivalent of a geek fantasy about being the captain of the Starship Enterprise.  And last I heard, Don, Ani is no longer a lesbian (exclusively anyway) and is married to a guy from a city 20 minutes from where I live.

“If Ani DiFranco and I got married, I would write books on the bus ride between cities and in the evening, after the concerts, we would watch Charlie Rose, and three or four times each night we would whisper, Good question, Charlie, good question.  But none of this will happen because Ani DiFranco is not attracted to men, I don’t think.  Otherwise we would be on.”

These are the fantasies of a desperately single, artistically inclined man.  Good luck, Don.

Miller is a first rate writer – in this book anyway – and from the audio I’ve heard of him he’s also an engaging and hilarious speaker. 

******

Post Script – I’ve read another entire book of his now and I disliked it as much I liked Blue Like Jazz.  It is a book that is more focused on theology and in it Don seems to be in way over his head, regurgitating half-baked ideas with a more that subtle liberal bias.  I’ll post some thoughts on that eventually.

*******

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***You might want to read part1, part 2, part 3, and part 4 first***

I’m quite certain Don’s chapter on confession is unlike anything you’ve read before.  The subtitle of this chapter is “Coming Out of the Closet” and in it Don recounts the experience of setting up a confession booth in the middle of the campus of a liberal secular university with a sign on the outside that said, “confess your sins.”  This was supposed to happen during a week in which the campus is shut down so the students can party.  That might sound like an uncommon yet bold and arrogant evangelism tactic, but all who entered the booth were in for a surprise.

It was Don’s idea to set up a confession booth but it was Tony the Beat Poet that added the twist. They would build the confession booth as Don had imagined, and they would be in the booth but they would be there to confess to the students.  They would be there to own up to the many brutal things that have been done in Jesus’ name.  The students expecting to enter the area of the booth where they would confess instead found themselves on the receiving end of the confessions of Christians.

I will tell you now that I don’t believe that all of those brutal things done in the name of Jesus were actually done by Christians.  How could they be?  These were not merely impulsive acts done in a moment of weakness and frustration; these were events – sometimes years and decades long – that required continual rededication to their completion.  But the evidence is staggering and there is no doubt that brutal and murderous things were indeed done in the name of Jesus.  And so I think that what Donald Miller and his friends did on that campus was a good thing.  It is a refreshing change to outright denial and, much worse, attempts to justify what happened.

“For so much of my life,” Miller writes, “I had been defending Christianity because I thought to admit that we had done any wrong was to discredit the religious system as a whole, but it isn’t a religious system, it is people following Christ; and the important thing to do, the right thing to do, was to apologize for getting in the way of Jesus.”

As the first confessor entered the booth Miller was lacking confidence and wasn’t sure he could actually carry through with his intentions.  After a bit of small talk, Miller finally began to confess:

“There’s a lot and I will keep it short.  Jesus said to feed the poor and heal the sick.  I have never done very much about that.  Jesus said to love those who persecute me.  I tend to lash out, especially if I feel threatened, you know, if my ego is threatened.  Jesus did not mix his spirituality with his politics.  I grew up doing that.  I got in the way of the central message of Christ.  I know that was wrong, and I know that a lot of people will not listen to the words of Christ because of people like me, who know him, carry our own agendas into the conversation rather than just relaying the message Christ wanted to get across.  There’s a lot more, you know.”

This is a confession that all but the most arrogant Christian can make.  We are all guilty of most of the things Don listed in his confession.

Go to part 6

*****************************************
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Scot McKnight provides more of his trademark clarity in a recent article in Christianity Today:

I maintain a crucial distinction between two related streams: emergent and the broader emerging movement. Emergent is crystallized in Emergent Village and its leaders Brian McLaren, Tony Jones, and Doug Pagitt. Emerging is a mix of orthodox, missional, evangelical, church-centered, and social justice leaders and lay folk. When I think of this broader emerging movement, I think of Dan Kimball at Vintage Faith Church in Santa Cruz, Dave Dunbar at Biblical Seminary in Hatfield, Pennsylvania, Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch and their book The Shaping of Things to Come, and Donald Miller’s Blue Like Jazz. Some of this was anticipated by Lesslie Newbigin’s many writings and is now sketched in Tom Sine’s The New Conspirators. Furthermore, I see emerging trends in megachurches like Willow Creek Community Church and Saddleback Church.

Despite what some critics assume, Brian McLaren, the most controversial of emergent leaders, does not represent all things emerging. But he does represent the more progressive wing, and his latest books offer a glimpse of where that movement might be heading.

(read entire article)

“And that’s the tricky thing about life, really, that the things we want most will kill us.” This statement follows 13 illustrated pages of a story about sexy carrots. You really need to look at the book to understand, but this is another good reason I never would have found this book in the Christian bookstores of my youth. Cartoons about sexy carrots?! Way too edgy!

Miller relays a lot of his stories through the eyes and actions of his friends – characters (non-fiction characters but certainly characters) like Tony the Beat Poet and Mark the Cussing Pastor (more on this one later) and Andrew the Protester and other real-life friends whom he calls by their real names like Laura and Penny and Rick.

The point of the sexy carrot episode was that, “Tony the Beat Poet read me this ancient scripture recently that talked about loving either darkness or light, and how hard it is to love light and how easy it is to love darkness. I think that is true. Ultimately, we do what we love to do.”

Miller expands on this, delineating his philosophy of humanity that includes common, if rarely talked about, Christian ideas like sin, self-addiction, and living in the wreckage of “the fall” and saying that because of these “my body, my heart, and my affections are prone to love the things that kill me.”

“Tony says Jesus gives us the ability to love the things we should love, the things of heaven. Tony says that when people who follow Jesus love the right things, they help create God’s kingdom on earth, and that is something beautiful.”

This is the crux of another misconception about Christians: that we are ever increasingly rule-bound automatons, taking orders from our Pastors to tell everyone that we meet to “Turn or Burn!” or wear t-shirts that say things like “Eternity: Smoking or Non-Smoking?” or, to put slogans on out church’s marquee like one I saw recently during a period of very hot weather: “Smile. We know of hotter places.”

You may have been accosted by Christians like that and if you have I’m sorry. But I also want to tell you that there are great changes happening in the Christian community, and that even though we’ll never rid the world of sloganeering salvation warriors I think there is more of a counter-effort to that than there has ever been before.

Go to Part 4 

I have to tell you that Don comes off as a bit of a political and religious lefty, so we disagree on a few things, but that’s not what this is about.  A number of times he diffused my frustration by stopping just short of rhetoric while relaying stories like the following about a protest he attended:

“More than my questions about the efficacy of social action were my questions about my own motives.  Do I want social justice for the oppressed, or do I just want to be known as a socially active person?  I spend 95 percent of my time thinking about myself anyway.  I don’t have to watch the evening news to see that the world is bad; I only have to look at myself.  I am not browbeating myself here; I am only saying that true change, true life-giving, God-honoring change would have to start with the individual.  I was the very problem I had been protesting.  I wanted to make a sign that read ‘I AM THE PROBLEM!’”

That was on page 20 of the book and I think that was when I decided that I was going to carry on reading the remaining 222 pages.  Whether you are on the left or the right politically or religiously, if you are far enough either way, you think that everyone else is the problem.  We are always telling ourselves that if only everyone else was like us, all would be well.  What if we all drilled “I AM THE PROBLEM” into our own heads?  Would there even be a left and a right anymore?

So I thought it was incredibly insightful of Don to say “I AM THE PROBLEM” and I think I’m going to have some T-shirts made up emblazoned with that statement.  That should make for some interesting conversations.

If I forget everything else I read in this book and remember the page that says, “I AM THE PROBLEM” I would still consider it a worthy read.  It is one of those statements that works itself into every day, changing your outlook and your responses. (Another recent one for me is John Naisbitt’s “The seeds of the future are embedded in the present”.)

I know how frustrated Don feels when he sees all the self-glorifying theology in the books and programs of TV ministers.  Feel-good-ism is the dominant Christian subculture theology and has been for a good quarter century at least.  While criticizing a fell-good theology Miller is certainly not saying we should never feel good about things, only that life will not always be the proverbial bed of roses that some of these television evangelists make it out be.

It’s important to reiterate that Don says “I am not browbeating myself here.”  It’s easy to confuse the honest self-examination with browbeating to be sure but Miller does a better job of it than most.  Go too far and you have guilt-based religion; neglect it altogether and you end up with man-glorifying pep-talk theology.

“I know now, from experience, that the path to joy winds through this dark valley.  I think every well-adjusted human being has dealt squarely with his or her own depravity.  I realize this sounds very Christian, very fundamentalist and browbeating, but I want to tell you this part of what the Christians are saying is true.  I think Jesus feels strongly about communicating the idea of our brokenness, and I think it is worth reflection.  Nothing is going to change in the Congo until you and I figure out what is wrong with the person in the mirror.”

Go to Part 3 

Wikipedia gives us a good start:

Blue Like Jazz is the second book by Donald Miller. This semi-autobiographical work, subtitled “Non-Religious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality,” is a collection of essays and personal reflections chronicling the author’s growing understanding of the nature of God and Jesus, and the need and responsibility for an authentic personal response to that understanding. Much of the work centers on Miller’s experiences with friends and fellow students while attending Reed College, a liberal university in Portland, Oregon.The book’s popularity is due to its personable style and seemingly relevant content which most appeals to twentysomething and thirtysomething, post-modern Christians in the emerging church movement. His writings have often been compared to fellow Christian memoirist, Anne Lamott.

His writing style is also reminiscent Madeleine L’engle, who died recently. He writes in a way that makes life sound important but weaves a lot of humor in as well. Basically, he writes autobiography and through his writing tries to map the joys and challenges of being a Christian. From these life stories you know he leads an interesting life and proves the adage that life really can be stranger than fiction sometimes.

Blue Like Jazz is not the type of book I would have found in the Christian bookstores my parents so often took me to as a child. Don would have been too “edgy” for the Christian book market of 20 years ago, a little too honest about his failings, but that is exactly the kind of stuff the Christian book market could have used 20 years ago. But then – as now – success and prosperity sell more books than failure and confession.

And I wish I’d read this book sooner because it had a profound effect on me. My used copy obviously lived its first life as a gift to a graduate, and the shallowness of the yearbook-style best wishes hand-written on the inside cover (I’ll list those later) are not indicative of the depth of the content of the book. There is much inside for those of us over 30 as well.

The subtitle reads “Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality”, which of course stirs the interest of a great number of readers I’m sure. “What kinds of thoughts, other than religious ones, can one have about Christian spirituality?” some might ask. Miller answers. This is not really a book about theology, but then again it is. The topics Miller writes about are not cloaked in academic language but he does tackle big ideas. I’ll let a few passages speak for the book.

The first notable sentence I came to was this:

“And so from the beginning, the chasm that separated me from God was as deep as wealth and as wide as fashion.” And I’ll just leave that sentence hanging there for you to read and ponder because even though it is a summary of the first page of the book I think it stands on its own as a kind of poetry. I’ll answer the question the way a poet and artist would by redirecting: well, what does it mean to you?

Don knows a lot about me. I know this because he says things like “I grew up going to church, so I got used to hearing about God. He was like Uncle Harry or Aunt Sally except we didn’t have pictures.” That was me – God was ever-present but not in the way a close friend is.

Go to Part 2 

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I like reading “classic” books, and by that I mean books like The Catcher in the Rye and more recent books like Donald Miller’s Blue Like Jazz. One reason for this is that many people have read them and so there is a great amount cultural currency about them. Great works of art stay relevant, if only for the reason that people keep reading them, viewing them, and listening to them and – thanks to Hollywood – re-creating them.

I like to make my own judgments on these works rather than rely on the proclamations of either the cultural yes-men or the anti-cultural naysayers. In some cases I am pleasantly surprised – in the case of Blue Like Jazz I was astonished; in other cases I think I must be missing something.

The Catcher in the Rye is one of the latter. What am I missing? Why has this book been idolized and often banned? Why the iconic status? I have intentionally avoided reading reviews and other’s thoughts about the book, so what follows are my unadulterated impressions.

A few things that I liked about the book:

First, it is a good read. The dialog is good, the characters are alive, and the supporting cast is colorful.

Second, I do understand how iconoclastic it must have been in the 1950’s when it was first published, although now it seems a rather tame and meandering tale of youthful delinquency.

Third, it was interesting to notice while reading how Donald Miller cops plenty of style from it for Blue Like Jazz. Miller uses “if you want to know the truth” throughout Blue Like Jazz just like Holden does. That’s fine with me – it’s an appropriate homage, a wink and a knowing smile from Miller to his readers who make the connection.

Some notable passages:

“I can’t always pray when I want to. In the first place, I’m sort of an atheist. I like Jesus and all, but I don’t care too much for most of the other stuff in the Bible. Take the Disciples, for instance. They annoy the h— out of me, if you want to know the truth. They were alright after Jesus was dead and all, but while he was alive, they were about as much use to him as a hole in the head. All they did was keep letting him down. I like almost anybody in the Bible better than the Disciples.
If you want to know the truth, the guy I like best in the Bible, next to Jesus, was that lunatic and all, that lived in the tombs and kept cutting himself with stones. I like him ten times as much as the Disciples, that poor b—–d.”

This is no surprise, since Holden is telling his story from within the asylum in which he now lives. But you don’t know this until the end of the book, so maybe you just see it as an attempt to shock the reader. Holden pities the lunatic, probably without seeing the parallel to his own life in which his younger sister seems to pity him in the same way.

Holden is absolutely obsessed with phoniness. He goes on about it at every opportunity. For example:

“In the first place, my parents are different religions, and all the children in our family are atheists. If you want to know the truth, I can’t even stand ministers. The ones they’ve had at every school I’ve gone to, they all have these Holy Joe voices when they start giving their sermons. G–, I hate that. I don’t see why the h— they can’t talk in their natural voice. They sound so phony when they talk.”

Authenticity is paramount in Holden’s hierarchy of social virtues. Authenticity is freedom, and freedom is liberty to do what one wants.

I’m finding this book more likable in the reviewing of it than I did in the reading. Because of the “surprise ending”, you want to read it again, now with your lens adjusted to account for the setting in which the story is being told. In this way it is like the movie “The Usual Suspects” – the only movie my wife and I have ever watched, then rewound (rewound, yes, back in the day) and immediately watched again. The surprise ending here is not as surprising, but I do think I’ll read this again sometime and the experience with be richer.

What follows is the dialog between Holden and his younger sister from the title of the book is taken:

“You know what I’d like to be?” I said. “You know what I’d like to be? I mean if I had my g—-m choice?”

“What? Stop swearing.”

“You know that song ‘If a body catch a body comin’ through the rye’? I’d like-“

“It’s ‘If a body meet a body coming through the rye’!” old Phoebe said. “It’s a poem. By Robert Burns.”

“I know it’s a poem by Robert Burns.”

She was right though. It is “If a body meet a body coming through the rye.” I didn’t know it then, though.

“I thought it was ‘If a body catch a body,’” I said. “Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing a game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around – nobody big, I mean – except me. And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff – I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I’d do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it’s crazy, but that’s the only thing I’d really like to be. I know it’s crazy.”

So the title of the book is actually taken not from the Robert Burns poem but from Holden’s faulty memorization of it. (Admit it, the title would not be nearly as compelling if was “Meeter in the Rye”.)

In this telling passage I see Holden’s longing for protection, his desire for someone to watch over him. At one point he takes refuge at the home of a former teacher whom he has always admired. He feels safe until he wakes to find this former teacher whom he trusts, Mr. Antolini, sitting on the floor next to couch on which he is sleeping, petting and patting Holden’s head. When Holden demands to know what he’s doing, Mr. Antolini replies “Nothing! I’m simply sitting here, admiring-”

Holden reveals that he “knows more d–n perverts, at schools and all… and they’re always being perverty when I’m around,” and “When something perverty like that happens, I start sweating like a b——. That kind of stuff’s happened to me about twenty times since I was a kid. I can’t stand it.”

Does anyone have a psychoanalytical take on those statements? I draw from that that he’s been a frequent victim of abuse. The next morning he considers returning to Mr. Antolini’s house, wondering if he’s misjudged the whole incident. “I mean I wondered if just maybe I was wrong about thinking he was making a flitty pass at me. I wondered if maybe he just liked to pat guys on the head when they’re asleep. I mean, how can you tell about that stuff for sure? You can’t.”This incident occurs near the end of the story and seems to put him over the edge with anxiety and worry, so I imagine it is shortly after this that he enters the asylum.

At the end of the story Holden regrets having told so many people his stories, since it makes him miss all the characters in them. “Don’t ever tell anybody anything,” he says, “If you do, you start missing everybody.”

I have to admit it – I’m seeing a lot more depth now than when I was reading the book. I was tempted to put it down, write a short, negative review, and forget about it. But right now, I’m more interested in picking it up and reading the whole story again.

And that is the way great art becomes great and memorable – the way it becomes a classic.

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Read more about The Catcher in the Rye at Wikipedia
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“For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.” Luke 18:14

Last spring I read Donald Miller’s book Blue Like Jazz. Miller is a wonderful storyteller who weaves humorous, and sometimes sad, personal stories with the insight he gains along the way. One such insight had to do with the cause of the world’s problems. Miller says:

“Do I want social justice for the oppressed, or do I just want to be known as a socially active person? I spend 95 percent of my time thinking about myself anyway. I don’t have to watch the evening news to see that the world is bad; I only have to look at myself. I am not browbeating myself here; I am only saying that true change, true life-giving, God-honoring change would have to start with the individual. I was the very problem I had been protesting. I wanted to make a sign that read ‘I AM THE PROBLEM!’”

That was on page 20 of the book and that was when I decided that I was going to read the remaining 222 pages. Whether you are on the left or the right politically or religiously, if you go too far either way, you start to think that everyone else is the problem! We are always telling ourselves that if only everyone else was like us, all would be well. What if we all drilled “I AM THE PROBLEM” into our own heads? Would there be much of a “left” or a “right” anymore?

I thought it was really insightful of Don to say “I AM THE PROBLEM” and I think I’m going to have a T-shirt made that has nothing on it but those four words in big, bold letters. That should make for some interesting conversations. Let me know if you want one and I’ll have a few more made.

If I forget everything else I read in Don’s book and remember the page that says, “I AM THE PROBLEM” I would still consider it a worthy read. It is one of those statements that works itself into every day, changing your outlook and your responses.

“When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with the humble is wisdom.” Proverbs 11:2

“Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.” Philippians 2:3