02-09-2022 — 9:52 p.m.
If there was an easier and more concise way for me to give you my thoughts on Blue Like Jazz I’d be doing it. But for now you’re stuck with an off the cuff jumbling of my thoughts and feelings on a book that, for a moment, seemed very personal and strangely familiar to some of my own beliefs and questions throughout my journey with Christ.
I’m going to try my best to give you my thoughts on Blue Like Jazz without getting too carried away. Along with that, sometimes I get carried away when I write stuff like this, sometimes it’s long and sometimes not, so we’ll see how it goes but I love doing stuff like this so I have no remorse if this turns into a full blown essay. My goal here is to not get too lost on the book or on Donald Millers message, but relate to it in the only way I really know how, through my own life. This may develop as a series of stories or feelings or just random thoughts from the pages I saved but I’m going to attempt to do what you asked and be honest.
At first, Blue Like Jazz seemed odd. It was jumpy and sporadic at times and that stood out to me, not because it was a little difficult to latch onto in the first few pages, but because Millers writing, to me, seemed a lot like mine. In the sense that, what seemed like random stories at first, slowly turned into a timeline of him processing thoughts, feelings and stories about his own life and those of his friends along the way, at least that’s what it seems like to me. The little chapters within the chapters made sense to me and had my attention from the get-go. The style of writing, stories about his beliefs and life experiences resonate with me a lot and at times (as cliche as it sounds) was like I was reading in a mirror. Not saying that Donald and I are too similar, that of which I doubt we are, but in his questions and his desires I saw ironic similarities. I saved three pages or sections I guess of the book, (ps sorry in advance about folding the corners of those pages) two that were like those mirror moments and one that wasn’t.
“I never thought I would love a church. But here is what I love about Imago-Dei” (pg.136)
In chapter 12 he talks about churches. He expressed anger and confusion towards previous churches and interactions, this came before the ending of the chapter where he’s talking about his church, Imago. There’s four things he loves about the church that actually made him love it.
The first of which being spiritual, second was art, the third is community, but the fourth was what caught me. He mentions “authenticity” as the fourth and when I first started reading it I rolled my eyes. But by the last sentence, my feelings had been turned.
“…by being true I am allowing people to get to know the real me, and it feels better to have people love the real me than the me I invented.” (pg 137)
I’ll talk about STF for just a second. A little honest truth is STF if the first Church I could even remotely call home since my early high school days, even if that. For the longest time, Church had left a sour taste in my mouth as it has for many. What seemed to me like a recycled process of emotions and emotional drought had me doubting not only myself but the love I had for others. I stopped going to church during college, even while I was still a Young Life leader, not because I didn’t want to, because there was no sense of authenticity out of me. And since moving to Tampa and stumbling into STF this part about me just kinda started to bleed out. It’s why I write so much, I know I’ve rambled about my writing to you before but what Donald said is the reason I write so much in private. There’s this feeling inside where I just want to share verbally and emotionally with others in hopes they’ll do the same, and for a while I’ve just written to myself as if it was directed at others hoping one day I’d have the guts to finally push “send”. I mean I really do enjoy it I can’t lie, and there’s a punchy-heart feeling inside that longs for my friends and family to know who I really am and how I truly feel about them but it just seems so hard to communicate. And that little bit of authenticity, that little bit of truth is what I want so desperately and have been slowly working towards since finding a little bit of a home in STF and in the surrounding community. I want nothing more than for my friends and family to know my heart. They don’t need to love me, I just want them to know the truth!!
“I fear what people will think of me, and that is the reason I don’t date very often. People really like me a lot when they only know me a little, but I have this great fear that if they knew me a lot they wouldn’t like me.” (pg. 143)
I like to think that Donald wrote this over a long processing period because, in the past, I’ve felt the same way. Late in college I would drink myself to the floor while living alone in fear that I would be unloved if my friends really knew me. This comes at a weird contradiction to what I just wrote a second ago but let me clear the air. That feeling took a lot of time and guidance to process. Yes, it’s still a fear of mine that if I share too much about myself, people may draw back from me. However, I have no control over their feelings and nor can I change my past and what it has made me. I didn’t think many others felt this way about themselves, Donald wrote a lot of things in Blue Like Jazz that were real mirror moments to my own life but I feel this may be the biggest.
Yes, much my life has been spent acting as a shallow personality whose true story has been nothing but a testament of repeated fuck-up’s. But hey! The peace that came with my acceptance and acknowledgment of that truth has brought more joy than any two-faced lie of a lifestyle ever did. I’ll be honest, I don’t even know where I’m going with this section. I just wanted to say that. It’s also a little late so sorry if it’s getting jumbly, I probably won’t fix it.
He goes on to talk about it in his relationships but I’m not talking about that considering my comically short track record in that department…
I’m not going to talk about the last thing I noted in the book. It was about money and in retrospect you probably don’t want to hear anything about that. And I am also starting to think too much now about wanting to say the right words to try to sound good so now ill just rant.
It was a little alarming, this book. Many of my own fears and struggles were written throughout and met subsequently with answers, some of which were good and others only applicable to the writer. I liked the book a lot, hell if I didn’t I probably wouldn’t have sat here so long after work reading the dang thing, let alone be here writing this. Blue Like Jazz, to me, is a book about feelings, processing emotions, telling stories, and attempting to understand my desire to love and to be loved. But more importantly, living life with a merciful Savior. I loved the book not because of the good content but because it fueled this desire to know some feelings that I seldom let myself feel and a God I don’t understand. And I’m not saying I understand them now, because that’s FAR from the truth. No, I liked the book because again, I’m shown that I don’t need all the answers about myself or my life or my emotions to come to a God whose entire being is already beyond understanding. I want to trust that Christ will give me those answers, but I won’t mind if he doesn’t.