Jazz Notes: Improvisations on Blue Like Jazz
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About this ebook
Jazz Notes is the literary equivalent of a remix CD-cool sound-bytes strategically crafted from Don Miller's classic Blue Like Jazz, combined with brand new material that offers the author's fans an inside look at some of the unforgettable-and outrageous-characters and stories from the original best seller. Jazz Notes captures the essential Don Miller with non-religious reflections on how Don's incredible spiritual odyssey got started; what happened to Don at one of the most liberal colleges in the world to help him experience faith and grace for the first time in his life; a recasting of Don's marvelous "confession booth" story; and how Don discovered the secret to really loving other people-and himself. Jazz Notes includes a bonus audio CD with Don Miller interview.
BLUE LIKE JAZZ Highlight Notes:
- 1 million copies sold
- 45 appearances on the NY Times Bestseller List-and counting
- A publishing phenomenon that continues to sell more books each year it is in the marketplace!
Donald Miller
Donald Miller is the founder of The Mentoring Project, an organization that helps churches start mentoring programs and pairs mentors with boys in need. He is the author of several books including New York Times bestsellers Scary Close, Blue Like Jazz, and A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. He is a frequent speaker, appearing at events such as the Women of Faith Conference, The Democratic National Convention, and Harvard University. He lives in Nashville, Tennessee with his wife and dogs.
Read more from Donald Miller
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Reviews for Jazz Notes
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Book preview
Jazz Notes - Donald Miller
A GIFT FOR
FROM
DONALD MILLER
JAZZ
NOTES
Improvisations on
BLUE LIKE JAZZ
New York Times Bestseller
JAZZ
NOTES
NONRELIGIOUS THOUGHTS
ON CHRISTIAN SPIRITUALITY
DONALD MILLER
JazzNotes_0006_001All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other—except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson.
Thomas Nelson is a registered trademark of Thomas Nelson, Inc.
Design: Kevin Swanson
Editorial Development: Todd Hafer
Photography: tiburonstudios/istockphoto, Henk Badenhorst/istockphoto, blaneyphoto/istockphoto, Remus Eserblom/istockphoto, Terraxplorer/istockphoto, Charles Noble/istockphoto, Dmitry Volkov/istockphoto, John Anderson/istockphoto, cglow/istockphoto, Kativ/istockphoto, M. Eric Honeycutt/istockphoto
Thomas Nelson, Inc. titles may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fund-raising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail SpecialMarkets@ThomasNelson.com.
ISBN-10: 1-4041-05158
ISBN-13: 9-7814041-0515-7
Printed in China
08 09 10 11 QW 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
CONTENTS
1 BEGINNINGS
2 OF FAITH AND GRACE
3 TRUE CONFESSIONS
4 ON WONDER AND WORSHIP
5 ALL ABOUT LOVE
I NEVER LIKED JAZZ MUSIC,
BECAUSE JAZZ DOESN’T RESOLVE.
BUT SOMETIMES YOU HAVE TO
WATCH SOMEBODY LOVE SOMETHING
BEFORE YOU CAN LOVE IT YOURSELF.
I USED TO NOT LIKE GOD
BECAUSE GOD DIDN’T RESOLVE.
BUT THAT WAS BEFORE
ANY OF THIS HAPPENED . . .
1
BEGINNINGS
I once listened to an Indian on TV say that God was in the wind and the water, and I wondered at how beautiful that was, because it meant you could swim in Him, or have Him caress your face with a breeze.
I am early in my story, but I believe I will stretch out into eternity, and in heaven I will reflect on my early days, the days when it seemed sometimes like God was down a dirt road, walking toward me. Years ago, He was a swinging speck in the distance. Now He is close enough that I can hear His singing. Soon I will see the lines on His face.
My father left home when I was young, so when I was introduced to the concept of God as Father, I imagined Him as a stiff, oily man who wanted to move into our house and share a bed with my mother. I remember this as a frightful, threatening idea.
We were a poor family who attended a wealthy church, and they told us we were children of God. So I also imagined God as a man who had a lot of money and drove a big car. I felt that God’s family was better than mine – that he had a daughter who was a cheerleader and a son who played football.
I was born with a small bladder, so I wet the bed until I was 10. Later, I developed a crush on the homecoming queen. She was kind to me, in a political sort of way, which she probably learned from her father, a bank president.
So, from the beginning, the chasm that separated me from God was as deep as wealth and as wide as fashion.
I have been with my own father only three times, each visit happening in my childhood. He was a basketball coach, and I do not know why he left my mother. I know only that he was tall and handsome and smelled like beer. It was on his clothes, even on his coarse, uneven face. I don’t drink much beer myself, but the depth of that scent has never left me.
My friend Tony the Beat Poet will be drinking a beer when we’re at Portland’s Horse Brass Pub, and the smell will send me to a pleasant place that exists only in recollections of childhood.
My father was a big man. I think bigger than most. On my second visit with him, he threw a football across a gym, drilling a spiral into the opposite hoop, so hard that it shook the backboard. I studied my father’s every action as a work of wonder. I watched as he shaved and brushed his teeth and put on his socks and shoes – all motions that were more muscle than grace. I would stand at his bedroom door, hoping he wouldn’t notice my awkward stare. I looked purposefully as he opened a can of beer, the tiny can hiding itself in his big hand, the foam spilling over the rim. His red lips slurping the excess, his tongue probing his mustache. He was a brilliant machine of a thing.
It is not possible to admire a person more than I admired that man. I know, from only three visits, a blend of love and fear that exists only in a boy’s notion of his father.
Years passed between his calls. My mother would answer the phone, and I knew by the way she stood silently in the kitchen that it was my father. A few days later, he would visit, always changed in