(more) Blue Like Jazz. part II

I'm going at it again with some more quotes from the book here. Lesson learned: when you give a mouse (or me) a cookie (or a highlighter), he'll want to drink some milk (highlight the entire book like a yellow-book warrior)... Anyway, yeah. This book is great, I recently ordered a new book by Miller but dumb eBay is taking forever to ship!!! I'm not an impatient American, no, I'm just all about (ahem) promptness.

Blue Like Jazz

It all sounded so very witless to me, but by this time I wanted desperately to believe it. It felt as though my soul was designed to live the story Christian spirituality was telling. I felt like my soul wanted to be forgiven. I wanted the resolution God was offering. (35)

Christian spirituality was not a children's story. It wasn't cute or neat. It was mystical and odd and clean, and it was reaching into dirty. There was wonder in it and enchantment. (35)

She also thought that if Christianity were a person, that is all Christians lumped into one human being, that human being probably wouldn't like her. (44)

They felt they had to sell God, as if He were soap or a vacuum cleaner, and it's like they really weren't listening to me, they didn't care, they just wanted me to buy their product. (46)

I always thought the Bible was more of a salad thing, you know, but it isn't. It is a chocolate thing. (47)

Love, for example, is a true emotion, but it is not rational. What I mean is, people actually feel it. I have been in love, plenty of people have been in love, yet love cannot be proved scientifically. (54)

I figured all this was God's fault. I thought that if God would make it so I felt convicted all the time I would never sin. I would never get drunk or smoke pot. (63)

I think the things we want most in life, the things we think will set us free, are not the things we need. (63)

And that's the tricky thing about life, really that the things we want most will kill us. (77)

I was in that same phase of trying to discipline myself to "behave" as if I loved light and not "behave" as if I loved darkness. (79)

The first of the exploits to go was the Bible. It wasn't that I didn't want to read it or didn't agree with it, I would just forget. (80)

The ability to accept God's unconditional grace and ferocious love is all we need to obey him in return. (86)

Our behavior will not be changed long with self-discipline, but fall in love and a human will accomplish what he never thought possible. (86)

I felt as if believing in God was no more rational than having an imaginary friend. (87)

I read through the Koran before it was even popular. It never occurred to me that if Christianity was not rational, then neither were other religions. (87)

I don't have so many problems with Muhammad, but I have problems with middle-aged white guys who grew up in America claiming Muhammad as a hero, not because Muhammad never did anything good (he did), but because calling Muhammad a hero is such an incredibly trendy thing to do. (90)

I understand why people wear crystals around their necks and why they perform chants and gaze at stars. They are lonely. I'm not talking about lonely for a lover or a friend. I mean lonely in the universal sense, lonely inside the understanding that we are tiny little people on a tiny little earth suspended in an endless void that echoes past stars and stars and stars. (92)


Here is this guy using Islamic verbiage to make himself look spiritual, and yet he really hasn't researched or subscribed to the faith, as it presents itself. He's just using it. Raping it for his own pleasure. (93)

I knew Christ, but I was not a practicing Christian. (94)

I have become an infomercial for God, and I don't even use the product. I don't want to be who I am anymore. (97)

That is the thing about giving yourself to God. Some people get really emotional about it and some people don't feel much of anything except the peace they have after making an important decision . (100)