Blue Like Jazz

Blogging might be light for the next few weeks. I have a couple of deadlines--one huge one--that will take a lot of my time and energy. Hopefully, on the other side, I can talk about those deadlines.

But in the meantime, I am reading yet another book. Yeah, I know. I am reading Helen Prejean's book and Bruce Bawer's Stealing Jesus, but both of those are preaching to the choir. I know the death penalty is an obscenity, and I also know that fundamentalists have stolen my faith.

But Donald Miller's Blue Like Jazz is interesting. Anglican and Jape will appreciate what he has to say about Jazz. He never liked it because it doesn't resolve, until he stood outside a theater and watched a guy play jazz. "I stood there for 15 minutes, and he never opened his eyes. After that, I liked jazz music. Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself."

I still don't like jazz, but I have always suspected that I didn't understand it. Maybe that will come.

I still have a lot to read in this book, but he has a chapter titled "How to really love other people" that was confronting and interesting. Miller grew up in Houston as a Southern Baptist, so when he writes about hanging out with hippies in Oregon, it sounds odd. But he says that those hippies taught him about love--taught him about acceptance.

He points out that so much of what passes for Christian love is conditional. It is talked about as being unconditional, but it is conditional. And many of us do it. I do. We love people as long as they don't ask the wrong questions, or believe the wrong stuff, or suggest the wrong answers. Miller relates something I understand; that he was taught in church that "there were bad people in teh world and good people in the world.... Christianity was always right."

His breakthrough came when listening to a professor (yeah, that's right) talk about metaphors. People use metaphors to describe certain things. Cancer, for example, invites war metaphors--fighting, battling, etc. Yet, most people survive their disease, and that metaphor invites a much harsher belief. Likewise, he pointed out that people use economic metaphors to describe relationships. We value people, we invest in people, people are priceless. We use love as a commodity: like money. "I use love like money, but love doesn't work like money. It is not a commodity. When we barter with it, we all lose."

Anyway, this book has me thinking. I use those kinds of metaphors all the time. I talk about personal capital (at least that one is consciously economic) and others. My love for people is often based on reciprocity.

I don't want to see love as money. Money is cold.