Jazz Notes: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality

This is a specialty book, a little bigger than picket size, hardback, a good gift format, which is so popular right now. Miller here provides some personal reflections and background on the personal experiences and concepts presented in his earlier book Blue Like Jazz.Miller is a refreshingly honest and personal writer. He has a self-deprecating style that will have you bursting out in laughter at some unexpected comment! He can portray his own inner struggle in a way you will identify with!You can go through the experiences with him, and as he opens up his thinking process, you can think through the challenges and concepts that he was experiencing. Miller shares his safari of moral and spiritual questing and clarifying. He was a member of a church, but uncertain, and found some questions not being dealt with. He proceeded to learn from the world at large and reference that to his Christian background.He found the figure and teachings of Jesus a continuing solid focus, which continued as a core of values and moral reference. His writing here is hilarious as he shares some of the unusual experiences he and some friends go through. He chose to go to a college known for its radical, antichristian attitude.He wanted to explore the philosophical context and learn what was motivating some of these students. In this context, he continues to ask whether being a Christian makes sense on that campus or in this modern world. He and some friends take some radical approaches to implement the teachings of Jesus, as opposed to the standard church ideas of how to be a Christian.For instance, he and his small group of Christian friends decided on a special activity for Renaissance Weekend. They decided to set up a confession booth, address as monks, and take confessions. Only this was reverse confession.They decided they would confess, as Christians, for all the current failures and historical sins of Christians in their society and through history. They approached this with trepidation, not really sure what this would entail or exactly how they would go about it. After they began the activity, it so surprised the first person that he went around telling everyone else and it brought about a reconciliation on the campus.This puzzling, novel approach the young Christians took facilitated bridging a social gap and clarifying some misconceptions about Christians and the Christian message. Miller and his friends tried to bypass the old negative churchy conceptions by focusing on Jesus and the way they were trying to follow him.Miller shares this and many more experience in Blue Like Jazz. In Notes, he provides some more personal reflections on the background of the events and how the process of trying to be like Jesus has gone for him. The tone you feel is that Miller has found life is a Wonder, an adventure. In faith, the adventure takes on deeper meaning, and Faith allows you to question and probe without fearing the answers you will find!This is a hilarious and poignant gift booklet. Enjoy it and give it to someone you love!

I am extremely irritated to have wasted my money on this. I am a huge fan of Don's work, have read Blue Like Jazz multiple times as well as his other books, have bought and listened to his MP3 recordings on his website, and read his blog occasionally.So I was really excited to have some improvisations on one of my favorite Christian books. I knew that there would be some repeat between this and Blue Like Jazz, but the promised "brand new material" and the audio CD that came with it were a total waste.First, let's be clear about what this is: The book itself is a small hardcover gift book, half the size of a normal book and 139 pages long (so you get about 60 pages of material). The material itself is about 5 chapters from Blue Like Jazz which have been abridged and modified slightly to fit into this small format - nothing new.The so-called "new material" is 25 paragraphs about where the people from the book are now (nothing depthy or that provided any further connection to the people), a tiny bit about Don's new book, the movie version of Blue, and how it feels to have a bestselling book/ thanks to loyal fans. As an avid reader of Don's work, I have read just about all of it before - the same stuff is touched on for free in his blog.The enclosed audio CD is 45 minutes long and is excerpts from Blue Like Jazz, the audio book. Zero new info. I hoped it might be actual jazz songs that inspired him, or something different from what I had just read. But they basically packaged the audio version and the book version together, so the content is nearly identical on the CD and book.I'll give this two stars instead of one just because if you have a friend who hates to read and will never read the real book Blue Like Jazz, this might be a good gift. They don't even have to read it, they can listen. But that's the only reason I can see anyone buying this instead of Blue Like Jazz.This was a total waste of money for me and I am really disappointed in Don for agreeing to publish this. The title and misleading info on it makes me feel like he and the publishers hoped that more than a few diehard fans would purchase this book, believing there actually was some new material in here as advertised.I feel lied to by someone that I look to for moral insights. I am disappointed to say the least.

Allow me to begin with a short excerpt:"Many of our attempts to understand and define the Christian faith have only cheapened it. I can no more understand the totality of God than the pancake I made for breakfast understands my complexity." (page 101)Buy one for your car, put one in your iPod, keep one in the office, have one in every bathroom, and make sure one is on your night stand. A perfect gift for a friend. What can I say, I adore Donald Miller's stuff, even when Thomas Nelson published this remix of his classic, Blue Like Jazz.That being said, the audio CD that accompanies the book is a dismal disappointment. Somebody at TN had the bright idea to mix some awful background music with Don reading a selection of his prose. Hey, Thomas Nelson --- kill the background music!!! It was a terrible distraction when one is attempting to focus on the essence of what Don is saying...it didn't work.A great contribution. A wonderful gift for a friend. Use the CD as a flying saucer with your neighbor's barking dog whose is chained up in their backyard 24-7.In summary, reading Donald Miller has this effect on me, "Wonder is the feeling we get when we do just that --- let go of our silly answers, our mapped out rules that we want God to follow. And I don't believe that there is any better worship than wonder." (p. 109).Thank you Thomas-Nelson and Donald Miller

I have read Don Miller's other book : Searching For God Knows What? And found it to be interesting and thought provoking - in the same way as Philip Yancey's excellent books. Jazz Notes - the book - is perfectly fine as writing about faith from an everyman's perspective. Stories and thoughts that are brutal in their honesty and life affirming in that 'hey - it's not just me, then...' type way. HOWEVER - the book comes with a free CD of spoken word from the book. Nothing wrong with that - except it's lathered over with horrible american soft jazz muzac. Read the book. Destroy the free CD.