Blue Like Jazz Opening Night

Friday is the opening day for Blue Like Jazz the movie. None of the theatres in my home town chose to pick up Blue Like Jazz. None of the theatres in my home state have it this weekend, and although two towns will show it next weekend, they are over 3 hours away. Therefore, I am driving over three hours to a neighboring state to see the movie this weekend.
If you want to see where Blue Like Jazz is playing, you can check the website for theatres in your state.

“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.”
― Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality

Why does Blue Like Jazz resonate so deeply with me that I would be willing to drive over 3 hours away just to see it opening weekend?

“Everybody wants to be fancy and new. Nobody wants to be themselves. I mean, maybe people want to be themselves, but they want to be different, with different clothes or shorter hair or less fat. It's a fact. If there was a guy who just liked being himself and didn't want to be anybody else, that guy would be the most different guy in the world and everybody would want to be him.”
― Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality

My first exposure to Don Miller’s writing was reading Blue Like Jazz - Non Religious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality. Here was someone talking about my faith in a way I had not heard before. He saw a Christian faith that was authentic, messy, and real.

“...I want my spirituality to rid me of hate, not give me reason for it.”
― Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality

Then I read A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. In this work, Miller compares our lives to a screenplay or story. There is some excellent analysis on what makes a good story, but Miller goes deeper with the analogy of stories and lives. Just as no one wants to read a meaningless story, Miller challenges his reader to not live a meaningless life.

“When you stop expecting people to be perfect, you can like them for who they are.”
― Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life

When I heard the premise of the movie of Blue Like Jazz, I was immediately hooked because the Don in the movie takes such a similar journey to the one I went on as I went to college. I lost myself, and much like Don in the movie, I found myself, but only after a messy ride.

“Many of our attempts to understand Christian faith have only cheapened it. I can no more understand the totality of God than the pancake I made for breakfast understands the complexity of me. The little we do understand, that grain of sand our minds are capable of grasping, those ideas such as God is good, God feels, God loves, God knows all, are enough to keep our hearts dwelling on His majesty and otherness forever.”
― Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality

I’m heading out bright and early to see Blue Like Jazz to vote with my dollars that this is a movie I wanted to see made, and a story that needed to be told.

“I loved the fact that it wasn't my responsibility to change somebody, that it was God's, that my part was just to communicate love and approval.”
― Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality