This book has deeply effected me in the way I view faith the church and community. (Not so much God, that's still about the same as it was). But I realized I should have written these thoughts down long time ago. I was writing a response to a discussion I had started about this book on my conference facebook a few months ago and figured if I didn't post it on my blog, I'd forget about all these thoughts I had, like they'd just fall out of my head. The question I had posed to the discussion group was, "Have you read Blue Like Jazz, and what part effected you or stood out the most?"
Reflections on Blue Like Jazz:
1. Intentional community, because no man is an island ...no matter how hard I try. When Don's pastor encouraged him to stop being reclusive and live amongst people in a community house. I never realized what it meant to live in community with other people until I moved to denver and lived alone, community pulled me out of the slump I had gradually slipped into.
2. The Idea of tithing as being important. After I read this I started titheing.what is strange is that i finally felt like I was pulling my weight at the church i was at. not what the church does with my tithes, that is a different issue. I like to see my hard earned dollars at work, especially when i have to make personal sacrifices like never eating out, or not buying any new stuff, in order to be able to tithe. then I start getting picky about wether my sacrifice is being wasted or not. I never really considered titheing because I thought i'd never be able to afford it.
3. When Don joined that group at (Reed College) a secular college and he offered confession to people who had been hurt by the church or cut off from God through rejection from the church. and by confession I mean apologized for the sins of the church against these people. I'm sure we all know some one who has lost faith because they feel they have been wronged through the church. But the Idea that a person would bother to reach out and apologize for the way the church has treated people and had been too full of itself to apologize to someone's face and really mean it. This blew my mind. but I feel there is a beauty to the moment when the church can admit to being imperfect and reach out in it's brokeneness to other people it has broken. I see Christ in that, and it colors how I see church, but for the better.
