Blue Like Jazz author note

[cherrysis]

Umm My dear friend Robin asked me to be moderator and watch over Mum's Bar.
At first I felt so special and then kinda overwhelmed NOW though I KNOW

WHY....

Tonight I start something new for us called

Blue Like Jazz:

If You can't wait for my daily posts then go pick a copy up for yourself the, author is Donald Miller.


We will start with the authors note;

I never liked Jazz music because jazz music does not resolve...
BUT
I was outside the Bagdad Theater in Portland one night when I saw a man playing the saxophone.
I stood there for 15 minutes, and he never opened his eyes.
After that I liked Jazz.
Sometimes
you have to watch somebody
love
something before you can love it yourself,
It is as if they are showing you the way!

I used to not like God... because God did not resolve.... But that was before ANY of THIS happened!

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ August 03, 2006 07:16 PM: Message edited by: cherrysis ]</font>

[Cherry_pez]

Oooh this will be interesting and engaging. I like it already. Go on....

[cherrysis]

Page one
Beginnings
God on a dirt road walking toward me


I once listened to an Indian on television
say that God was in the wind and the water, and I wondered at how beautiful that was beacause it meant you could swim in Him or have Him brush your face in a breeze. I am early in my story, but I believe I will stretch out into eternity, and in heaven I will reflect upon these early days, these days when it seemed God was down a dirt road walking towards me.
Years ago He was a swinging speck in the distance;
now He is close enough I can hear His singing. Soon I will see the lines on His face.


My father left my home when I was young,
so when I was introduced to the concept of God as father I imagined Him as a stiff, oily man who wanted to move into our house and share a bed with my mother. I can only remember this as a frightful and threatening idea. We were a poor family who attended a wealthy church, so I imagined God as a man who had a lot of money and drove a big car. At church they told us we were children of God, but I knew God's family was better than mine, that He had a daughter who was a cheerleader and a son who played football. I had a small bladder so I wet the bed unitl I was ten and later developed a crush on the homecoming queen who was kind to me in a political sort of way, which is something she probably learned from her father, who was president of the bank. And so from the beginning, the chasm that seperated me from God was as deep as wealth and as wide as fashion.

[cherrysmum]

I'm enjoying this...where is it coming from???

[cherrysis]

Mum,
It is coming from a book that Zach's youth pastor said would help me/us!
I had it out with Zach B4 he left to see Jeff 6 weeks ago...keep in mind I have not REALLY SET FOOT in a church with any meaning since before I knew Jeff ( long story LONG)
But now I am willing and I spoke with Herb ( Zach goes to church every chance he gets) and Herb leads the youth.
I am sorry I am trying so hard to make this make sense right now but my heart is breaking DAMN
I just thought things would be different...Now I don't know!
I can't understand the pains each of us are going through
HEY BUT
I can continue the story ( BLUE LIKE JAZZ by DOnald Miller) I do think this book MAY mean something and...I am only reading
\
AS FAR as I can type EACH DAY!

So here is page 2
BTW
Mom I love you...


In Houston where I grew up, the only change in weather came in late October when the cold is sent down from Canada. Weathermen in Dallas would call weathermen in Houston so people knew to bring their plants in and watch after their dogs.
The cold came down the interstate, tall and blue, and made reflections in the mirrored windows of large buildings


....HEY Robin This reminds me of the Mother Mary imagine on that building...We could see it on the way to your house Clearwater anywho...


moving over the Gulf of Mexico as if to prove that the sky holds magnitude over water. In Houston, In October, everybody walks around with a certain energy as if they are going to be elected president the next day, AS IF they are going to get married.
In the winter it was easier for me to believe in God,

And I suppose it had to do with new weather, with the color of the leaves clinging to the trees, with the smoke in the fireplaces of the big houses in the opulent neighborhoods where I would ride my bike. I half believed that if God lived in one of those neighborhoods,
He would invite me in, make me hot chocolate, and talk to me while his kids played Nintendo and stabbed dirty looks over their shoulders. I would ride around those neighborhoods until my nose froze, then back home where I closed myself off in my room, put on Al Green record, and then I threw open my windows to feel the cold. I would stretch across my bed for hours and imagine life in a big house, visited by important friends who rode new bikes, whose fathers had expensive haircuts and were interviewed on the news.

[cherrysis]

OK...I left this alone for awhile and I am sad that I can't seem to stay focused on something important. I said I would do this and if it take me til I am 50 this whole book will be on this post...I still haven't read ahead AND for that I feel good.

I have been with my own father only 3 times, each visit happening in my childhood, each visit happening in cold weather. He was a basketball coach and I do not know why he left my mother. I only know he was tall and handsome and smeeled like beer; his collar smelled like beer. I do not drink much beer myself, but the depth of the scent has never left me. My friend Tony the beat poet will be drinking a beer at Horse Brass Pub and the smell will send me to a pleasant place that exists only in recollections of childhood.

My father was a big man. Ithink, bigger that most, stalky and strong like a river at flood. On my second visit to my father I saw him throw a football across a gym, drilling the spiral into the opposite hoop where it shook the backboard. There was no actions my father committed that I did not study as a work of wander. I watched as he shaved and brushed his teeth and put his socks and shoes on in motions that were more muscle than grace, and I would stand at his bedroom door hoping he wouldn't notice my awkward stare. I would look purposely while he opened a beer, tiny can hiding itself in his big hand, the foam of it spilling over the can, his red lips slurping the excess, his tongue taking the taste from his mustache.
He was a brilliant maching of a thing.