Ladies and Gentlemen, Don Miller

Monday was a big day for me here at Baylor. As you can see on my little sidebar, I have included Blue Like Jazz as a website connection on my blog. I absolutly love the book Blue Like Jazz. Actually, I love any book by Donald Miller. I am more of a fan than I would like to admit, in fact I was so excited on Sunday night because he was coming to Baylor to speak, I had a hard time sleeping. Seriously, I am not obsessed, I promise...I just really like the books!

Anyway, a couple of things. I have met Don Miller before. He came to George Fox University when I was a house manager there. I had never heard of the guy before and he came and spoke to our crew of res life staff. He asked the question to the group, "Who here is afraid of public speaking?" I was one of a few people who was stupid enough to raise my hand, and when I did, he asked me to come up to the front of the room and share a little bit about myself. So, you can imagine that he wasn't my most favorite person at that point in time, although he did have a some point in embarrassing me, which is related to his "Lifeboat Theory" that he talks about in his second book Searching For God Knows What (and yes I love that book as well!)

So, that was my first interaction with anything Donald Miller. My second was from my brother who kept talking non-stop about this book he read called Blue Like Jazz. I think he even wrote a letter to Donald Miller once he finished the book, saying how great he thought the book was. So, of course, if Randy loved it so much, I was going to read it!

And I absolutly loved it! It was such a great conversational book about things that I had been thinking, but was unable to articulate. He talks about faith and life and questions and doubts in a way that made me feel normal for having questions about it. One of my biggest questions about this book though (and please respond in the comments!) is why is it such a big hit? Why do you think that people (mostly the millenial generation) have resonated so well with this book, and with his style of writing?

To get back to the original point of this entry, I did get to meet Don Miller. I was working at the table where we were selling his books, and he vaguely remembered our first encounter at George Fox (although he was probably just saying that to be nice). He just seems like a nice guy, genuinely a nice guy. Pretty normal actually (which made me think that perhaps someday I could write a book too...since I'm a pretty normal girl).

It was a most fanstastic day though because it ended with Don doing a book reading. He read the first part of his new book called Through Painted Deserts. I have not read this book yet and I am not even really sure what it is about (of course I am going to read it though!) but he read part of the author's note. It talked about seasons and change, and described Portland and how beautiful it is in the fall, and I started crying. I think it was the first time I really realized that I am living in TEXAS, that it is still 100 degrees without the crispness of fall or the changing colors of the leaves. Most everyone around me was just looking at me like a crazy person, but I couldn't help it. I miss the northwest, I miss Portland, I miss the autumn and cool weather.

However, in the midst of saying all that, the other point of the passage he read was that we should expect different seasons in our lives. And this is just a different season. I can see the purpose of being here and I love the program and people I am meeting and interacting with. But, you can pray that I will begin to accept and become more okay with Texas, since I have to call it home for the next two years! And for all my friends in Portland, soak it in for me!

Here's a part of the quote from the book that made me cry:
"It is fall here now, my favorite of the four seasons. We get all four here, and they come at us under the doors, in through the windows. One morning you wake and need blankets; you take the fan out of the window to see clouds that mist out by midmorning, only to reveal a naked blue coolness like God yawning.

September is perfect Oregon. The blocks line up like postcards and the rosebuds bloom into themselves like children at bedtime. And in Portland we are proud of our roses; year after year, we are proud of them. When they are done, we sit in the parks and read stories into the air, whispering the gardens to sleep...

I remember the sweet sensation of leaving, years ago, some ten now, leaving Texas for who knows where. I could not have known about this beautiful place, the Oregon I have come to love, this city of great people, this smell of coffee and these evergreens reaching up into a mist of sky, these sunsets spilling over the west hills to slide a red glow down the streets of my town...

I could not have known then that everybody, every person, has to leave, has to change like seasons; they have to or they die. The seasons remind me that I must keep changing, and I want to change because it is God's way...Everybody has to change, or they expire. Everybody has to leave, everybody has to leave their home and come back so they can love it again for all new reasons."