neurological dryer lint

it's great outside. kinda the 'getting close to fall' weather, which i always love, end of september / beginning of october weather.

so you should check out this book called blue like jazz by donald miller. artie the goofy-rebel-free-thinking-book junkie pointed me to it, and i started reading it last night. i'm through almost half of it already. the writing style is done in almost blog fashion, stream of though combined with memoir combined with inspired thought and opinion. personal storytelling. garrison-keillor-meets-saint-peter. a style that i bet (and hope) that in 20-30 years, a solid 50% of people writing 'spiritual' books will be using. the best, though, is that the thoughts he expresses so clearly through telling of his experiences and relationships and memories, these thoughts sound like they came from my brain (because clearly i have a monopoly on the experiences he relates). like he borrowed my brain, studied it, found some frustrated and encouraged and lovestruck and hopeless and angry and funny and intrigued thoughts and feelings that were in there, translated them into his life, and wrote them in a book. probably because lots of people i'm close with experience these same things. and my life, as i'm learning from reading this masterpiece, is not so much just me but a collective hive of the experiences of my friends and family, like a huge peer to peer network constantly sharing files.

whoa, oops, strayed into geek analogy. could i write a similar book of my experiences, just for geeks? would people read it? i wonder.

anyway. i like the book. people whose fave 'spiritual' authors are rick warren and james dobson and chuck colson and charles swindoll and may not enjoy it, because there's not enough commands to change and finger pointing to which groups have screwed up the most. max lucado and henry nouwen fans may see some interesting things, enjoy his storytelling and relational demeanor, but may remain skeptical at the lack of a clear, converged point or theological platform. philip yancey fans may read and relate to his doubting and curious strays into other, non-mainstream-christian ways of thinking. eldredge-ites (like me) will seek hope and some answer and not really find it, but find themselves more looking inward and see someone else asking the questions they're asking and maybe think of a new avenue to pursue them in - kind of like doing a crossword puzzle, getting stuck on one clue, and remembering another movie the guy that the question's about has been in.

mclaren fans may be shocked that the problem isn't modernists or transitional postmodernists that haven't achieved relativistic enlightenment. the problem is just about everyone. the problem is me.

anyway. i don't know if there's more than a dozen people that i know that would read it and really be moved by it. geez how arrogant of me, like i'm this wise old man that knows everything and have achieved this level of awareness that allows my opinion to be really good. i haven't even finished the frickin book yet. honestly it's like a lot of books i read (waking the dead was one of these) - where i don't WANT to finish it. i want to digest what i've read and apply it yet i know that i can't just yet. i can't get it out. the point of the book, of the ideas, is stuck inside my head, locked behind a door, whose only key is the future experiences i'll have.

i'm very proud of a lot of the things in the above sentences. i'm such a dork. it's funny, reading this book, seeing someone write a book that sounds like my train of thought, is liberating for me. i wrote notes about what i read so far, about the things that have stood out to me. i don't ever do that, ever. but here's one of them.

the hardest thing for me about following christ has been that i never know if i've got it right or how well i'm doing. like i'm blindfolded, painting a picture. i have no reason to believe that i'm painting anything remotely legible, but i won't know for sure until i'm done with the painting and i remove the blindfold. i'm so afraid my painting is going to suck, but i can't do anything about it, so i just keep on painting.