Blue Like Jazz

RE: My last post. Thanks to those of you who read and were understanding. What this means for my blog is not that I will in any way, shape, or form avoid expressing my thoughts/feelings, but simply that my personal letters will be kept personal. I'm sure there will still be times when I'll feel the need to write about how much the deaths of my loved ones have affected me but the frequency of this may be a little less than it was before.

On another note, for a long time I've really been wanting to write about my issues with "church" and perhaps even "the church," (a bit of a generalization, I know, because there are a wide variety of people who make up "the church")  but I could never figure out how to approach the topic. I don't want to offend anybody and I do realize that some of the people who read this blog - well, they may not necessarily like what I have to say.

I've just recently begun reading the book "Blue Like Jazz" for a second time and surprisingly it's as captivating the second time around as it was about three or four years ago when I first read it. The book resonates with me to the point where oftentimes I feel as if the words Miller has written were taken straight from my heart.

I took a hot bubble bath last night and read the first two chapters. That's when I decided that maybe this book would be a good way to approach what I've been wanting to write about for so long. So I'll give it a shot.

But first a bit of background.

 I grew up a small-town Christian. Went to church regularly and never questioned much. To question, in my mind, would have been weak. In fact, I don't remember ever questioning anything about God until grade twelve, when Uncle Jamie died. At least that's the first time I remember actively questioning God and even being sort of angry. I remember exclaiming at Him: "What is this mustard seed thing all about? Or 'ask and you shall receive?'" Up until the last moments of my uncle's short life I believed with every fiber of my being that his cancer would just disappear. My faith was bigger than a mustard seed, and there were definitely no mountains moved for my uncle. That's when I first began to realize that prayer probably does not work the way I was taught it worked.

Miller talks about how he used to think of God sort of as a slot machine, "a set of spinning images that dolled out rewards based on behavior and, perhaps, chance." I suppose that there were some similarities to that in my own thinking, and I had been on my best behaviour for my entire life - which basically, to me and everyone I knew, meant that I didn't smoke, drink, swear, sleep around, or do drugs.

Something else happened shortly after my uncle passed away that made me question even further. This event didn't make me question God, though, so much as "church" and many of the people in it. Of course I do realize that the majority of people who go to church are well-intentioned, genuine and authentic people who really do have good hearts. But there are many who have been taught to judge. Most of them do it under a different name. "Accountability" or something. Oftentimes, it isn't done out of love or in the context of friendship, either.

So I now realize that during my grade-school years I was truly naive and when it came to God and church and things of that nature, I did not have too many independent thoughts. How could I? My mind was like an endless well filled with all the information I'd been taught since I was old enough to understand language.

Any independent thoughts I did have came from discussions around the table at suppertime. I remember them well, because my parents who also went to the same church I did were much more open-minded and liberal than any of the other people I knew from the church. In fact, sometimes this would scare me because I would worry for their eternity if their beliefs veered even slightly in another direction - off the path of the way we were supposed to believe.

Looking back, I am incredibly grateful to my parents for those discussions about God we would have for hours. They taught me that it's actually okay to not be a lemming, to think for myself while keeping in mind that God is big enough to transcend any silly little variations that exist between denominations. It is because of them that today I am far less "religious", pious, and judgmental than I once was. For that I owe them thanks.

I have a lot of thoughts about a lot of things, and I am going to be discussing  many of them here in the next few weeks as I read through "Blue Like Jazz." There are definitely some topics that I want to avoid getting into, but then, I also thought I would avoid this topic altogether yet here I am.

I'm going to try to be as candid as possible but again, my intention is not to offend anybody or even to "inform." This is my personal journey and I'm sharing some of my own beliefs on my blog. If that is a hard pill for any of you to swallow then it's best to just move along, nothing to see here! :)

-Laura