Illinoise

Currently listening to the Sufjan Stevens album Come on Feel the Illinoise!. It may have come out like a hundred years ago, but I am in love. I am floating on the swirling piano melodies. I am marching to its infectious beats. My heart beats in time with the swells of the brass sections. My mind forgives my fingers as they type these painstakingly corny words. These songs will be my background music for this post.

So I've just finished reading two books by Donald Miller. Blue Like Jazz and Searching for God Knows What, lent to me by a certain pro photographer. Blue was really original and engrossing. It was raw, it was insightful, and it was exciting. It makes you wish you had such good stories to tell. Or better yet, it makes you want to make some stories for yourself. Searching tackles misguided Christian ideals. The need to be validated by our peers. Morality of rules versus a morality of loving and wanting to imitate God. I love how he puts it. One's like running a stop sign, the other's like cheating on your wife. One is impersonal. The other is intensely personal.

Enough of my amateur book review. Let's talk about me. As selfish as it seems, that's what this blog's about. I mention the two books above to show how much I've changed. I wouldn't have touched those books about a year ago. I would be fine watching whatever TV series piqued my interest on the computer. I look back on life then, and I think I was living a kind of "half-life". Like walking around half-asleep. Addictions do that to you. When your life is centered around a "drug", every minute is spent in waiting for the next fix, and momentary satisfaction. Everything else is dull by comparison.

If you have read this far, you are a trooper and I commend you. Anyhoo, as I was saying, I changed. Through a combination of some messages at church, people around me, and a certain book club, I've come to realize I wasn't living the "right" way. Technically, I wasn't doing anything wrong. But a relationship reduced to technicalities is a pitiful excuse for a relationship. I wasn't striving for Jesus. Or moving for that matter. This is where the books come in.

I think I needed Velvet Elvis, and the Donald Miller books. I needed to know there was more to faith, an intellectually challenging side. I needed my Elite writing teacher to tell me to take everything critically, even if he wasn't referring to Christianity in the slightest. I needed the sermons on Galatians and the small groups that I attended to teach me that I couldn't find justification in following laws and rules. I needed friends to have fun with and enjoy life with, to switch my mindset of personal pleasure to finding enjoyment in relationships. I needed a blog to keep me from keeping my thoughts to myself, and sharing with others what I've found.

I haven't done much of that last one yet, but still. This is my story. Thanks for reading, and forgive me for my lack of conciseness. And for my non-christian readers, I hope you won't too bored.

I think Donald Miller's rubbing off on me.