If you’ve never listened to jazz music then you’re really missing out. Jazz music isn’t like other forms of music. It’s almost like Jazz music is alive. It’s not bound to a piece of paper. Jazz just has a life of its own.
I remember going to my first jazz club. I was in college, so trying new things was the norm. We left well after dinner time and took the drive into downtown Detroit. It was a neighborhood I probably wouldn’t have normally entered, primarily because it had a bad reputation and I had no real need to go that far into Detroit. But one of my friends was going to play that night so a few of us agreed and off we went. And am I ever glad I went!
Part of my excitement for going was because I’m a trumpet player. Not a great one but I still dabble around with it from time to time. I play music, like the stuff on a piece of paper, with notes that go up and down. It makes sense. There’s a rhythm that’s been predetermined for you. There are a series of notes that rise and fall. There are volume markers to show you when to get louder and when to get softer. These things are there to make sure everyone plays the exact same thing. But that’s not how jazz works. Jazz musicians don’t need this kind of sheet music.
That night that’s exactly what struck me. There wasn’t a sheet of music anywhere in the club. The drummer set a simple rhythmic beat. Discussed a pattern for how they’d approach the piece. Determined the key. Had a few comments about style and flow of the song they were about to play. Then they took off! And man was it the coolest sound I’ve ever heard! It was such a cool jazz sound that it made the room feel like I was floating down a crystal blue river. The whole room was blue like jazz.
Ok so I know this is a weird transition but there’s also a book with the same title as the feeling in that room. Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller. And I totally get it, if you haven’t read the book, you’ll think this is a weird name for a book. But the story behind the title is pretty amazing. I’ll do my best to summarize the title and its meaning here along with a quote or two from it that struck me as really good.
The title of the book really reflects what I was experiencing in the club that night. The air was a little foggy with cigarette smoke. I could taste the air. The lights were so dim it was almost dark. The atmosphere, while dark just felt wide open. You could see everyone in the room because there were no walls or dividers to separate you from the other patrons. We were there from all walks of life. Race didn’t matter. Gender didn’t matter. Economic status didn’t matter. Everything just fit in that one context on that one night.
It’s kind of like the way faith is supposed to be. No sheet music to tell you exactly what note to play. There’s a key in which we operate. There’s a rhythm that we match, a rhythm that’s not our own. There’s a smooth, almost silky feel to the way this life is supposed to be lived. Blue Like Jazz captures the openness of that club where we can see one another from all angles. That’s the way life in the kingdom is supposed to be. No hiding behind our embarrassment. No fear of judgement. No manmade divisions meant to break one another down.
One of the things Miller says in the book really caught my attention. If you try hard enough, you can get the things you want most in life. But you better be careful because the things you want most in life just might kill you in the end.
There’s immense freedom in the movement of jazz music. Without sheet music you can go where the beat takes you. You just have to listen to the right beat. In this quote, the author is reminding us that just because we have the freedom to play the notes we desire, it doesn’t mean it’s right or beneficial to play them. Some notes don’t match the song at all.
Faith is so often like this. We embed our ideology into the text of the Bible. We make it say something it never was intended to say. We infuse our wishes and personal lives into the words on the page that was never there to start with. But this is not the way it’s supposed to be. This is not how it’s supposed to be done.
We too can experience a faith that’s Blue Like Jazz if we take our beat from the rhythm of God’s Word. Then all we have to do is play the song using the notes he’s given us, following the patterns and flow embedded in our soul by the Spirit.
Kick back. Take it all in for a minute. I hope you can see and experience a faith that’s a little bit blue like jazz.
