i don't really know how to title this....

so these are some things that stuck out from reading Blue Like Jazz...

"There are plenty of things that are true that don't make any sense. I think one of the problems Laura was having was that she wanted God to make sense. He doesn't. He will make no more sense to me than i will make sense to an ant."

"I don't think you can explain how Christian faith works either. It is a mystery. And i love this about Christian spirituality. It cannot be explained, and yet it is beautiful and true. It is something you feel, and it comes from the soul."

"There is something quite beautiful about the Grand Canyon at night. There is something beautiful about a billion stars held steady by a God who knows what He is doing. They hand there, the stars, like notes on a page of music, free-form verse, silent mysteries swirling in the blue like jazz."

"I lay there under the stars and thought of what a great responsibility it is to be human. I am human because God made me. I experience suffering and temptation because mankind chose to follow Satan. God is reaching out to me to rescue me. I am learning to trust Him, learning to live by His precepts that i might be preserved."

"Loneliness is something that happens to us, but i think it is something we can move ourselves out of...Jesus does not want us floating through space or sitting in front of our televisions. Jesus wants us interacting, eating together, laughing together, praying together. Loneliness is something that came with the fall. If loving people is a bit of heaven then certainly isolation is a bit of hell."

"If we are not willing to wake up in the morning and die to ourselves, perhaps we should ask ourselves whether or not we are really following Jesus."

"God's love will never change us if we don't accept it."

"I think the difference in my life came when i realized, after reading those Gospels, that Jesus didn't just love me out of principle; He didn't just love me because it was the right thing to do. Rather, there was something inside me that caused Him to love me."

"The first generation out of slavery invented jazz music. It is a music birthed out of freedom. And that is the closest thing i know to Christian spirituality. A music birthed out of freedom. Everybody sings their song the way they feel it, everybody closes their eyes and lifts up their hands."