Excerpts from Miller

I'm an avid reader. I always have been. There's just something about good literature; I get lost in it.

That said, my most recent reading endeavor is entitled Through Painted Deserts by Donald Miller, the same author who wrote Blue Like Jazz. I am only 35 pages in and I am captivated. If you’ve never picked it up, you should. You absolutely should.

In short, the story is about a three-month road trip Miller takes with his friend, Paul, in an effort to experience life beyond routine, beyond 9-to-5's, beyond daily monotony and beyond constraints of time. It's a journey of awakening--awakening of the body, mind, soul and spirit. Miller is very real, very open, very honest, and he asks questions that none of us seem to want to slow down enough to ask ourselves.

Below are some of my favorite excerpts thus far...enjoy!

"We are shaped by our experiences. Our perception of joy, fear, pain, and beauty are sharpened or dulled by the way we rub against time. My senses have become dull and this trip is an effort to sharpen them." --Donald Miller

"Trips like ours are greener grass left unknown for fear of believing trite sayings, sayings that are sometimes true. But theirs is an existence under the weight and awareness of time, a place we are slowly escaping, a world growing fainter by the hour and the mile." --Donald Miller

"And so my prayer is that your story will have involved some leaving and some coming home, some summer and some winter, some roses blooming out like children in a play. My hope is your story will be about changing, about getting something beautiful born inside of you, about learning to love a woman or a man, about learning to love a child, about moving yourself around water, around mountains, around friends, about learning to love others more than we love ourselves, about learning oneness as a way of understanding God. We get one story, you and I, and one story alone. God has established the elements, the setting and the climax and the resolution. It would be a crime not to venture out, wouldn’t it?
It might be time for you to go. It might be time to change, to shine out.
I want to repeat one word for you:
Leave.
Roll the word around on your tongue for a bit. It is a beautiful word, isn’t it? So strong and forceful, the way you have always wanted to be. And you will not be alone. You have never been alone. Don’t worry. Everything will still be here when you get back. It is you who will have changed." --Donald Miller