Donald Miller, meet Donald Miller

Having drawn connections between "The Two Steve Taylors,"
"Both St. Vincents,"

and the two (shudder) Dave Wainscotts..

..it's time to ask the obvious:

Do both writers name Donald Miller know or know of each other?

I mean, they are both delightfully playful writers from the Pacific Northwest who have the God and jazz factors in common...

The one most of you are familiar with, is author of "Blue Like Jazz."

Some classic sections of that book are linked here (Lotsa Naked People & The Campus Confessional) and here( "Penguin Sex is like Christian faith." ). SpyScott, in an excellent Bohemian Alien article (here) quotes the prologue of DM1's classic book:

"I never liked jazz music because jazz music doesn't resolve. But I was outside the Bagdad Theater in Portland one night when I saw a man playing the saxophone. I stood there for fifteen minutes, and he never opened his eyes. After that I liked jazz music. Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself. It is as if they are showing you the way. I used to not like God Because God didn't resolve. But that was before any of this happened"

The book closes in a kind of inclusio:

"I was watching BET. He said jazz music was invented by the first generation out of slavery. I thought that was beautiful because, while it is music, it is very hard to put on paper; it is so much more a language of the soul … 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 hand." (p.239)

On to Donald Miller...the other, DM2.

He's a former jazz musician and current cardiac surgeon in Seattle, who believes in the God-touch of jazz enough to be sure it's piped into his operating rooms. In his "Heart and Hand." Engage his Chapter 5 on "The Metaphysics of Music" at this link.
See more of his musings in a post we have called: "Kerouac, Coltrane & Kierkegaard OR Evangelical Pornography"<>

Do you two DMs know each other?
Why don't you meet halfway (only kinda) at my friend's church for coffee?

PS: For more on the God-jazz connection, see SpyScott's article, as well as Charlie Peacock's ("One writer explained Coltrane's premature death at the age of 40 by postulating that a man cannot see God and live ." ) I'll bet those two guys would like each other, and the Donald Millers

PPSL Also:
HOW JAZZ CAN BREAK THE HERESY OF WHITE CHRISTIANITY