Midnight, Jesus & Me: Misfit Memoirs of a Full Gospel, Rock&Roll Late Night Suicide Crisis Psychotherapist

Midnight, Jesus & Meis an at once heartbreaking, provocative, and inspirational collection of true-life tales from J.M. Blaine, that semi-agnostic, evangelical absurdist, existential Christian, licensed psychiatric guy. He invites readers to listen to the secret lives of saints and sinners falling, as he questions the meaning of it all and determines that there are no easy answers.

Armed with a mental health degree, Blaine works his way through mega-church counseling centers, drug rehabs, and graveyard shifts on the psychiatric crisis response team, all the while trying to hold onto his own sanity and not lose what little religion he has left.

Blaine offers a street-level vision of charity, with deep concern for and engagement with the young, the marginal, and the troubled. Through stories, parables, and personal insights, the author highlights the ties that bind us rather than those that divide, that we are all struggling to grasp peace, live in grace, and find our way back home.

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Midnight, Jesus & Me: Misfit Memoirs of a Full Gospel, Rock&Roll Late Night Suicide Crisis Psychotherapist

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Midnight, Jesus & Me: Misfit Memoirs of a Full Gospel, Rock&Roll Late Night Suicide Crisis Psychotherapist

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Midnight, Jesus & Me: Misfit Memoirs of a Full Gospel, Rock&Roll Late Night Suicide Crisis Psychotherapist

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Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781770903913
Publisher:	ECW Press
Publication date:	04/01/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	318
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

J. M. Blaine is nonfiction editor of the Los Angeles literary collective the "Nervous Breakdown," feature writer for a popular street paper, the "Nashville Contributor," and a former contributor to the religious satire magazine, the "Wittenburg Door." He holds a master's degree in counseling psychology and is a nationally certified psychotherapist. He lives in Nashville, Tennessee.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Gorgeous, brilliantly written, deeply moving, funny as f-bomb, life-affirming and just plain stunning. J.M. Blaine's debut will blow you away." —Augusten Burroughs, author, Running with Scissors

"'Sometimes I wonder if magical thinking is my alcohol,' writes Blaine, a crisis interventionist in Nashville, in this self-aware, literate memoir of adventures in the para-shrink trade . . . a glimpse into a world that few readers know firsthand." —Kirkus Reviews (February 2013)

"If Christianity has become a stale institution, then Jamie Blaine's Midnight, Jesus & Me might be the perfect antidote. A raw reminder of the Gospel's power." — Philip Gulley, bestselling author, If the Church Were Christian

"Blaine's got the gift that all great storytellers have — the ability to convey the crush of emotions in the tiniest of details. He renders otherwise ordinary people in resplendent detail, painting vignettes in heart-stopping strokes." — Joe Daly, Classic Rock magazine

"Blaine shines a 'there-but-for-the-grace-of-God-go-I' light on the hidden world of psychiatric crisis response —leavened with much-needed humor — in a manner that can't help but engender empathy and compassion." —Randy Susan Meyers, bestselling author, The Comfort of Lies and The Murderer’s Daughters

"A stupendous achievement. Exhilarating, hilarious, a virtuosic exploration of mental illness in America. Seething with fury and frustration, Blaine captures the reader with great conviction." —Jeff Ragsdale, activist and author of Jeff, One Lonely Guy

"With pitch-perfect prose filled with raw heart and humor, Midnight, Jesus & Me reveals the hole in all of us that cannot be filled with anything but Divine love." —Jolina Petersheim, author, The Outcast

"Super stylized but absolutely authentic, these stories are told visually and with a musicality that punctuates the humor and heartbreak of crisis work and its haunting side effects." —Tony Shaff, filmmaker/television producer, MTV Networks

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Editorial Reviews

Blaine, "a lapsed Catholic with a bad case of magical thinking, a scatterbrained mystic who looks like a roadie for Foghat," mesmerizingly spins tales of love, utter loss, despair, anxiety, uncertainty, hope, and redemption in these reflections of a misfit among misfits. Meeting others in the midst of their own troubles, never judging, always embracing difference, he strives to help others recognize and accept their own self-worth. A musician who spent his early years in gospel bands, Blaine struggles with vocation, settling on psychology and counseling, but he also struggles with the traditional understandings of church and religion. Through these short stories of his various attempts to intervene and bring people back to themselves, as well as humorous recollections of his hours spent spinning records as a DJ in strip clubs and roller rinks, Blaine declares that understanding emotion provides a key to unlocking the door to many issues. "Rock and roll is emotion. Film is emotion. Gospel is emotion. The bottom line in art that matters—is emotion." He concludes that "some of the most down-to-earth good-hearted people I meet are drug addicts and deviants and manically depressed. It feels like good church to me." Blaine also provides a list of songs at the end of the book so readers can select any song and read to the beat to which he wrote the book. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

"Gorgeous, brilliantly written, deeply moving, funny as f-bomb, life-affirming and just plain stunning. J.M. Blaine's debut will blow you away." —Augusten Burroughs, author, Running with Scissors
"'Sometimes I wonder if magical thinking is my alcohol,' writes Blaine, a crisis interventionist in Nashville, in this self-aware, literate memoir of adventures in the para-shrink trade . . . a glimpse into a world that few readers know firsthand." —Kirkus Reviews (February 2013)
"If Christianity has become a stale institution, then Jamie Blaine's Midnight, Jesus & Me might be the perfect antidote. A raw reminder of the Gospel's power." — Philip Gulley, bestselling author, If the Church Were Christian
"Blaine's got the gift that all great storytellers have — the ability to convey the crush of emotions in the tiniest of details. He renders otherwise ordinary people in resplendent detail, painting vignettes in heart-stopping strokes." — Joe Daly, Classic Rock magazine
"Blaine shines a 'there-but-for-the-grace-of-God-go-I' light on the hidden world of psychiatric crisis response —leavened with much-needed humor — in a manner that can't help but engender empathy and compassion." —Randy Susan Meyers, bestselling author, The Comfort of Lies and The Murderer’s Daughters
"A stupendous achievement. Exhilarating, hilarious, a virtuosic exploration of mental illness in America. Seething with fury and frustration, Blaine captures the reader with great conviction." —Jeff Ragsdale, activist and author of Jeff, One Lonely Guy
"With pitch-perfect prose filled with raw heart and humor, Midnight, Jesus & Me reveals the hole in all of us that cannot be filled with anything but Divine love." —Jolina Petersheim, author, The Outcast
"Super stylized but absolutely authentic, these stories are told visually and with a musicality that punctuates the humor and heartbreak of crisis work and its haunting side effects." —Tony Shaff, filmmaker/television producer, MTV Networks

From the Publisher

"Sometimes I wonder if magical thinking is my alcohol," writes Blaine, a crisis interventionist in Nashville, in this self-aware, literate memoir of adventures in the para-shrink trade. Anchorless as a teenager, but pretty sure he didn't want to break a sweat for a living, the author took a job at a mental hospital in college, assured that he would get decent pay, free meals and plenty of time for study. What he got was an education in how terribly sad the human mind can be when in a state of illness, as with an early encounter with a "vampire girl with stars tattooed around her eyes swearing I am the holy one, the chosen son, and she wants to bleed me badly but she is so afraid that she wants to and it is very so very important that I know how much she needs to bare her teeth into the softest part of my neck and slowly grind them together until they produce the richest of blue-black juices…." The mental ward led to a suicide hotline and other avenues into that sad world, and all the while, Blaine wrestled with plenty of demons and worldly sins of his own, filtered through a particularly flinty kind of fundamentalism that fell away in sheets in the face of reality. After time in the trenches, the author reflects on the book of Job and concludes that the "whole wager thing between the devil and God is scary and just doesn't seem fair." Blaine's memoir is likable and often compelling, if he sometimes strains too hard for a laugh; its chief flaw is that it is too long by nearly 100 pages, studded with false endings that suggest that he found and then abandoned points at which to break off. Still, a glimpse into a world that few readers know firsthand--and good thing for them.

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