A Million Miles In A Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life

Donald Miller is an American author, business owner, and public speaker. He was born in 1971 in Houston, Texas. At 21, Miller left home to travel across America with a friend. After their money ran out, they lived in the woods in the Cascade Mountains in Oregon. Miller moved to Portland, Oregon, where he owned a small textbook publishing company called Coffee House Books. He grew up fascinated by storytelling, and his writing often focuses on Christian spirituality, faith, God, and self-discovery through a storytelling. Miller wrote about his road trip experience in his 2000 travel memoir Through Painted Deserts.

In 2003, Miller published the semi-autobiographical book Blue Like Jazz, which became a New York Times bestseller. The book is a collection of essays reflecting on God and Jesus Christ. Miller unpacks his growing understanding of God’s nature and the necessity of an authentic response to that understanding. The book is based on Miller’s experiences with friends and fellow students from Reed College. Miller describes grappling with spiritual questions as he and his friends struggle to find meaning in life. The book gained popularity among Christian audiences and the emerging church movement—a Christian movement in the early 21st century that embraced an evolving, deconstructed, and decentralized view of traditional evangelical doctrine.