Are You Growing?
September 29, 2007 | 11:44 pm
It is unfortunate that our free public school system has made education seem temporary and not really worth very much. As often happens with gifts, they do not retain their real value. For some reasons, we tend to lose sight of the real value of things in our lives when they are free. Freedom among them.
Back to education, though, are you growing? Personally, I mean?
One of the primary messages of the Open Your Heart series (and Elfreda’s excellent book, as well) is that we continue to grow… or we start to die.
In Open Your Heart with Skiing, every chapter has two parts: the first part is about skiing; skills, concepts, experiences. The second part is about life. It’s fascinating to me how much skiing parallels life and teaches us.
To learn, though, you have to be willing. You have to be looking for ways to grow. Are you looking for ways to grow?
What will you learn this week?
Let’s go!
Posted by: — Stephen Hultquist
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First Book
September 28, 2007 | 6:41 pm
If you’re looking for a way to make a difference in the world, may I make a suggestion?
First Book is a leading children’s literacy organization committed to a simple mission: giving children from low-income families the opportunity to read and own their first new books. Since 1992, First Book has placed more than 50 million books into the hands of children in need by supplying a steady stream of brand new books to more than 20,000 local literacy programs serving disadvantaged communities.
To join the nationwide network of volunteers, visit www.firstbook.org.
Thanks to everyone who helps bring the gift of reading –
Jeannette
www.JeannetteCezanne.com
Posted by: — jcezanne
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Learn How to Get Your Spiritual Writing Published, Part One
| 12:18 am
I’ve decided to start a semi-regular segment here to provide advice to writers. Feel free to ask questions via the comments, and I’ll respond either in the comments or in my next segment.
Let’s start with the basics: Is spiritual writing different?
In some ways yes, and in some ways no.
In most cases, your readers expect more from your writing than they would if they just picked up a mystery novel (nothing wrong a good mystery novel, though, I’ll hasten to add). But they’ll read your work with an expectation that it will lead them to personal growth, that what they’ll get from your book will take them beyond the words on the page. And that makes your writing different.
On the other hand, you still have the same considerations about making your book marketable, about keeping your end audience, about knowing your genre inside and out that other writers do.
What do you think? Is your writing the same or different as other writing? How so? How not?
Posted by: — Meg
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More About Reading
September 27, 2007 | 4:50 pm
I like what Steve Hultquist had to say in an earlier post about reading creating connections. I think that communicating in general is all about connections — helping us understand other people, the world around us, ourselves; and reading is the most intimate of communications, the conversation between a writer and a reader. I think that Neil Rosen says some things about this in his writing book; but it’s certainly something I talk about in Open Your Heart with Reading:
“Library scholar Louise Glenn (…) has suggested that readers in fact create their own reading experience. ‘Findings,’ she reports, ‘indicated that readers played an important role in the reading experience, with the majority of readers identifying the existence of a creative partnership between the reader and the writer.’”
It’s that partnership, that relationship, that is exciting, because it provides connection between two people, two worlds, two times … ideas and images fizzing through the pages and between two minds.
If that isn’t intimate, I don’t know what is!
Jeannette Cézanne
www.JeannetteCezanne.com
Posted by: — jcezanne
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What Do You Read?
September 19, 2007 | 8:22 pm
It’s a question that I asked a lot of people when I was putting together my most recent book, Open Your Heart with Reading, and I’m reminded of it as I’m sending out copies of the book to the many and wonderful people who consented to do interviews for the book.
I deliberately tried to talk with people from all sorts of different backgrounds, all sorts of different professions, because I was really interested in what non-writers read … since they are, after all, the people for whom we all write!
But it’s also worth checking in with ourselves from time to time, also. I write dates in my books as I read them, and later, looking back, I can see what I was reading at any given time. Odd how some of my tastes have changed over time … and equally odd is how some haven’t!
What about you? What do you read? And what does what you read tell other people about you?
– Jeannette Cézanne
www.JeannetteCezanne.com
Posted by: — jcezanne
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Reading for a Reason
| 12:25 pm
When you pause and consider it, the power of a book is truly amazing. Thoughts and ideas are amplified and transmitted through the seemingly mundane process of putting ink on paper. The aesthetic power of holding a book and turning its pages as you read is one that technology has yet to replicate, and there is even something about the smell of that combination that makes a book–paper and ink and binding–that contributes to the experience.
Perhaps more amazing is the connection with thought that occurs through a book. Reading an ancient text connects us to a deep reservoir of thinking, the energy of which still fills the universe. Connecting with people of other cultures creates similar connections, like the synapses of a universal mind.
The Open Your Heart series creates a multidimensional spiral of similar energy. The common thread of deep life truths and relational realities intertwine with pastimes and recreational pursuits that resonate with our deeper selves.
What have you read lately?
Let’s go!
Posted by: — Stephen Hultquist
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Passionate Living
September 12, 2007 | 8:44 am
Last week, the world lost two people who have opened the hearts of many: Luciano Pavarotti and Madeleine L’Engle. Even people who have no interest in opera have heard of Pavarotti, and many of us were first introduced to different worlds (and different ways of thinking) by L’Engle.
And in some ways, the world feels a shabbier place without them in it.
Yet, if anything, their enduring gifts are all about life, not death. Unlike other tenors, who feel as distant as stars, Pavarotti brought opera back into the mainstream and into the hearts of many: he was approachable, a genius who looked like a dozen other people you could see on a New York subway car. And L’Engle set the world of children’s literature on its head by staging cosmic battles between good and evil using concepts from Einstein’s theory of relativity and Planck’s quantum theory – her own theory being that good children’s literature is unapproachable by adults.
They both left us with one gift: the art of living passionately, of opening one’s heart to the world and all the beauties and puzzles it offers.
Not a bad gift at all. But they will be missed …
– Jeannette
www.JeannetteCezanne.com
Posted by: — jcezanne
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Mastering Life
September 10, 2007 | 1:59 pm
The Open Your Heart series provides a lot of insight in a small package. Using what you know or what you’d like to learn, you get the opportunity to discover more about yourself and how life works. As the seasons seem to have turned the corner here in Colorado, with wonderfully cool weather replacing the summer sun, my mind has turned to snow and skiing. But, as it does, I think about how skiing gives me insights into how to live life.
One example is balance. In the Open Your Heart with Skiing chapter about Stance and Balance, I outline just how critical they are to skiing: skiing, like most sports, starts with balance. In fact, skiing is moving in balance to balance. Then again, so is life, isn’t it? Even though we like to think that we can somehow stop everything in perfect balance, life doesn’t work that way. We are much better off realizing that movement is the natural state of things. Once we see that, we learn that moving in balance to balance in life is a powerful metaphor that frees us to enjoy those changes that inevitably come along.
What are you doing to Master you Life?
Let’s go!
Posted by: — Stephen Hultquist
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Writing From The Heart
September 5, 2007 | 10:43 am
Open Your Heart with Writing by Neil Rosen is now available, and I’m hoping to see it appearing on the syllabi of high school and college classes, if not next semester, then at least next year. It’s a completely different approach to writing than the “how to get published as the only goal” orientation of many, if not most, writing books. It really is about opening one’s heart, feeling the sheer joy of writing, the delight of words, the intoxication of stories.
And it’s about time! If you believe the bookshelves of bookshops, most people who are writing are looking for agents, crafting query letters, waiting to be the next Dan Brown. And somewhere in that process a lot of the joy gets lost.
If you haven’t already secured a copy of Open Your Heart with Writing, do so today. Holiday gift-giving is just around the corner, and this is a perfect present for anyone who finds joy in words.
Jeannette Cézanne
www.JeannetteCezanne.com
Posted by: — jcezanne
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