Jill Jepson's Blog
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Apr.22.2013
I’ve been a fan of Les Miserables ever since I saw it on Broadway in 1988, and watching the movie a few weeks ago only renewed my enthusiasm, even despite Russell Crowe’s “singing”.
The play and the movies have have been called everything from “a cauldron of harmonic mush” (...
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Apr.20.2013
Sometimes I call myself a Zen Buddhist and sometimes I call myself an agnostic and sometimes I call myself “spiritual, but not religious.” The truth is probably “all of the above” or even “that and even more” or perhaps something else. “Searcher”? “Seeker”? “Still working on it”?
I’ve been thinking...
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Apr.16.2013
This is a rather meandering post about what I don't believe and what I might believe and what my cat taught me about belief. Actually, it’s about what all cats taught me, by which I mean not just the cats I’ve shared my life with, but all cats who ever lived. All mammals, in fact. All animals.
But...
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Apr.15.2013
In March, John and I traveled to Morocco for two weeks. I'm telling the story in bits and pieces. This is Part 2.
John and I are standing amid vats of stinking liquid in the old city of Marrakesh while Berber men busily work at their traditional trade of tanning the skin of camels, goats, and sheep...
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Apr.11.2013
After I asked my creative nonfiction students to post what they would like to cover in the class over the remaining weeks, nearly 2/3rds of them posted, “How to come up with ideas.”
I was surprised because they've been coming up with interesting ideas all term. But I realized that they feel like it...
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Apr.09.2013
May all beings be well.
May all beings be happy.
May all beings be free from suffering.
May all beings be at peace.
This is the chant I say each day as part of my meditation practice. There are many versions of it, as a quick Google search shows, but this is the version I learned years ago,...
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Apr.09.2013
At first, I wasn't going to write about the lump I found underneath my lower left eyelid a few weeks ago. Writing about my own physical ailments just seemed too crass and self-indulgent, not to mention yucky. Then I read David Sedaris's most recent essay collection, When You Are Engulfed in...
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Apr.05.2013
Two weeks ago, John and I were sitting under an azure sky on the terrace of our riad, a traditional Moroccan inn, in the old city of Marrakech. The sun had just set, leaving an amber glow along the horizon. The Atlas Mountains rose out of the desert in the distance. The graceful palms of...
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Mar.19.2013
Tomorrow morning at 11:02 Universal Time (that’s 6:02 a.m. here in frosty Minneapolis), the sun will appear in the sky directly above the equator, and all over the world, people will celebrate the spring equinox.
We humans are biological beings, as well as spiritual ones, and are deeply affected by...
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Mar.18.2013
Yesterday, I stood in front of my computer in a stupefied haze for several hours, trying to compose a 300-word press release. It didn’t matter that I knew exactly what I wanted to write. It didn’t matter that I’ve written plenty of press releases before. It didn’t matter that I have a ton of other...
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Mar.15.2013
Today’s Great Stuff for Writers focuses on an aspect of spirituality I am just beginning to delve into in my own writing and thinking: The Feminine Divine. Exploring this side of my spirituality is proving to be a challenging, rich, and satisfying journey—and one I will be blogging about in future...
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Mar.14.2013
I almost started this blog like this:
If you’ve always dreamed of being a failed writer (and who hasn’t?), you’re in luck. With these easy-to-follow instructions, you, too, can join the ranks of disappointed, disillusioned unknowns–and have a never-ending supply of reasons to complain,...
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Mar.12.2013
Most of my readers know me as the author of Writing as a Sacred Path, but long before I wrote that book, I published my first.
No Walls of Stone: An Anthology of Literature by Deaf and Hard of Hearing Writers came out in 1992, and, to my great pride and delight, is still selling. It was...
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Mar.11.2013
As a writing teacher and coach, I often focus on ways to write faster and more efficiently. I teach techniques for generating ideas, writing when we only have five minutes, getting a fast start on our daily writing practice, and quickly identifying and correcting problems in our work. But lately I’...
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Mar.08.2013
I didn’t set out to post about the relationship between writing and meditation this week, but somehow I ended up doing it anyway—twice. Perhaps it’s because I’m working so diligently on my own meditation practice these days, trying to refresh and strengthen it. The way meditation can aid my writing...
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About Jill
I have spent a lifetime exploring spiritual traditions throughout the world--from Siberia to Afghanistan, Syria to Japan. I have also spent a lifetime writing. In my work, I weave together those two threads, combining the spiritual and the artistic,...
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Causes Jill Jepson Supports
Humane Society of the United States, Defenders of Wildlife, Interational Society for the Protection of Burros and Mustangs, National Wildlife Federation,...