Six Degrees of Connection

This is an amazing planet. I had a bloggers dream-come-true happen in my life last week. I received an email entitled: Greetings from The Huffington Post with an invitation to blog on Spirituality for their Living Page. The editor and I exchanged a couple of emails and then I called her. I wanted a human, at the very least, voice connection before I committed to her pages.

I also wanted to run some possible post topics by her so that I didn’t shock her when she got my first one. When I told her what I was considering, she said, “Wow, the comments will be amazing!” I guess, as a blog editor, that’s what one wants. Anyway, I felt free to go forward with it after I talked to her.

As you know, here I write about spiritual practice. On my Ode Magazine blog, I write strictly about peace. (For over one year now!) Go to Ode Magazine to view them all. For Huffington Post, since it’s so well known for its liberal politics, I decided to use Spirituality in the World as my theme. I’ll be writing about worldly things with a spiritual spin. My first post on Huffington ought to be this week. I’ll post a link on this page when it’s up.

One of the questions I asked my new editor was how she’d heard of me. She told me that someone on her staff had recommended me to her. Fortuitously, (the universe is a conspiracy, remember?) that staffer walked right by my editor’s desk at that precise moment (Who plans these things?!) and she was able to ask who recommended me.

Well, come to find out, a former acting student from my beloved’s classes at Tufts University with whom I had a chance to connect (we discovered that we are birthday siblings—you know about that, right? People who have the same birthdate, though not the same year) who left Boston after he graduated and moved to Vancouver and then back home to L.A. and who is working in Australia right now suggested his friend from God only knows where who works for Huffington check me out.

The most wonderful part of this is that I also have to credit another connection made for me years ago by the woman I met through a friend I knew in seminary in Kansas City (they’d done summer stock together in college) who sublet her New York City apartment to me (who “happened” to be a bridal consultant so she referred me) when I officiated at the wedding of two wonderful souls. We’ve stayed in touch and I christened their two daughters as well. (It is my sincere hope that I get to officiate at their daughters’ weddings and christen their children as well.) Anyway, he’s a compu-wizard and he’s the one who patiently, lovingly helped me set up this blog a year and a half ago. He didn’t dis me or my computer innocence. He walked parallel with me for as long as I needed him. The one thing I remember majorly from that conversation is: Be consistent. Decide how often you want to post and do it. I did. And now I’m a Huffington invitee.

So, beloved, never let it be said that you have no connections! The greater truth is that the eponymous six degrees of separation are rapidly becoming six degrees of connection and we have no idea where those connections will take us.