I prefer that to degrees of separation. I was tickled several years ago when I found that I had 2 degrees of separation from Johnny Depp as my cousin played fiddle with one of his Austin friends, a fella who is on Depp’s only CD.

But it was nothing compared to when I found out that I am 2 degrees of closeness to the Dalai Lama. I was approached to do a quickie tutorial for some Buddhist nuns on html and decided it would be easier and more fun to just design a website for them, develop it. Then they could learn html at a community center and edit themselves. This is the website, BodhiHeart Sanga. It wasn’t until I read the content on the Teachers page that I discovered that these two wonderful nuns were both trained by the Dalai Lama himself. What an honor to be able to do this for them.

This Friday I found out that a friend, a communications guru, has been brought in to work with the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu on the Seeds of Compassion project. She’s peeing herself with joy. Very cool.

And this morning in my inbox? And invitation to attend the UW’s presentation to the Dalai Lama of an honorary doctorate and all staff and faculty are invited. “Following the conferral of the honorary degree, the Dalai Lama will address the audience on compassion and civic responsibility.” For free. I can hardly wait.

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Last night The Ex came over. He had volunteered to come by because he was in the area and I had requested that some day I be able to photograph some of the pouches I had made for him.

I was very nervous. We have not seen each other since the end of the breakup. Which was HIGH drama. Neither of us are really into drama although we do get it in our lives occasionally. We have spoken on the phone twice and that went pretty well. So last night was our first attempt at seeing what it would be like to be friends. I really didn’t want to cry. But I did. But they weren’t tears of pain this time. Just tears of emotions and even relief that we were able to communicate some of the things that we hadn’t been able to when in the thick of it.

The comment made by him that opened the tear flood gates was to this effect:

I want you to know that no matter what it was a privilege and an honor to consider you my partner and my lover…

I started crying so he didn’t finish. But.. goodness, here I am crying again. It’s really a shame that the timing this time around was just so off. We both made mistakes but this man? Is a truly good human being and so am I. We’re just meant to help each other in different ways for the rest of this lifetime.

SO

I took photos of the pouches and have put them on my personal website http://www.harvestblessings.com

I put them here for your viewing convenience.

Dog Pouch: dogs and especially wolves. This tarot bag was made in the celtic style with wolves. Wool fabric with perl cotton and bone beads

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