I was at a retreat this past weekend eating dinner with a few people I had never met before when one woman at the table turns to another and says "are you BengalIi?" The woman answers "yes how do you know". The woman inquiring says "I recognize the accent" . Then i ask if Bengal is now a part of another country outside of india since i was reading a book on Anandamayi Ma and it said although she was Bengali her birthplace was now considered another country. Obviously geography is not my forte. so then they say "you mean Bangalore". The Bengali woman says are you reading "Mother of Bliss"?" and i say yes and i 'm really enjoying it and it such a great book etc. then she tells me she knows the author because they have been corresponding by email for some time and are internet freinds and know people in common. Then i get up to get more dinner and when i come back the woman who started the conversation says oh "Lisa and i are great freinds. I didn't realize that you were talking about Lisa because i always call her by her spiritual name Prajna." so we all go outside and she calls her and we all end up passing the phone around and talking to her. So we are three strangers on a retreat in michigan , all three of us sit down as strangers and we all end up being connected to Lisa Lassell Halstrom and Anadamayi Ma and we only find out because i asked a random question about geography! If i wouldn't have asked that question we would have all had a nice dinner and never had the opportunity to find out that out of three people at the table one was reading the book, one was corresponding with the author and the other is intimate freinds with her. I thought it was cool!