A Lighter Way Week 18: Impossible Lightness
Sep 19, 2026Holy Saturday was late this year. It came on a random Wednesday in August. And like the first Holy Saturday, it occurred outside any organized church. But like the first Holy Saturday, thirty of us sat anxiously between death, life or new life in the oncology infusion waiting room at Vanderbilt Cancer Center.
I was scared.
So many people looked so unwell. Would that be me in a month, a year, 5 years? I was so scared that when a man using a walker with an obvious catheter bag sat down next to me, I couldn't speak. I couldn't even say hello. My kindness was stuck in my throat.
I stared at my book and felt ashamed that basic courtesy abandoned me in the face of serious illness. The waiting room of the infusion center, where we were all getting life altering drugs, or blood transfusions or something to help us all live, felt like an impossible space for the lightness of the Spirit to reveal Herself. It felt like an impossible space for the gift of generosity.
And yet....whispering into my ear, cutting through the fear and the shame came the Spirit's voice: "Pray".
And so I did.
And the prayer that the Spirit gave me was not Christian, it was Buddhist; it was the Metta Meditation. Without looking up at first, I began with the man sitting on my left with the walker: "May he be filled with loving-kindness; May he be well; May he be peaceful and at ease, May he be happy."
Slowly, I could glance up and pray for the woman who had just had brain surgery "May she be filled with loving-kindness; May she be well, May she be peaceful and at ease, May she be happy..." Then I prayed for the woman curled in the chair asleep, and the older couple holding hands, until I had gone around the whole room and was left with me. And by the time I got to myself, I was indeed filled with loving-kindness, I was well, I was peaceful and at ease and I was, incredibly though it seems, happy.
In the mystery of Holy Saturday, where both everything and nothing seems possible, even there--especially there breathes the Spirit.
What place in your life feels like it is impossible that the Spirit could breathe herself into you? Imagine Her there. What is She saying to you?
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