I Prayed that Light Prayer Again

I prayed that “light” prayer again—May the Light of God shine upon _____ for the greatest possible good—several times today.

The first time there was another prayer before it: Thank you, God, that I was looking. That was in the context of driving to the post office—had to get some two cent stamps, damn it—when the car in front of me rear-ended the car it front of it which rear-ended the car in front of it which rear-ended the car in front of it. Do I have four (4) cars in that last sentence? Well, there needs to be if I don’t because it was a four-car accordion accident. Had my mind been wandering or had I been changing the radio station or lighting a cigarette, I would have been the fifth car and had the car behind me not been looking there would have been a sixth. So I prayed: May the Scared Light shine upon the drivers and passengers in those four cars.

Somehow I made it around those four cars. It wasn’t easy because I noticed no one stopped in the other lanes and the people behind me pulled into the open lane before I could. On my way home I passed the accident again. By then one police car had arrived and a second was heading toward it. Again I prayed for the occupants of those automobiles.

About three minutes later I stopped at the convenience store owned by my friends from India. I didn’t really need to purchase anything and I don’t know why I decided to stop—unless it was that “light” that I have been praying for others. H.T. (I can’t pronounce or spell his name and everyone call’s him “H.T.”) the owner and husband of Satnam Sandhu, who was killed in December, was the only one in the store. I could tell H.T. wasn’t doing well.

We talked a bit. As he always does, H.T. asked if I was O.K. and I lied and said, “Yes, I’m just fine.” Then I asked him if he was O.K. and that’s when I saw the tears begin to come into his eyes. As I reach out and held his hand, H.T. wiped his eyes and said, “We were married twenty-nine years and I miss her.” Had there not been a counter between, I would have offered him a big hug. But there was—and other customers had entered the store.

As I left the store I said that prayer again: May the Sacred Light of God shine upon H.T. and Jimmy (his son) and Cinnamon (his daughter) for the greatest possible good. Then, as I got into my car, I abruptly remembered that his wife had been killed when the car in which she had been riding was rear-ended by another car on the very highway where I had just missed being rear-ended. And I prayed again: Thank you, God, that I was looking—and so was the driver of the car behind me.