This can be frightening and painful. A bonus life as a grocery bagger is not what anybody went to school to prepare for.
A commencement speaker at Harvard Divinity School, Professor Kimberley C. Patton, thinks that in profound ways, the difficult, uncertain periods are a good thing.
“…In these career detours, lie gestation and receptivity, what the Japanese call "hollowness" to the divine. In these nonproductive times, new things are hatching, being born in the darkness, if only we do not panic.”
How to avoid this panic?
Simply remember that the time may be very useful, that good things are germinating that cannot be forced. Keep coming back to that thought, because it so easily slips away.
(Thanks to Margaret, who sent me this address: “When the Wounded Emerge as Healers.”)
