Comfort in the void

By Sarah Callahan
Gray Space Graces

I recently read the memoir, “Educated,” by Tara Westover. It is the life-story of a woman who grew up on a mountain with parents who did not believe in doctors, public or private schooling or many of the systems that are “norms” in society. Tara was homeschooled and worked for her father scrapping for metal. As she ages and has more encounters with the world that she has not yet experienced, she becomes more curious about that world. That curiosity led her to places she could’ve never imagined herself — places like Cambridge and Harvard. The book follows Tara’s journey as she becomes more educated and navigates her relationship with her family from which her new-found knowledge distances her.

In one story within the memoir, Tara found herself in the library discovering for the first time the works of thinkers like Mary Wollstonecraft, John Stewart Mill, Simone de Beauvoir and others whose ideas laid the groundwork for early feminists. Coming from a background that had very specific and limited expectations about what a woman could, and should, do with her life, Tara found that these texts offered her a freedom that she had not felt before. In one of the quotes that struck me particularly, she recalled her experience of reading these new ideas, “Blood rushed to my brain; I felt an animating surge of adrenaline, of possibility, of a frontier being pushed outward. ‘Of the nature of women, nothing final can be known.’ Never had I found such comfort in a void, in the black absence of knowledge. It seemed to say: whatever you are, you are woman.”

I believe that this quote bears witness to the experience of growing from gray areas. Larger than just this particular instance of Tara learning about feminism and what it offers, I think that any growth must come from a place of curiosity, confusion and unknowing. The particular sentence of this excerpt that grabbed my attention was this: “Never had I found such comfort in a void, in the black absence of knowledge.” This articulated for me that gray spaces can offer a sort of comfort, even though they are often marked by un-comfortability. What I think the author is getting at here is that not knowing about something, or someone, provides the hope and excitement that there is so much more out there to learn. This quote illustrates the feeling of just dipping your toe into the water on the shore of the ocean. What else could be out there?

What if this were the attitude that we put on when learning new pieces of information? While it is good to be thoughtful and not take everything at face value, what if we were intentional about charitably receiving knowledge, news and stories? How would that change our encounters, relationships and communities?

In my own life and educational experience, I have found this feeling of “comfort in the void,” that Westover explains — when I took my first college theology class, in after-seminar conversations with my peers in graduate school, when reading texts that broaden my horizons, when listening to stories from those with different backgrounds then my own, or when I am face-to-face with the expansiveness of God’s creation. I have felt that “animating surge of adrenaline, of possibility,” but it has only been when I let my heart and mind be malleable, open, inviting and curious.

(Sarah Callahan is social media coordinator for the Diocese of Davenport.)