Learning to Walk in the Dark

For the past little while, my bedtime reading has been the book, Learning to Walk in the Dark.

I usually read books I can identify with - but I've been struggling to understand this one. The author is so different from me! A former minister, now a religion professor, she struggles with the negative connotations of darkness in the Bible and in Christianity. As a child, she loved to wrap herself in a blanket and sit outdoors at night. It was exciting, not fearful. But during her years as a Christian (she was not born into a church-going family), she feels that she learned to fear the dark. The book seems to be an exploration of darkness, in an attempt to dispel that fear.

I am fascinated by the book, in part, because I am so different! (Sometimes it's good to be reminded that we're not all the same...)


For me the dark has always been fearful, partly because I have poor night vision. I've never felt confident walking in the dark. Once, when we were vacationing in a cottage in Quebec, I suggested an evening walk. But the cottage had no outdoor lights - and when we stepped outside, all I could see was total black. After taking a few steps, I changed my mind. There was no way I wanted to walk outdoors - and risk tripping and falling, or running into something.

"Wow-We're-so-different" moments come frequently in the book. In her research on darkness, the author spent a few hours in an unlit "wild" underground cavern, dressed in special "caving" garb - and a miner's hat with a light. Her guide was someone who has been caving for over fifty years! (Wow! People do that as a hobby?! I can't imagine anything worse!)

I've been in caves - ones lit for tourists, not dark ones inhabited only by insects and bats where you squeeze through tiny openings and risk getting lost. Terry loves visiting underground caverns, so over the years, in our travels, we have been in the underground mining museum in Sudbury, Ontario, an old abandoned coal mine in Pennsylvania, Mammoth Cave, the Lost Sea in Sweetwater Tennessee, the Bennechere Caves in Eganville, Ontario, and Lusk Cave, closer to home.

Sitting in the pitch black - and silent - darkness, the author could hear two humming noises, which she described as the sound of her life: the low one, the sound of her circulation; the high one, her nervous system.

Wow! I have so much to learn from people who are different from me.