It is crucial to differentiate between knowledge that is missing versus knowledge that was withheld.
Knowledge that is missing is found by study and research. Teachers in classrooms provide knowledge to students. Prior to taking the class, the students likely didn’t have much knowledge of human anatomy, for example. That knowledge was missing prior to the class. And that knowledge was found via teaching and study during the class.
Knowledge that is withheld cannot be taught in a class. You cannot study your way across a withholding. A withholding is not a gap in the information — it is a break in a relationship. The only thing that repairs a broken relationship is to restore one by building a channel.
One piece of knowledge that had been withheld from me was the role Quakers played in the Indian boarding schools. Quaker involvement in the Underground Railroad is a story Quakers like to tell. But I didn’t hear stories about what happened during the forced assimilation of Native children. The story stayed on the other side of a boundary I had never crossed — I had no relationship with the Native people who carried that memory, and no channel by which it could reach me.
Knowledge that has been withheld cannot travel on its own. It can only travel through relationship. A relationship strong enough to carry knowledge across a boundary is what I call a channel — and without knowing the word, I have been building channels all my life.
I’ll be writing a lot about building channels in subsequent articles.
This is a link to this interactive web app about what was withheld, not missing.
Channels Into Knowledge 
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