Collecting Ourselves and Something Else

The poet William Wordsworth defined poetry as "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility."

I love that word "recollected." Something about the sound of it.

And it is that word, hyphenated by Foster into its two parts re-collected, that stood out to me in Chapter 4 of Sanctuary of the Soul.

While Foster spoke of psychological relaxing and surrendering, through sitting still and maybe going over a Scripture in one's mind, I was somehow thinking of daffodils, and how Wordsworth once wrote of them...

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

Thinking of the daffodils, I remembered how psychologically relaxing it had been to spend time outdoors every day for a year. So relaxing, in fact, that my body began to develop a new 4-o'clock sense of longing for solitude and fresh air and my cup of tea. A "pattern of life" (as Foster puts it) had developed, and from it came deep times of collection— collection of images, truths, inner spaciousness. I wrote more poetry during that time than I ever have or have done since. I re-collected the past and somehow came out with a larger sense of love.

I don't sit outside daily anymore. It had its time and place. The other day, in Wordsworth style, I allowed myself to simply lie on the couch. The afternoon sun was warm on my arm and I fell asleep. I woke up filled with so many little epiphanies it was almost overwhelming.

Is it important how we go about collecting and re-collecting ourselves? I'm not so sure it is. Sitting still in a chair, going outside with a cup of tea, lying down on the couch in the afternoon, with a sense of wanting to know anew: each can be a basket into which we gather refreshment, vision, and love.