Poetry, faith and imagination can all help us time travel - or capture within our experience moments outside the present. This Whirlow Spirituality Centre blog opens up such ideas, which may be helpful when things are tough or wearisome - a common trial for many in January!
Photo by Kristine Weilert on Unsplash
In his epic project The Prelude, Romantic Lakeland poet William Wordsworth writes:
“There are in our existence spots of time,
That with distinct pre-eminence retain
A renovating virtue, whence—depressed
By false opinion and contentious thought,
Or aught of heavier or more deadly weight,
In trivial occupations, and the round
Of ordinary intercourse—our minds
Are nourished and invisibly repaired.”
In writing this huge work, Wordsworth looked back over his life. He discovered moments charged with sensation, emotion, and spirit. The Prelude was one of the first poetic forays into the inner world of the human soul, its relationship to experience and especially encounters with the natural world.
What are these ‘spots of time’ Wordsworth says can renew us, when remembered? That overcome the depressing rounds of the ‘ordinary’ and that can nourish and heal?
The post-Christmas period can be tough; the decorations, encounters and celebrations are finished with but the nights are still long and dark.
Can you bring to mind any moments of experience, perhaps when you were in a thin place, a rich time, when the Divine was revealed to you in some way? Hold on to that. Try to re-enter it in your imagination and spend a few minutes pondering what it contains for you now. What nourishment can you take from it?
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One moment Wordsworth remembers in his poem occurred while walking home to Grasmere after a party. (The Wordsworths thought nothing of walking 20 miles to reach a destination - Thomas De Quincy said William walked 175,000 miles in his lifetime. Perhaps the Latin saying solvitur ambulando – it is solved by walking - was true for them!)
You can find the excerpt here - and may like to try read it out loud, hearing William’s Cumbrian accent as he speaks. It begins:
“Two miles I had to walk along the fields
Before I reached my home. Magnificent
The Morning was...”
The Prelude is addressed to friend and fellow poet, Coleridge. In this moment, Wordsworth realises he has a calling to be a poet, a dedicated spirit. That sense of blessedness remains with him.
Have you had moments when you felt that wonderful, mysterious, inner transaction? Vows are silently made; a mystical bond is given. Fleeting they may be but in such instants, ever accessible in memory, we know who we are, where we are going and why.
The Scriptures, holy books, are in many ways a recording of such spots of time; these instances; flashes of revelation.
It can be a renovating exercise, reflecting on what has been recorded in your own life. Moments of blessedness that remain. Births, marriages and deaths … experiences of the natural world … foreign or unusual locations … religious experiences … engagement with art and creativity….
At such times, we are alert and attentive to our soul. Suddenly, the powerful presence of ‘ordinary’ things - mountains, coastlines, rivers, trees, other people, words or music - awaken our souls to the inherent meaning of our lives. A ‘common dawn’ fills Wordsworth’s heart to the brim and overflows, rendering him willing to dedicate his life.
What is it in your life that you have been or could be dedicated to?
As you reflect on these things, we offer a poem by our friend Adrian Scott, a ‘spot of time ‘remembered from a walk around the lake where William and his sister Dorothy lived.
You may want to create your own reflection - written or in another form - on a spot of blessed time in your life. May this sustain you in the weeks that follow!
