https://montaguewhitsel-4friends.blogspot.com/]
“Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised, or a little mistaken.”
- Jane Austen, in Emma (1814)
Recently I was asked how I am using these three terms in the story of the Four Friends: Remembrance, Recollection and Resourcement? While every reader or hearer of the story will have or come to their own understanding of these terms, I will try and offer, here, as briefly as I may, what I intuited when I chose the sub-title, and what I intend by these three related terms.
What I think I was trying to suggest was a ‘method’ or ‘process’ in the use of our ability to reflect and remember, and then how this ‘method’ may enhance our being-in-becoming; that is—who we are as the evolving, maturing individuals we are coming to be in the world; in Earth & Spirt.
By way of a short answer to the question, I would suggest that Remembrance is active remembering; delving into one’s past—seeking to recover potentially significant moments, as our intuitions and self-understanding may lead. Recollection is then the conscious ‘collecting together’ of memories of felt significance, these then being used to re-source oneself. Resourcement is the imaginative, intellectual and emotional enriching, deepening, enlightening or illuminating of oneself through the memories recollected. This is what the four friends come to be engaged in through this dialogue with Octavia Winslow.
This said, I may delve a bit_
We all have memories; some trustworthy, some not so much. I have Robert at one point offering William Wordsworth’s remark that ‘one’s memories from childhood are ‘brittle’ things to try and lean on.’ Perhaps too true. When remembering our past, we need be aware of how memories can be changed, transformed; made to serve certain purposes we bring to them—depending on where we are in our life and how we are faring_ all this said without even touching on how honest we are with ourselves in the remembering process.
Memories come to us on a continuum; from the more ordinary to the more unusual. As the characters in the story begin to relate stories of experiences they have had, they move from more ordinary events to experiences which stand out to them because of their unusual or strange nature, or perhaps because of difficult circumstances in which they are embedded. Then there are memories that we have rehearsed repeatedly to ourselves; those having come to, in some sense, ‘define’ us, in one way or another, for better_ or worse. Memories that have the touchstone of a photograph or an audio or video recording associated with them may generate even more vivid remembrance; those ‘texts’ becoming potential templates for Recollection.
Remembrance, as I am using it, refers to an active engagement with memories. It’s more than ‘having a memory’ or a simple ‘remembering’ of some event or experience, words someone said, or a place one once visited, and so forth. Remembrance in this sense involves attention to a memory or to a series or group of memories, attempted reconstruction of that to which the memory portends; the life-moment on which the memory stands; the cognitive ‘isle’ that we can know anything about and recognize, above the surface, stationed over a depth in our sea of consciousness that may well be unfathomable? It is an exploration of one’s feelings, thoughts and ideas, images and responses to an event, experience or place in one’s past as remembered; though perhaps not ‘exactly’ as it actually was in its fullness, when experienced.
This is what the Four Friends are led into doing by Octavia that first night at the Wickersfeld Railroad diner. As the friends point out, they are not novices at this reflective praxis, as Geoffrey Whittier had interviewed them back in the 1980’s, leading them to talk about their memories of life at the First Whittier House on Deer Hill decades earlier. Thus it is no wonder that they remember some of these experiences so well; with such detail—as they have at least once before been led to do so and have gone over them amongst themselves over the years. Yet not all of the experiences they relate during the story were ‘curated’ by Geoffrey’s interviews.
Remembrance as used in this story is a going-deeper into memories; attempting to reconstruct the source-moment of each remembered experience and ‘what actually happened,’ where and to the extent that this is possible; the feelings associated with it, as best as they are able, as friends who have known each other for over almost 50 years.
Recollection, then, is the active reclaiming of certain things remembered; once known or experienced—those that the rememberer thinks or experiences as potentially meaningful or important to who they are. This term is not meant in the Platonic Sense of Recollection, [1] but rather as a re-collecting of_ and from_ memories; remembering—things in this life; not things from a ‘prior existence’ that we have ‘forgotten.’ Remembrance may cull memories from a wide range of experiences and times and places in one’s mortal continuum. Among these a person may find – even re-discover – moments that speak to their life-at-present; illuminating something about how they have lived, choices they have made, coming to their present station in their mortal walk. To re-collect these memories can lead to insights into oneself, one’s friends and family, and how one has arrived at the place where life is now lived; at the time of active recollection. It could well reveal something forgotten; which is yet still ‘active’ in the understructure of one’s consciousness.
When significant memories arise, they can be ‘collected’ into one’s personal ‘cache’ as in a ‘memory bank’ – referring metaphorically to that ‘realm’ within us where everything gets ‘stored.’ Who and what we are is informed in part by our experienced history. Recollection engages in a gathering of potentially significant memories, found or re-discovered and then curated by reflection—until we re-cognize their potential ‘place’ in our selves.
The last ‘step’ in this praxis, Resourcement, involves the re-engagement with these moments of felt-meanings, runes understood or experienced in re-collected memories. Remembrance and Recollection make it possible to re-source ourselves; adding-in – or back-in – elements and moments of who we have been, things we have done or experienced—as informing our being-in-the-world, always becoming; on the way to wherever we imagine we are going; however that may unfold—under whatever forces are acting upon us. To re-source ourselves is to re-connect with elements of one’s self that have perhaps always been ‘part of us’ though we have become unaware of them. Resourcement is an enrichment, perhaps a deepening, or both—of our dwelling here in Earth & Spirit.
The Four Friends, by Act IV, are beginning to engage in Resourcement, as indicated by their attempt to ‘define’ their friendship not just for Octavia, but for themselves.
This said, I hope you will enjoy listening-in on the dialogue with these four friends as they go through this process of active remembering, recollection and resourcement.
- Montague Whitsel
finis
[1] A Platonic, if not strictly Plato’s, use of “Recollection’ refers to remembering things you once knew before you were born, but that you had forgotten through the incarnational process of being born into the flesh.
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