On my piano rests a book given to me by my son years ago. Every year around the middle of November, I take the book from its place on a bookshelf and place it again on the piano so that we can enjoy hearing and singing this music again.  It is a collection of Christmas music from around the world, many very old traditional carols. I do not form a new collection; I remember this very good one and bring it close to me so that I can use it, savoring the words and melodies.

This is a good picture of the word recollect for me.  My grandparents used that word, pronouncing it “reck-o-lect,”  as remembering.  But the wider meaning is one of gathering back, of bring back to awareness, to assemble again something that is scattered.

It is this sense of gathering back that I am given as Advent unfolds. As I choose to open my music book once more, I am practicing one part of this remembrance.