The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.
Alfred Tennyson
Church bell, Doncsecz
What am I letting go?
A new year can create an artificial threshold, but as we are short of many of the rites and rituals that enable pausing, we shall take it. Anything that makes us stop and reflect, lift our heads with curiosity rather than plough on regardless is good in my book. Beauty does this, suffering, beginnings and endings may prompt it, loss and gain too. What am I letting go, ringing out; a loss, a burden, a false hope? And allowing or ringing in?
Inward conversation
This poem is a terrific vehicle or medium for conversing with our innards; perhaps naming for ourselves and for our communities the reach which salvation seeks. Acknowledging on one hand death and on the other life, hope and dread and in the process welcoming in the Christ 'that is to be'.
Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light;
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.
Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more,
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.
Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.
Ring out the want, the care the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.
Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.
Ring out old shapes of foul disease,
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.
Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.
Ring out, wild bells, Lord Alfred Tennyson