As I enter my annual blog break over the twelve nights of Christmas, here’s a favorite poem – an excerpt from Tennyson’s In Memoriam. The first two stanzas are the ones I knew and loved as a child, but as I read the whole passage, I think how applicable it is to our time. Faithless coldness, false pride, party strife…can we really ring them out, and ring in a better future?
I enjoy hearing church bells here in Switzerland, but when especially loud, enduring, or inescapable, the ringing of bells can be discomforting, too. The sound goes through the whole body, shaking, jarring, and rattling it. There’s a sense of relief once silence descends, a wish to forget about the uncomfortable vibrations … until the next hour rolls around again.
A better response might be to pay heed to what’s been shaken up, tending to the most fragile and vulnerable places, preparing for the next, inevitable stroke of doom. The rattling of our souls is not a bad thing, if we can take it as an opportunity to reorganize what has become overly fixed in place. Maybe, as one year turns into the next, this can happen, at least for some of us. It’s a choice we have to make, to hear and heed the call of the bells.
I’m taking the whole month of January off to reorganize this blog and other aspects of my online life. I’ll be back some time in February. Till then, I wish you good health and happiness in the New Year — even amidst the jarring disruptions!
from IN MEMORIAM by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
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.