Ring Out Wild Bells
/Call Out To The Wild Sky
It’s time to say goodbye to 2019 and a big hello to our new year of 2020.
Ring Out, Wild Bells
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.
Alfred Lord Tennyson (1850)
Happy New Year 2020
As we speed around the Sun of our solar system, another year has passed.. Whirling, stumbling, whisking ourselves into a froth as we count down, and then count up, another year, another decade.
We humans like to count things. We like to measure and and delineate our hours and days. It helps us to feel organized and to make sense of a wide world without borders that looms before us.
The cosmos whirs on without a thought of numbers or counting. What is a year to the universe? Does the universe count its cycles? Maybe it measures things in a universal breath. How long is a breath-in and a breath-out in the deep, dark vastness of outer space?
Inhale. Exhale.
The Light In Our Hearts
Alfred Lord Tennyson, coming from his Victorian background, rings in Christ who represents the light. Whatever our religion or spiritual beliefs, we keep the light burning bright in our hearts as we welcome a new year and move into winter.
The Winter Solstice has passed.
Even in the dead of winter the days are slowly growing longer, carrying us forward into spring.
A little more light each day.
Let that light warm your heart along the way.
