New - - - View

Happy New Year!

New - View - Ring in - Ring out - Back - Forward - Hold - Change - View - New 

This Sunday we will be connecting these words/concepts/images in light of what the calendar tells us has become a new year, though off the calendar, it simply became the next day. We'll start and end with "new," linked closely with "view." And to do all this connecting we will be ascending a tall bell tower with a 12 year old boy (of necessity in our imaginations, as the event took place in 1894). 

Join us for a time of focus, reflection, lament, and celebration in the room we create when we meet together.

Watch for the Recording of our gathering HERE

Readings

In 1850, it was the middle of the Victorian era, when people’s faith in science was on the rise and faith in organized and personal religion was on the decline, a time of excitement and confusion, hope and fear. Alfred, Lord Tennyson, had just become Poet Laureate of England when his close friend since Cambridge student days, and his sister’s fiancé, Arthur Halam, died of a stroke at age 22. In the depths of grief, Tennyson wrote the poem entitled “In Memoriam,” as an elegy, a requiem, in honour of Halam and also to try to come to terms with conflicting ideas about belief, the role of science, and the loss of family and friends as well as the loss of certainty in life.

The nearly 3,000 lines are divided into 133 sections or “cantos,” one of which has been entitled “Ring Out, Wild Bells.” Some sources hold that Tennyson was writing “In Memoriam” at High Beach on New Year’s Eve and heard the bells of the Abbey Church ringing out the old year and ringing in the new at midnight.

This is “In Memoriam,” Canto (section) No. 104, written in 1850 and later entitled “Ring Out, Wild Bells.” Note that for this reading only, the final line has been revised:

“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 [love] that is to be.