A New Year Greeting

As we leave the wreckage of 2008 behind us, Alfred Lord Tennyson’s Ring Out Wild Bells is says it all.


Ring out wild bells to the wild sky,
The flying clouds, 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:
They year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

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 kinder hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

May it be so.

Happy New Year

--cw