I know I’m oversimplifying, but here goes:
Christian leaders are right to be future-oriented. The God of the Bible works in history, moving events forward according to his will, working through human agency. Unlike Eastern religions and many other philosophies, Judaism and Christianity teach a linear, goal-oriented understanding of the human experience.
At the start of a New Year, churches, non-profits, and businesses pass another milestone in their fiscal and institutional history with eyes on the road ahead. But carefully-made plans do not always yield the results we had hoped. The idea of human progress is ambiguous at best. It is easy to neglect another great theme of Christian spirituality -- meditative, penitential reflection.
At the turning of the year I like to hear the church sing “Ring Out, Wild Bells,” with words by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Tennyson lived from 1809 to 1892 and for more than half his life was England’s poet laureate. The hymn resonates for me year after year.
“Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,” it begins, in stark contrast to the previous week’s “Silent Night, Holy Night.” The hymn blends themes of death and possibility: “the year is dying . . . let him die” and “ring, happy bells, across the snow.” The tone is neither sheer relief that what’s past is over, nor blind faith that things will surely be better. It’s rather one of humble, prayerful resolution. Whatever regrets we may harbor, whatever the shame or disappointment or anger that may cling to our souls, the hymn invites us to look forward with hope, healing and fresh resolve.
The hymn imagines that transformation is actually possible. Certainly, there is real truth in the (almost) equally great song by U2, “Nothing changes on New Year’s Day.” That 1983 piece pointedly observes that we live in a “golden age” because “gold is the reason for the wars we wage.” But Bono tempers his plaintive cry with a glimmer of hope. Despite the realism of “nothing changes,” nevertheless, “I, I will begin again . . . maybe the time is right.” Tennyson would say “Amen” to that.
In “Ring Out, Wild Bells” we pray that, with God’s strength and wisdom, we might “ring out the old, ring in the new . . . ring out the false, ring in the true.” The verses suggest areas of experience in which God calls us to repentance, forgiveness, grace, and new life. Strikingly, Tennyson links individual renewal and the reform of persisting social sins. At the personal level, we may “ring out the grief that saps the mind, for those that here we see no more.” The very next line calls us to “ring out the feud of rich and poor; ring in redress to all mankind.”
The last two verses address the dangers of national or ethnic pride, partisan politics, and self-centered individualism, envisioning the dawn of a redeemed humanity.
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 in the valiant man and free, The larger heart, the kindlier hand; Ring out the darkness in the land; Ring in the Christ that is to be.
That final line affirms that in Jesus Christ God has in fact “broken down the dividing wall” that perpetuates hostility, “that he might create in himself one new humanity . . . thus making peace” (Ephesians 2:14-16).
“Ring Out, Wild Bells” is from the long poem “In Memoriam” (1850), which Tennyson wrote after the sudden death of a college friend. And the poem was written in the context of political turmoil in Europe following the revolutions of 1848. While old-fashioned, its language is not outdated. Our world suffers not less than his from loss, grief, failure, violence, and chaos. So it’s true, as Bono sings, “nothing changes on New Year’s Day.” But it’s also true that, in ways large and small, with the New Year, God beckons us to a higher and better life.
