“Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky”

“The year is dying in the night; Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.” ~ Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Sunset ~Fairbanks, Alaska (Chena River); Dec. 31, 2024; Photo taken at 2:06pm (Alaska Standard Time); -7 Fahrenheit (-22 Celsius), 18” of snow; Sunrise: 10:55am, Sunset: 2:52pm; Daylength: 3:59:32, gaining about 3 mins per day. (There are closer to 6 hrs of daylight when you consider that it’s light before sunrise and after sunset.) The sun rises on the southern horizon, travels low, and sets on the southern horizon.

Being back in Alaska for 3 months of another long, cold, dark winter reminds me of how we rely on hope here.. it comes in the form of waxing hours of light, of knowing that every day brings a few more minutes of the precious stuff and that eventually, when our patience is thinnest, we’ll feel some warmth in the solar smile; we’ll need our sunglasses again.

The dying of the old year and the dawning of the new seem predicated on a similar kind of hope.

This poem by Tennyson,* sung by Alana Levandoski, inspires me to enter the new year with a greater measure of positivity:

I seem to be approaching 2025 with a mixture of dread, hope and uncertainty. My naturally optimistic nature wants to embrace everything in Tennyson’s poem, wants to believe it’s all possible… to leave behind the feud of rich and poor, the political party strife, false pride, civic slander, lust for gold, spite and war. Oh that we could abandon war, see it recede into the distance as we embrace a future of peace. As unrealistic as this feels, if we abandon our hope for such a civilization, we will never achieve it. It’s only our hope that keeps us working for “sweeter manners, purer laws… the love of truth and right…the larger heart, the kindlier hand,” that keeps us striving towards “the common love of good.”

“There can be no nobler nor more ambitious task… than to help shape a just and peaceful world that is truly humane.” ~Jimmy Carter

Wherever you find it; in your dearest relationships, in the beauty of nature, in the knowledge that there is always good happening somewhere in the world, I wish you hope for the new year. Even if it’s just a flicker on the horizon of your heart, may it increase as surely and steadily as the return of light to the Arctic.

*In Memoriam, [Ring out, wild bells]

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.