[Faith-talk] Good Night Message for Thursday, December 27 2012

[Paul]

Well, here's your good night message for you, at least for those of us in North America.  It's already Friday for those living outside our continent and hemisphere.  So let me get that proverbial blanket ready to tuck you in and, for good measure, your better half if you're married.  I hope and pray that your day went well or is going well.

We are about halfway between Christmas and New Year's Day, so I decided to use a poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson entitled "Christmas and New Year Bells," rendered as follows:

The time draws near the birth of Christ:
The moon is hid; the night is still;
The Christmas bells from hill to hill
Answer each other in the mist.

Four voices of four hamlets round,
>From far and near, on mead or moor,
Swell out and fail, as if a door
Were shut between me and the sound:
Each voice four changes on the wind,
That now dilate, and now decrease,
Peace and goodwill, goodwill and peace,
Peace and goodwill, to all mankind.

This year I slept and woke with pain,
I almost wished no more to wake,
And that my hold on life would break
Before I heard those bells again.

But they the troubled spirit rule,
For they controlled me when a boy;
They bring me sorrow touched with joy,
The merry, merry bells of Yule.

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:
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.

Well, if there was anything unwished for a happy new year, I don't know what it is.  Tennyson seemed to me to capture everything.

And now may the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob just keep us safe, individually and collectively, throughout this night or day and especially in these last days in which we live as I wrap blankets of love around all readers and their spouses. Your Christian friend and brother, Paul