Ring Out, Wild Bells

 

I’m seated in my old pink chair in my old music room as I write. Just finished a class with the 4^th graders who were my 5-year-old students in my last year of teaching here. That old pleasure of watching them grow and develop in the character that already was partially revealed almost half of their lifetime before. The New Year’s Ritual class I created years back, with some welcome new twists recently given by my colleague James Harding, clearly has hit each class I’ve taught these two days exactly where they live. 

 

Part of this unique class is shown in The Secret Song film, but I couldn’t help but wish the cameras were rolling again to show how young kids can participate in a beautiful ritual that aims them toward a future best self by giving them exactly what they need now. A chance to improvise a farewell song on the xylophone to the Old Year and a welcome song to the New Year, an opportunity to send the wishes for what they hope to leave behind riding out into the air on the powerful vibrations of a large Balinese gong and their hopes of what they hope to bring to the New Year with a smaller Thai gong. To respectfully and silently witness each other step through the doorway into their new possibility and then come join a seated circle with handbells awaiting them. When the last has arrived from that little ritual journey, they watch my signal, ring the bells exuberantly and exclaim, “Happy New Year!!” A welcome release after the kid-difficult task of being still and silent for some 10- 15 minutes.

 

Then some musical games with the bells, listening to the melody they create if we ring one at a time around the circle and the effortless new melody when we go the other way. Having kids conduct the bell orchestra. Passing bell sounds one at a time across the circle with eye-contact. And so on.

 

The 4^th graders had an extra surprise of a slip of paper under their bell which they then read out loud one at a time in a numbered order. It is a Tennyson poem titled “Ring Out, Wild Bells.” The language a bit archaic for them and some words needing explanation, but the sentiment is clear and needed and welcomed. Ring out our old personal and collective failures and ring in our always-present but so-difficult-to-realize better natures. Yes, indeed

 

In this election year, stanzas four and six feels particularly strong. No naïve hopes here, as those who have built their life around slander and spite, who view sweetness and kindness as weakness, will not be motivated until they face their own pain and vulnerability and stop trying to blame it on others. Or have a foundation of experience with those who have treated them kindly and shown them what true bravery is, the beauty of being large-hearted, kind-handed and free. Everything that I tried to give these kids in my days of subbing here and all the years before that, and judging from their happiness and focus in each class, it feels like they’re getting it. Those clinging to the slowly (but not fast enough) dying causes of party warfare, lust for gold, false pride and ongoing war can only be rung out by the new generations trained to nobility, purer laws and the fuller songs of minstrels that marry grief and joy. Here’s Tennyson’s poem:

 

RING OUT, WILD BELLS: Alfred Lord Tennyson

1) 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.

 

2) 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.

 

3) 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.

 

4) Ring out a slowly dying cause

And ancient forms of party strife.

Ring in the nobler modes of life,

With sweeter manners, purer laws.

 

5) 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. 

 

6) 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.

 

7) 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.

 

8) Ring in the valiant man and free,

The larger heart, the kindlier hand,

Ring out the darkness of the land,

Ring in the light * that is to be.

 

 

    * Original poem says “Christ”