Peace and hope for 2018.
I've not enjoyed 2017, we lost my mum, our house rabbit and two important friends. My family and I have struggled with our grief as well as a variety of medical and practical hassles. We lost a lot of garden produce, as we couldn't pick and process it.
The world and the country have been in turmoil. Trump is a danger to humanity and the planet. Brexit seems to be a disaster and because so much government time is taken up with it, nothing productive is happening in domestic legislation and scrutiny, things are falling apart and getting out of hand with nobody appearing to notice. Terrorism in London and Manchester and the Grenfell Tower fire really got to us.
My Advent and Christmas letter is still unfinished so may follow as an Epiphany letter!
The best bits were my daughter graduating with a first class BSc and joining the NHS, three premieres of my son's compositions, visiting Pozzuoli on the bay of Naples and especially the cave of the Cumaen Sybil, a few gentle autumnal days in Brittany and an unexpected Christmas Market in Worcester. Advent turned out to be a very rich and eventful journey.
“It is an accepted custom to ring English Full Circle Bells over midnight, to ring out the old year and ring in the new. Sometimes the bells are rung half-muffled for the death of the old year, then the muffles are removed to ring without muffling to mark the birth of the new year.”
Ring Out Wild Bells
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
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 thy mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.
(Ring in the Christ that is to be)
