The Bells Rang Again!
Everything stopped. The live news reporter paused to listen for the bells. The bells, made famous by Victor Hugo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, rang again at Notre Dame. The sound marked the return of life and hope to the cathedral after the devastating fire five years ago. It was the sound of relentless hope, a reminder that “the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness doesn’t extinguish the light.” (John 1:1-5).
The death of Jimmy Carter at 100 was another reminder of the light of goodness is a dark world. He faced a devastating defeat with grace, faith and the determination to go on making a Christ-like difference in this world.
President Biden called him “a man of principle, faith, and humility … We would all do well to be a little more like Jimmy Carter.” Even the President-elect, who could not be a more glaring contradiction of who Carter was and what he believed, acknowledged his respect for his predecessor. “He worked hard to make America a better place, and for that I give him my highest respect. He was a truly good man.” I’d say Jimmy Carter showed us what it looks like to be a Christian.
The Sound of Hope
We need the sound of the bells and the witness of Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter as the reminder of the light of goodness is a dark and difficult time. The return of Trump to the White House and the MAGA control of Congress and the Supreme Court mark a dark turn in our history. I really did (and still do!) believe that we are better than this, but the immediate future looks ominous in many ways.
And so, I return to words to Alfred, Lord Tennyson. His classic poem, In Memorial A.H.H, is his cry of grief and pain after the death of his best friend, Arthur Henry Hallam, at age 22. It captures how many of us feel at the end of this year.
But midway through the poem, there’s an abrupt change in rhythm and spirit. Tradition says it was written after Tennyson heard the bells ringing in Waltham Abbey. You can hear it set to music here.
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 thy 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.
I’m listening to the bells of hope as I pray for a gracious and good new year.
Grace and peace,
Jim
Jim Harnish 
Well said my friend! And may the bells ring beautifully for you and your family in 2025!
Steve
Nice and timely.Well done, my gre
Happy New Year, Martha and Jim. Hope it is blessed in every way.
May I offer this observation on today’s message:
Was there not a way to celebrate Jimmy Carter’s extraordinary contributions to mankind and his shining Christian example and leave it at that?
Stay well, good friends.
Jim
Thanks and best wishes to your entire family, too! The answer to your question would be Yes if honoring the Carters had been the primary purpose, but the bells of Notre Dame and the poem spoke to me is a larger way to the challenges of the time. I appreciate your comment.
I want to say thank you for your work here. I too am praying for a gracious and good new year for us all.
Thank you, Jim. Blessings and Peace to you and Martha. love, Flossie
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Thank you for Tennyson’s words. Amazing how they are just as meaningful and on topic over a century later.
Your words are a blessing to those of here at Carlyle in Macon. Thank you and blessings for the new year.
Please have someone change my email to ed.brewton@me.com…..
I can hear them clearly! ❤️
Jim, thank you so much for your excellent commentary on President Jimmy Carter, and also for your theme of “the bells,” so beautifully wrought in Tennyson’s long poem, In Memoriam A.H.H. Like Jimmy Carter, you have a broad knowledge of poetry, music and “the arts,” which you have shared so generously in your blog over the years, and from which I have benefited immensely.
Your discussion of Tennyson’s great poem in memory of his brother-in-law started me researching the poem, its history and a number of instances in which some or all of the eight stanzas of chapter CVI, beginning with the phrase, “Ring out, wild bells” have been set to music. In my opinion, the most beautiful of those musical settings is a work by Welsh composer Karl Jenkins, entitled The Armed Man: A Mass For Peace, in which the second, seventh and eighth stanzas you quoted were included in the finale (entitled “Better is Peace”). Of all the performances of The Armed Man I have found on YouTube, I like the one conducted by the composer, Karl Jenkins, with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and sung by the National Youth Choir of Great Britain. If you decide to listen to the finale, I also highly recommend the “Benedictus” immediately preceding the finale. . I have not had time to carefully try to absorb even of fraction of the entire poem. However, I was struck by the following chapter, on page 114 of this 163 page masterpiece, which reads:
IN MEMORIAM.
XCVI.
You say, but with no touch of scorn, Sweet-hearted, you, whose light-blue eyes Are tender over drowning flies, You tell me, doubt is Devil-born.
I know not: one indeed I knew In many a subtle question versed, Who touch’d a jarring lyre at first, But ever strove to make it true:
Perplext in faith, but pure in deeds, At last he beat his music out. There lives more faith in honest doubt, Believe me, than in half the creeds.
He fought his doubts and gather’d strength, He would not make his judgment blind, He faced the spectres of the mind And laid them: thus he came at length
To find a stronger faith his own; And Power was with him in the night, Which makes the darkness and the light, And dwells not in the light alone,
But in the darkness and the cloud, As over Sinai’s peaks of old, While Israel made their gods of gold, Altho’ the trumpet blew so loud.
Jim, I highlighted the third stanza above, because it echoes a theological point that you made multiple times from the pulpit, that faith and doubt are not opposites, and one that I firmly believe. And of course, “reason” is one of the four pillars of the “Wesleyan Quadrilateral.” I would add that, for many years now, I am not comfortable with reciting the Apostles’ Creed, in particular its belief in “the holy catholic church,” either with or without a capital “C.”
I was able to find only one copy of the complete poem online. If you don’t have that and would like to have it, I would be glad to send it to you.
Thanks again for enriching our lives with your excellent blog, Jim.
Wishing you and Martha a very Happy New Year!
Peace and Grace, Tom
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Tom:
Thanks for your always thoughtful reply and for the recommendation of the music. With you, I love his lines beginning with “Perplext in faith…” What a perfectly beautiful description of the way many folks come to the faith. I’m grateful for all of you encouragement. Jim