The Fuller Minstrel (Trinitarian article)

The Fuller Minstrel

Fr. Tony’s Letter to the Trinitarians

January 2017

I have had several friends tell me that they are not sorry to see 2016 leave:  the year was particularly bad for many.  We saw the death of many beloved cultural icons and gifted artists, the Brexit vote in the UK, continuing racial turmoil, police brutality, and gun violence in the U.S.  An outrageously vicious U.S. presidential campaign ended with victory for the candidate who lost the popular vote naming to his cabinet many people the majority of Americans find deplorable and troubling.  Here at Trinity, we saw the death of many beloved parishioners and ongoing debilitating illness for increasing numbers of others.  It was truly an annus horribilis. 

Poet Laureate for Victorian Britain, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, awoke one night near the end the year in the mid-1800s to a winter storm.  Amid the thunder, lightning, and howling wind, he could hear the gale pealing chaotically the bells of Waltham Abbey Church.    Seeing this as an appropriate coda of a bad year, he wrote the poem “In Memoriam”:

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.

I wish you all a happy, bright New Year, with newness of life and a nearer Reign of God. 

Fr. Tony+