The Outs and Ins of New Year

A New Year is coming! 

Scarcely ever can so many people have been looking forward to a better 'next year'.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson:

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. 

Twinning

What British town might best be twinned with Bethlehem?

Musing on this I feel that perhaps a city twinned with Bethlehem ought to be - well - holy and perhaps very old. We might think of St Albans, with a history going back to Roman times and architecturally dominated by a great Abbey Church and Cathedral honouring an early martyr of Christ. Not very Middle Eastern though.

The most obvious place to twin with Bethlehem has, in a sense, already started. It is a little Carmarthenshire village once known as Dyffryn Ceidrich. The village chapel was (not unusually) called Bethlehem and such was the overwhelming nature of the spiritual revivals experienced in the area and the smallness of the village that somewhere in the mists of history the village stopped being known by its original name and took on the name of the chapel. Hence Britain has its very own Bethlehem, complete with nearby sheep.

However the truth is that just one British place is twinned with Bethlehem. I confess to a whiff of pride as Diane and I are former residents of that place. On the other hand, even as I write this article, my head continues to involuntarily shake from side to side in a kind of deeply disturbed bewilderment. For the British city now twinned with Bethlehem is....

Glasgow.

Yes, that Glasgow. Rangers and Celtic, Billy Connolly, Barlinnie Prison and a homing device for Atlantic low pressure areas. Whether I was climbing over a sozzled seasonal celebrant on the underground, fighting the wind and rain between shops on Sauchiehall Street, queuing in a launderette full of students or sitting in a bleakly dark and forbidding kirk, thoughts of Bethlehem rarely surfaced in my student life in Glasgow - even near Christmas!

Yet thinking on, Bethlehem and Christmas are all about incongruous twinning.

I don’t know what angelic heralds do after a major performance - do they get straight on with heavenly ministry or do they take time out? If the latter then surely, as the shepherds made their expectant way down to Bethlehem to see the Christ-child who was Lord of glory, one of the heavenly chorus muttered to another, "I just don’t understand why He would twin with them"

King of kings, yet born of Mary,

As of old on earth He stood,

Lord of lords, in human vesture,

In the body and the blood;

Happy Birthday Kim!

Kim Walker-Smith is 39 today.  Happy Birthday, Kim!  If this was the only worship she had sung we would be grateful for her, her voice and her Lord.