RFI Executive Vice President Eric Patterson authored a piece for Providence this week titled, “Ringing in 2023 With Hope.” Patterson reflects on the past year and looks to the year ahead in light of Lord Tennyson’s 1850 poem, “In Memoriam,” or better known as “Ring Out Wild Bells,” writing:

As the Sun sets on 2022 and rises on ’23, what are we to make of another annum come and gone? The year began with hope, epitomized perhaps best by the thrilling sportsmanship of the Beijing Olympics. The Olympiad was particularly joyous in the aftermath of the global COVID-19 pandemic and it seemed 2022 was starting with hope. Indeed, on New Year’s Day 2022 the entire world yearned for a year of health, of safety, of peace.

Lord Tennyson heralded the end of one year and the coming of the new in his poem “In Memoriam,” better known as “Ring Out Wild Bells.” Tennyson’s 1850 New Year’s prayer for the fading year and its successor sounds prophetic:

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.

Here you and I are now: reflecting back and peering ahead to 2023. Instead of Olympic spirit, China’s dictator class threatens its neighbors and faces a severe recurrence of the pandemic. Partisan attacks seem sharper than ever, particularly in Latin America where aged, corrupt authoritarians wielding bankrupt ideologies have returned to power in Nicaragua, Brazil, and elsewhere.

Read the full article: “Ringing in 2023 with Hope.”