SThe feast of Epiphany stands at a fascinating crossroad of history, theology, and human longing. For centuries, Christians have observed January 6 as the day the church remembers how Christ was first revealed to the world — not just as a baby born in Bethlehem, but as God incarnate, manifest to all people. ome wise men, the Greek term “Magi,” from the East saw a star signaling the birth of the king of the Jews. Then they set out to find Him.

The turning of the year is always bittersweet. We look back with gratitude, sometimes with sorrow — and we look forward with hope, sometimes with trembling. We stand between “what has been” and “what may yet be.” Few poems capture that holy tension like Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s “Ring Out, Wild Bells.” It appears as Canto CVI in his long work In Memoriam, written over many years in the wake of the early death of his closest friend, Arthur Hallam.