Standing at the Gate of the Year by Griselda Heppel
Happy new year! 2024 brought much rejoicing to my wider family, as five new babies were born, beginning in January and culminating in twins in December. Babies bring hope and joy and also a little trepidation. We can’t tell what the future will bring for them; the best we can hope is that whatever it is, they will cope. In his Christmas broadcast of 1939, King George VI quoted these lines from a poem: And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year: "Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown". And he replied: "Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way". So I went forth, and finding the Hand of God, trod gladly into the night. And He led me towards the hills and the breaking of day in the lone East. It's a truism that the world in which Minnie Louise Haskins wrote her poem (originally called God Knows ) in 1908 was very differen...