Advent Visions

December 19:   Bells

My wife and I have bells all around us.   There are sleigh bells on the front door, and they jingle merrily whenever anyone comes into the house.   And out on the barn is a large bell, hand-made out of an old oxygen tank.   I ring it every morning when I go out to feed the birds, and its deep tones resonate for a long time as I walk across the yard.   I like to think it announces the beginning of the day to the creatures in the woods and fields around us, its rich sound similar to one of those great Chinese or Japanese gongs that stand in a Buddhist temple, sending prayers for miles out into the world.   One of my favorite acquisitions was an old cowbell I found at the church Christmas fair many years ago.  It was dented and had a bullet hole in one side;  evidently in a prior life it had been used for target practice.  But I grew up in a family with many farmers, and so the sound of cows coming from the fields with their bells clanging is a reminder to me of a more bucolic, peaceful way of life.   

I don't know which bells inspired Henry Wadsworth Longfellow to write a Christmas carol in  the midst of the Civil War.  Perhaps the church bells of Cambridge, Massachusetts, pealed a hope for peace to a man riddled with despair.  His wife had died after being burned in a fire, and his oldest son, a Union soldier, was seriously injured the battle of New Hope Church in Virginia.   Perhaps it felt to him as if the world was falling apart, and he ached for an end to the evil, destruction and death that seemed to be everywhere.     And so when he heard the bells on Christmas day, he took it as a prayer, that "wild and sweet/ the words repeat/ of peace on earth, good-will to men!"   

We may sing about happy jingle bells on a one-horse open sleigh, but Christmas bells also represent an ancient, heartfelt yearning for peace on earth.   On Christmas Eve, we will ring the old bell high in the church tower at midnight, and we'll toll it again to usher in the new year on January 1.  And at home, every time someone comes in the front door, they will enter under a sign that says "Peace to all who enter here" as those sleigh bells ring a welcome.   And I will ring my big old bell in the back yard every morning of my life, praying for peace on earth until the cows come home.

Bells

Let them ring
across the meadows and hills,
echoing over the long river,
rising to the stars.
Let them ring
so that the small creatures
and the ornery ones,
the ones bitter to the heart
and the ones who ache and weep
may hear the prayer, the song.
Let them ring
deep and soulful,
bright and merry.
Let them clang and clatter;
let them cry wild and sweet:
Peace to all.
Peace to all.