For Wilshire Baptist Church
Bells come in all shapes and sizes and are rung for all reasons and purposes. We hear them in churches and casinos, boxing rings and stock markets, schools and fire stations, in bars and on bicycles. Bells signal that something important is happening – something that warrants our attention.
In my first journalism class at Baylor, the department chair would refer to a significant news event as a “proverbial bell ringer.” I soon learned he was talking about an event of such magnitude that when it came across the AP teletype machine, a physical bell would ring. I heard that bell ring for the first time on March 30, 1981, when President Ronald Reagan was shot. I was editor-in-chief of the Baylor Lariat, and the bell rang sporadically throughout the afternoon and evening with updates.
We had the same machines in Sherman and Waco when I worked at those newspapers, but I don’t recall ever hearing that bell again. Still, I’ve heard plenty of bells over the years. In fact, we tend to live from one bell to another, signaling a moment of splendor or heartbreak. With our social media, however, the bar has been set ever lower on what is considered significant, to the point that we can become deaf to the sound of the bell unless it is ringing for us.
There’s a tradition in chemotherapy that the patient rings a bell after their last treatment. I missed doing that when my last chemo session was cancelled, but some dear Wilshire friends sent us a beautiful glass bell and wind chime a few days later. I hung it in our backyard Vitex tree and rang it for myself on Monday when I got home from my final radiation treatment. Sometimes a private ringing – like a silent prayer – feels best.
There was nothing silent or private about those big black AP teletype machines. They would clatter all day every day, announcing in never-ending rolls of paper events from coast to coast and around the globe. There usually was someone assigned the task of monitoring the machine and tearing off the paper for distribution to reporters. Today we live in a never-ending stream of news on our devices and we have to be diligent to separate the mundane news from the “proverbial bell ringers” that might need our attention.
That happened last week when the bell rang for a childhood friend. We were good buddies from third through sixth grade when his family moved away. We didn’t reconnect until a few years ago on Facebook, and that’s where I learned he was found dead in his home from still-unknown causes. I read all I could and regretted the time and distance that had grown between us.
Seventeenth century English poet John Donne famously wrote about bells and their messages with these words: “Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.” He was writing about our interconnectedness, which in his day might be news of someone in the next village. Today we are, for better or worse, connected to people around the globe, whether we live in Dallas or Kyiv or Maui.
So now when the breeze rustles the bell out in the Vitex tree, I will be reminded not only of my own progress but of the joys and sorrows of people nearby and far away. Because while I can go out and ring the bell for myself, it is the breath of God moving in the wind that rings it for all who need our prayers.