Musings of a Loquacious Mind

To the Rhyming and the Chiming of the Bells!

As I got out of my car this morning I heard the 9am choruses of the local church bells, echoing across the cool autumn morning. These bells really needed a tune-up, but the sound of them took me back....

Back to my days at Carolina, when the Bell Tower would chime out their songs and church bells their hymns. Sometimes it was a game to see if you could recognize the song. Other times it was clear as, well, a bell. My favorite was when they would play the Doxology.

"Praise GOD from whom all blessings flow,
Praise Him, all creatures here below.
Praise Him above, ye heavenly host,
Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost"

It took me back to my wedding day, when the bells in the belfry rang out for all around to hear the joyous news of a couple that had pledged their lives to each other. My brother, Stephen, took his job seriously, ringing the bells like he meant it, but you could also see the joy on his face at getting to do what I'm sure all of us have wanted to do at sometime and nearly swing like Quasimodo from the great clappers of the bells.

It made me think of the Wyoming Valley where my husband grew up, an area so dense with such great, old churches that the bells literally would call people to worship. And all of the families of generations that had been called to their small town church along the dusty roads to the sound of the bells.

It made me think of the picture that hung in the ladies sitting room in my home church that showed early-American life on a Sunday morning, walking a dirt road to church on a hill in their finery. I loved that painting.

But at that point I had crossed the threshold into the office, and I needed to put those thoughts on the backburner as I went to work.

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