There is a church in Hillsborough that plays bells at 9:00 a.m., 12:00 p.m., 3:00 p.m., and 6:00 p.m. every day. Nana absolutely loves the bells. The bells are played to famous hymns. Nana will stop whatever she’s doing and go sit outside and enjoy the bells for a few minutes. The bells have become a restorative and life-giving ritual in Nana’s life.
Nana wrote the poem below. It’s inspiring to me to find similar ways to experience God in daily life.
CHURCH BELLS by Nana Vinar
Church bells from a distance, clanging and yet beautiful, some days subtle and some days sharp and clear. In the years we’ve lived on Fairmont, mostly in the summers when I was gardening mid-day, I’d stop my stooping and start to smile, recognizing the old, old tunes of faith being rung out over Orange County, perhaps the most secular county in this southern state.
May Your Kingdom come here, Lord! When they don’t suspect. May Your goodness catch them off-guard and bring them in like “bringing in the sheaves.”
The bells ring four times every day, and often I’m occupied or distracted when they come. But then I know they’ll come again. Several evenings when it was chilly, we’d put coats on and sit on the deck to wait for the bells. It’s like they signified the end of the workday, and now we make dinner and enjoy talking together and then rest. But when we’d sit outside waiting, there were sometimes too many competing sounds: the HVAC, an outdoor motor, nearby cars, the Hillsborough train, the neighbor’s chainsaw, or even the wind. So we would try again another day.
“Bells!” is what Amelia and I say now when one of us hears them. She’ll text me from the barn and I’ll hustle outside to catch the last part. They only play one line from each song, but sometimes that’s enough for me to hum that tune all day. Words of faith rising in my heart, spread all over this town, calling to us to rise up! Faith is what matters most. It’s what’s eternal. No matter what I’m dwelling on at the moment, the bells bring my focus to God, to His divine plan, to His sovereignty over all things, to His love for each of us.
The bells keep time for me each day if I’m outside working. That’s when I hear them most. They’re comforting and dependable and faith-inspiring, like garden dirt. I consider that they may sound like noise to anyone who doesn’t know the tunes, and mere songs to those who don’t know the words. I’m grateful for having learned these hymns way back in my childhood. I had no idea they’d mean so much more to me now.
Four times per day I have an audible invitation to stop what I’m doing and rest. To wash my hands and get out of the kitchen, to sit on the patio and close my eyes and breathe. To drink in God’s presence in the tunes of faith. “Faith of our fathers, holy faith!" To shift my perspective from mundane to eternal. This is a gift. And if you’re at my house at 9, noon, 3 or 6, I may invite you to enjoy the bells with us.