A Life By The Bells
By Anna Laughery
Among countless other little blessings, the isolation caused by COVID-19 has made me see the many things I took for granted on my college campus. The absence of these gifts, such as the accessibility of my friends, the books in my library, the crappy, is now constantly before my eyes. Some of the things we end up missing the most when we leave a place don’t even register in our minds when we are in their vicinity. For me, this unseen and unexpected hole in my heart has been created by the loss of the bells of the Abbey and parish on my college campus.
There were days at college where I would curse those bells. They would wake me up at 6:00am when I planned on sleeping in, or they would startlingly remind me that I was late for classes or meetings. There were also days that they went completely unnoticed. Sometimes I would find myself walking with a visitor and they would ask, seemingly out of the blue, “Do those bells go off every hour?” and I would respond, half confused and half dismissive, “Yea, I guess they do. I don’t even notice them anymore.”
But now they are gone and I spend my days in the quiet and the chaos of my family’s home in suburban America, I realize what those bells represented to me.
First, they were a reminder of the selfless, prayerful and obedient lives our religious live. Hearing bells at 6:00am reminded me that there are people who sacrifice sleep, day after day, year after year, decade after decade, to a routine of prayer and worship which participates in the salvation of the entire world. Seeing a monk run across campus after the ringing of bell of summoning reminded me of what it means to be a fool for Christ. They didn’t care that they looked ridiculous running in their habits; they just knew their Lord and their brothers deserve their punctuality.
These bells also reminded me that our time is not our own. Hearing the 9:00am and 11:00am parish bells ringing on Sunday mornings reminded me that families were dragging their kids out of beds and of pajamas and into their Sunday best and their minivans to make it to mass on time. These families were heedless of the loss of their lazy Sunday morning; instead they knew that Sunday was not theirs, but rather their Creator’s. Likewise, Seeing the monks of our abbey rise in unison out of their cell-like choir stalls at the sound of the bells reminded me of the humble obedience of a servant. They are all grown men, capable of making their own decisions and planning their own days, yet they freely and joyfully give up their daily freedoms in exchange for the humbling virtue of obedience. Yes, the bells of my college keep time. But more importantly they remind us that time is not just a creation to be wasted, but rather belongs to the Creator and because of this is sacred and sacramental.
As I mourn the loss of these bells in my life, I am well aware that many of us do not live a life by the bells. We live a life dictated by our capricious schedules, thrown around by the winds of laziness, false expectations, and lies about peak productivity and efficiency. How can we break out? How can we humble ourselves and our schedules in obedience, as Christ humbled himself, and consecrate our hours back to the Lord? Whether you do this through setting an hourly alarm on your watch or phone, creating a habit of praying Liturgy of the Hours (if you want to do this, follow this link for an app with the prayers), or stopping to pray at sunrise or sunset, I challenge you to let obedience dictate the schedule of your day, not your own will and desires. Let the subtle bells the Lord has placed in your life be like a lamp to your feet.
“Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.” 2 Philippians 5-8
