The bells are ringing!
Dear Bethesda Family,
Every noon on Wednesdays, and before the Sunday Eucharists, we hear the glorious Bethesda Tower Bells ringing. Originally, church bells rang to tell the village that it was time for church. We still do that! And it’s also a great reminder for those of us serving that it is time to get into place. We are all so busy with preparations to lead worship, to greet one another, to grab some coffee, and in pre-service prayer that it is easy to lose track of time. On Sunday, they ring for five minutes, beginning ten minutes before each service. And the service always starts exactly on time!
During the week, we also hear the bells playing seasonal hymns. The automatic playing mechanism has many hymns programmed into it, and the manufacturer made playlists of hymns from our Episcopal tradition for each season, often transposed into a key that fits the notes available on our chime. We have a major scale, plus a few accidentals and a couple of extra notes on top.
I recently climbed into the somewhat inhospitable bell tower. I realized I hadn’t done this in the daytime recently, and I’m always impressed by the sheer scale of the structure. Our 14 bells fall right in the center of the definition of a “chime,” which is between 8 and 22 bells. The Mulford Memorial Chime was given by the Cluett family and was dedicated at the first service to take place in the present church building.
Our chime does not have the rope pulls that you may have seen in very large buildings. Instead, we have an Ellacombe console upstairs, which is a system designed by a 19th-century English priest to allow one person to ring any of the bells, one at a time. In addition, we have a modern mechanism that uses a separate set of electric strikers to play the bells, controlled by computer or keyboard. Either way, we have real bells that can be played with ease. The Organist can press a few buttons to play tolls after funerals and peals after weddings.
I hear those bells from my office every day. What a marvelous reminder to all of us that something special is happening right here!
Warmly,
Stuart.