Every Sunday the Bell Rings - Some St. Mark's History You May Not Know

The Mingun Bell in Myanmar weighs 90 tons.

There is a story of a temple with magnificent bells built long ago on an island. Over time the island sank, and with it sank the temple and its bells.  Legend had it that the bells continued to peal and anyone who listened could hear them.

A young man heard this story and traveled to the seashore, determined that he would hear the bells.  He listened for several weeks, giving up many times. Each time he gave up, the people in the village would recount the story. This encouraged him to try again.

Bells at a Spanish mission near San Diego, California

Finally, he did give up, deciding that perhaps he was simply not meant to hear the bells. Defeated, he laid on the seashore, listening to the sound of the waves.  That’s when something interesting happened.

As Anthony De Mello tells the story in “The Song of the Bird”:

In the depth of that silence, he heard it! The tinkle of a tiny bell followed by another, and another, and another. . . and soon every one of the thousand temple bells was pealing out in harmony, and his heart was rapt in joyous ecstasy.

When I arrived at St. Mark’s twelve years ago, two people approached me after church and asked why I hadn’t rung the courtyard bell during the Lord’s Prayer. I had two reasons for this – First, I didn’t know there was a bell. Second, no one told me I was supposed to!

That was when I learned it was a St. Mark’s tradition that the bell be played during the Lord’s Prayer - and that for many people it was a meaningful part of the service. It was an easy enough practice to adapt, so I started doing it.

A couple of weeks later I was told the bell was rung during the Lord’s Prayer for a very practical purpose – to alert the caregivers in the nursery that communion was starting. It was a signal that the children would be picked up soon.

One mother (whose children have been raised at St. Mark’s) had her children convinced for a long time that the bell had magical properties and just “knew” when it was time to ring.

Whether it’s a sign of devotion or a fancy timepiece (I’m pretty sure it’s not magic), the bell and its tower add beauty to our courtyard.

Recently we’ve begun using the bell to signal the assembly to stand for the Confession and Forgiveness/Thanksgiving for Baptism portion of our service.

The bell and tower were dedicated in 1987 – the bell to the glory of God and in loving memory of

Dorthea and Edgar Armstrong, 1984

Stephen Edgar Armstrong, and the tower to the glory of God and in loving memory of Rynhold J. Klomhaus.  It came about through the S. Edgar Armstrong Memorial Fund, the Rynhold J. Klomhaus Bequest, and the gifts of various members of St. Mark’s.

Andy Chopra, a composer and church musician who grew up at St. Mark’s, honored the bell in his composition “Behold, Bless Ye the Lord” which was written for St. Mark’s 75^th anniversary. A single bell, reminiscent of the bell in our courtyard, tolls throughout a portion of the piece.



You can hear the bell in this video clip:

May this bell give us many more years of service as it continues to call us to worship.

Sources:

Mingun Bell photo: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bell,_Mingun,_Myanmar.jpg#/media/File:Bell,_Mingun,_Myanmar.jpg

The Song of the Bird, Anthony De Mello © 1982 Anthony De Mello S. J., Lonvala, India. Published by Doubleday

The Story of St. Mark’s Evangelical Lutheran Church by Alice R. Loest, 1988