The day begins with a bell. Bells ring throughout the day to mark when it’s time to move between the many classes and activities. Then comes the final bell, ending the school day and prompting everyone to leave the school grounds and move into the bigger world waiting beyond them. For school is a temporary place of learning, meant to inform and prepare but not contain or restrain. The bell is the prompt for moving within and moving beyond.
There aren’t many bells beyond high school, and precious few other markers that spur movement within and beyond; it’s up to each of us to keep an eye on the time, to create a life pattern with built-in bell equivalents. It’s also up to each of us to remember that there’s a bigger world beyond whatever work fills our days.
How do we know when it’s time to leave behind that part of life, that temporary place that was never meant to contain or restrain us? How do we take what such a place taught us and move into the larger world? How do we recognize and accept that it’s time to move on and beyond? How do we trust that there’s something more that waits beyond?
The bell reminds me of that David Whyte poem, “The Bell and The Blackbird,” where the speaker is torn between following the call of the bell (calling to prayer? something like that, I think)–and the call of the blackbird that is so alluring. And…how does one choose? Or is it both, somehow?
I remember you wrote about the choice to sit in the pew for worship or to go out into the natural world and do the same. Perhaps the bell and the blackbird symbolize this choice. I think it’s what we do once we make the choice that determines whether it is an experience of God or an avoidance of the same… Thanks, David!