Perhaps if you've stood near the cathedral in Uppsala . . .

Yesterday I spent the whole day at church. No, I’m not nearly that dedicatedly religious–I’ll leave that to the clergy and others far more willing and capable–but since my husband conducts choirs at that church and they sang (a lot) at three services between 9 a.m. and 7 p.m. yesterday and I like to hear his choirs when I can, not to mention keeping a hard-working guy company through a long day . . . well, we both spent the whole day at church. Except for a lunch break, I mean.

There were reasons besides the music that it was a worthwhile day to be at church all the day long. I’m sure some would say my everlasting soul is in dire need of such a thing, since I’m admittedly not so very pious by nature. But as I’m not conducting or singing or working like the rest of the people who attend multiple services, there is also welcome space in the forms of a mass for me to meditate and maybe refresh my strength for a bit.

The benefits of a church marathon yesterday certainly included being among people that took the solemnity and significance of 9-11’s tenth anniversary to heart and really did spend a day of remembrance and service in honor of those lost and those others who have continued to pay the price for ten years. More importantly in my book, I think many of those people with whom I ended up spending the day understand equally that the significance of the date is only validated and saluted properly by finding the most positive ways to move forward and renew all things touched by wounds of the day’s history. So amid the seriousness, there was a great deal of kindness and generosity and joy.

Certainly didn’t hurt for us to have a visit from a truly dear longtime friend who stayed after the second service and took us to lunch!

The other happy peculiarity of being in church all day was the reminder of how much I love the sound of church bells. While they were rung on this occasion for some less-than-ecstatic reasons along with the usual markings of time and ceremony, their very presence in the air, softly change-ringing through the nave and tolling across the neighborhood, was a benison I find particularly sweet. It brings not only consciousness of the best of the words and acts in hand but also of all kinds of good associative thoughts.

The bells do always bring with them reminders for me of their tolling for various loved ones who have died over the years: grandparents and close friends, other relatives, deeply connected neighbors and colleagues and cohorts of many kinds. Though I never cease to mourn the loss of those dearest to me, the bells generally bring up more welcome and cheering memories of them, perhaps because something comforting and pleasing in the sound of a well-tuned bell makes it hard for me to hear it as ominous or depressing.

The most distinct aspect of the beauty of bells’ ringing for me, though, is more strictly secular: all of the memories evoked of places I have loved to be, journeys taken, cities visited, hidden jewels of towns in obscure corners of lyrical countryside singing with the ringing of chime-like carillons and roaring urban canyons clanging with bold abandon. In part this is because of the those very connections made with memories of other loved family and friends, many in this case (happily) still living. I’m suddenly drawn back to a wintry day of walking through falling snow in the sharp cold of Basel with my sister and our cousin as the cathedral bells shout above us, echoing from corner to corner, we three stopping only to buy roasted chestnuts from a street vendor purely to heat our hands in our pockets. Then I’m in the outlandishly plush green hills of Oberstaufen in Bavaria, meandering the summer trails near town with my husband and finding one tiny chapel after another, almost like farmstands in their numbers and miniature simplicity but each exquisite in its own well-loved way, amid a sort of soft chattering of bells as one calls to another–all interwoven with the very different bells tinkling on the necks of “guest cows” equally enjoying the spa town as they roam their summer pastures.

Ring for me, sing for me . . .

I think I can fairly say that I caught the gist of the bishop’s thoughtful homily yesterday, the lilt and import of the liturgy and readings and ceremony, after attending three fairly elaborate services. I know that I bathed in the sounds of the choirs and the sonority of the organ very gladly. And soaring over it all, or undergirding it, was the recurring theme of the ringing of the bells. That was a particular grace-note on this very particular day.