Church Bells This Morning - Noisy Church Bells Are OK with Me [View all]
Right across the street from our townhome is a Catholic church. We moved here almost two months ago and I had noticed a bell tower on the church, but we heard no bells. This week, that changed.
Apparently, they fixed the automatic bell player last week. Suddenly, the daily noon mass is being announced with a long, discordant peal. Not musical, and the same every time, which tells me that the bells are played by a computer or other automatic means.
The bells are played just before the mass begins, so twice on Sunday and daily the rest of the week.
I don't mind, actually. They're very loud, since the church is right across the street from our place and the bells are large. I'm sure some people are bothered, in the same way they are bothered by the traffic noise on the four-lane arterial street where we live. I'm not bothered, though, despite not being religious in any way.
People have the right to worship as and if they please. 30 seconds of bell-ringing does not have much of an impact on my life, so I am not bothered by it. People also have the right to travel as they choose, so street noise doesn't bother me, either.
It reminds me of my 15-month time in Samsun, Turkey while serving in the USAF. My barracks window looked out on a steep hill in the town, with a mosque and minaret about halfway down that hill. Five times a day, the call to prayer rang out from that minaret, delivered by someone with an amplified voice that was very loud and very unmusical. Like the bells across my street now, that became part of the clockwork of the day.
I was not bothered then, and am not bothered now.
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