This Wikipedia article on the ringing and tolling of church bells says:
Ringing them occurs in three basic ways: normal ringing, chiming, or
tolling. Normal ringing refers to the ringing of a bell or bells at a
rate of about one ring per second or more, often in pairs reflecting
the traditional “ding-dong” sound of a bell which is rotated back and
forth, ringing once in each direction. “Chiming” a bell refers to a
single ring, used to mark the naming of a person when they are
baptized, confirmed, or at other times. Many Lutheran churches chime
the bell three times as the congregation speaks the Lord’s Prayer,
once at the beginning, once near the middle, and once at the “Amen”.
“Tolling” a bell refers to the slow ringing of a bell, perhaps once
every four to ten seconds. It is this type of ringing that is most
often associated with a death, the slow pace broadcasting a feeling of
sadness as opposed to the jubilance and liveliness of quicker ringing.
Customs vary regarding when and for how long the bell tolls at a
funeral. One custom observed in some liturgical churches is to toll the
bell once for each year of the life of the deceased. Another way to tell
the age of the deceased is by tolling the bell in a pattern. For example
if the deceased was 75 years old, the bell is tolled seven times for
seventy, and then after a pause it is tolled five more times to show the
five.
At Concordia Lutheran Church in Hood River, the bell is rung before church
every Sunday, but we do not observe the custom of chiming. On the
other hand, we do toll for funerals and on Good Friday. Those who can
recognize a tolling bell might easily wonder who has died: “For whom is
that bell tolling?”
A tolling bell is only one example of the way a church bell communicates
to the community. I realize that some community members may think a
church bell to be a nuisance, because they would rather continue
sleeping (or whatever they are doing) unmolested. Yet the very purpose
of having a church bell is to help rouse our earthly neighbors from
their slumber of doubt and unbelief to find the immortality that God has
prepared for them through Jesus Christ alone. Many of them should
find it a nuisance, since they do not wish to have any reminders of
their sins and mortality.
Since the Evangelical Lutheran Hymnary included the hymn “Wilt
Thou Forgive that Sin,” a poem by John Donne, I have been more
interested in Donne’s works. I find them devotional and provocative in
the best possible way. Today, a passing reference on
Cyberbrethren reminded me of a certain test-taking time in
college, and connected it with John Donne. I had taken my seat,
expecting a rigorous test, and the bell rang as the professor began
passing it out. I said something about the bell tolling, and he said
(as if quoting): “Ask not for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee.”
Ominous, if you understand the whole tolling thing.
A little digging on this wonderful Internet has turned up a fuller
context of that quote. It’s not really from a poem, though some
consider it so. Rather, it’s from a meditation by John Donne, in which
he would have the reader consider his connection with all of Christendom
in the body of Christ. Every time the church bell tolls, it marks the
passage of one of our members into eternity, and so every toll is
personally relevant to each Christian. In a similar way, every human
being is connected with every other, so that we should recognize that
the humanity we share with those who die means that we also participate
somehow in all those deaths.
Another point of interest about this meditation is Donne’s
now-familiar statement “No man is an island.” It’s good finally to know
the original context of those words, and see how the author put the
metaphor to a salutary use.
Here is the text of the meditation:
PERCHANCE he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill, as that he
knows not it tolls for him; and perchance I may think myself so much
better than I am, as that they who are about me, and see my state, may
have caused it to toll for me, and I know not that. The church is
Catholic, universal, so are all her actions; all that she does belongs
to all. When she baptizes a child, that action concerns me; for that
child is thereby connected to that body which is my head too, and
ingrafted into that body whereof I am a member. And when she buries a
man, that action concerns me: all mankind is of one author, and is one
volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but
translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so
translated; God employs several translators; some pieces are translated
by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God’s hand
is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered
leaves again for that library where every book shall lie open to one
another. As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon calls not upon the
preacher only, but upon the congregation to come, so this bell calls us
all; but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this
sickness. There was a contention as far as a suit (in which both piety
and dignity, religion and estimation, were mingled), which of the
religious orders should ring to prayers first in the morning; and it was
determined, that they should ring first that rose earliest. If we
understand aright the dignity of this bell that tolls for our evening
prayer, we would be glad to make it ours by rising early, in that
application, that it might be ours as well as his, whose indeed it is.
The bell doth toll for him that thinks it doth; and though it intermit
again, yet from that minute that that occasion wrought upon him, he is
united to God. Who casts not up his eye to the sun when it rises? but
who takes off his eye from a comet when that breaks out? Who bends not
his ear to any bell which upon any occasion rings? but who can remove it
from that bell which is passing a piece of himself out of this world?
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the
continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a
manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were: any man’s death diminishes
me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know
for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee. Neither can we call this a
begging of misery, or a borrowing of misery, as though we were not
miserable enough of ourselves, but must fetch in more from the next
house, in taking upon us the misery of our neighbours. Truly it were an
excusable covetousness if we did, for affliction is a treasure, and
scarce any man hath enough of it. No man hath affliction enough that is
not matured and ripened by and made fit for God by that affliction. If a
man carry treasure in bullion, or in a wedge of gold, and have none
coined into current money, his treasure will not defray him as he
travels. Tribulation is treasure in the nature of it, but it is not
current money in the use of it, except we get nearer and nearer our
home, heaven, by it. Another man may be sick too, and sick to death, and
this affliction may lie in his bowels, as gold in a mine, and be of no
use to him; but this bell, that tells me of his affliction, digs out and
applies that gold to me: if by this consideration of another’s danger I
take mine own into contemplation, and so secure myself, by making my
recourse to my God, who is our only security.
