Twice a day now, we have the cacophony of various bells, gongs and chimes over a ten to fifteen minute period - I didn’t know that Bridgetown had so many time zones. The original concept, I believe, quoting Father Paul Cannon in your report “Bells to Chime Over The Town”, 20 October 2010, was a “calling of the soul to prayer”, and “If people were out in the field or elsewhere working, on hearing the bells they would stop what they were doing and drop to their three, three, nine chimes.” (sic) I’m presuming this is a typo, and refers to getting down on one’s knees. The reality is very few of us still work in the fields and fewer still, I believe, would eagerly genuflect and pray Pavlov’s dog fashion.
Why don’t we invite our fellow Australians of the Islamic faith to build minarets around the town and have the ‘Azan’ or ‘call to prayer’ five times a day ? Or perhaps the military could put on a twenty one gun salute or a canon shot at a certain time of day, then the “Last Post” played every sunset ?
Aren’t there enough reminders of our ‘in the moment’ obsessed lives ? Mobile phones, text messages and social networking ?
I don’t think that many would disagree that we, in Bridgetown, find ourselves in a beautiful part of the natural world. Why not follow nature’s clock. The dawn chorus of the birds. The welcome drumming of the rain on a tin roof. The distant bellow of a straying cow.
Why can’t our collective mantra be “Silence is golden”
Regards
