Ringing of bells

It is a sound that captures attention.

I listen to it as a natural reflex. It gives me peace, it keeps me company, it reconnects me with my childhood and the generations that preceded me. People who try, honest people, pious people. I count the hours while I work and sew or am in the garden.

It is a sound that has always accompanied the passage of time of men, the first mass in the morning and then the daily work began, the three moments of the Ave Maria, there are other canonical hours to mark, dinner, prayers and work, more work until it is time to go to sleep. If it had gone badly, going to a funeral and if it had gone well, to a wedding or a baptism.

The sound of the bells brought news, announced hospitalizations and deaths, rung to ask for help and assistance.

For the holy mass they were rung by the children of the village, the same ones who inevitably under the same stern gaze, but with pride, served the Mass.

Once upon a time, the bell towers were open, the churches were also open, and people gathered inside them to pray, to entrust their souls to God and everything they had and to hope, that it would rain, and during violent storms, to chase away the hail.

Today the voices, always unique, of the bells have not changed, the distracted ears of those who listen to them and the faith in their hearts have changed.

Campane vecchia chiesa