Checking the Facebook page the
other morning, I noticed my buddy was on. Like me, she’s a late comer to
Facebook. In fact, she’s still learning the ropes. I pull up the chat
page – “Hi!” I type. No response…. aaaand….no response.
My eye strays to the latest issue
of The Economist sitting on my desk. The magazine is open to a small article
about Christian churches in Jerusalem making the move from human-powered bells
calling the faithful, to mechanical bells.
Rarely
in this fractious holy city do clerics cede rights for which they used to wage
holy wars. But from the Abbey of the Dormition to Jesus’s resting place in the
Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the bell-ringers of Jerusalem are abandoning
their ropes after a century and a half, and installing automated timers
instead.
The computer emits a lilting,
gurgle-ring. It’s my buddy. “Hey!” she’s typed. “I had to ask my son what to do
because I’ve never chatted on FB before.”
We type back and forth about what
they’ve been up to the last few days, how she just took her son to see the
Hobbit at the IMAX theatre and what they thought. “It was amazing,” she says.
“I’ve never read the book, but I really liked the movie.”
“Confession time,” I respond. “I've never made it through the book either.”
“No way!”
“Way.”
My eye strays back to the Economist
article.
…times
and technology change. The churches now compete for the latest mod cons,
including manpower-saving bells that chime at the touch of a button. “The old
way was kind of a hassle,” sighs Athanasius Macora, a Franciscan friar whose
church was the city’s first to automate its bells. “You had to be there on
time.”
After a few minutes, the computer gurgles again (I’m sure she’s doing other things, too). “So, this is kind of fun.”
“Yeah,” I type. “I have friends...they spend a lot of time online, and they always stop by and say hi
when I get on. It’s kind of the equivalent of chatting over the fence while
you’re hanging out the laundry.”
…With
their bells on autopilot, the churches can compete with the mosques [who record
and broadcast their calls to prayer] and the air-siren that Israelis use to
call in the Sabbath.
“I can see that,” she types. “I
miss being there with you, though, face to face. It’s not really the same.”
Aesthetes
say they can hear a difference between traditional bell-ringing and today’s
phoney jingling bells.
“Me too, G,” I smile a smile she
can’t see. “I miss you, too.”
