Last night el Patronato San Xavier sponsored a conversation about the restoration of the bells at the mission, an ongoing effort that Miles Green leads, and including help from Nancy Odegaard at the Arizona State Museum. The bells at the mission, three bronze and three iron, are from the 18th century, I believe, and have long hung in their places, slowly weathering, but often calling out lamentation or praise.
The big bell on its wheel marks both death and fiesta, and the bells call people to prayer.
Donald Nicholl observed, asked what elements he would include in a college of religious studies, that he would include a bell, to tie the people together in hearing it. (He also proposed a garden, so that we would get our hands into the earth.) The bell would provide sonic unity: as it does for the mission congregation of the Wa:k O'odum and their friends, as it does for the monastery of New Camaldoli. And as Jen Harris pointed out, as the bells on Old Main bring together (ring together?) the university community in Tucson.
What is our unity? How are we brought together? What calls to us? What resonates? What reverberates?
In a time when reconciliation, the restoration of peace, is devoutly sought, what better than to be called together into unity, by a bell sounding or by a call to prayer?
http://waknet.org/
https://patronatosanxavier.org/
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