We are given changes all the time. We can either cling to security, or we can let ourselves feel exposed, as if we had just been born, as if we had just popped out into the brightness of life and were completely naked. Maybe that sounds too uncomfortable or frightening, but on the other hand, it’s our chance to realize that this mundane world is all there is, and we could see it with new eyes and at long last wake up from our ancient sleep of preconceptions.
—Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart

And now the bells are ringing and the ear of my heart is too. First three rings. Then silence. Three more rings. Then silence. Three more rings. Then silence. Then in the dark of the sunrise that hasn’t yet happened the sister is pulling hard on both ropes, and both bells in the bell tower, the large bell and the small bell, ears ringing, and it is a flurry of dings, so many rings, far too many to count with no rests in between, lasting for what feels like the longest time you’ve ever held your breath.

I used to be a percussionist, counting all the notes and all the rests, playing the bells, the chimes, the cymbals, the gong, the vibraphone, all types of metal reverberating against mallet, mostly in gyms and auditoriums and football fields and recital halls, playing even in Switzerland once, but I never played to a mostly-dark valley like this. I never threw off the counting mind and started swinging with flurry and delight, moved by this offering of reality: this dim, cold day, the bruised sunrise that is beginning just like it did every day before

It’s a way in and under and over and together, a way to move through this life. To ring in this day and the next, each and every one, simply because it is here and so am I. We can ring in this day for whatever our version of the beautiful valley is, for whatever rests in the dark and listens. There is too much delight under this sky and under each of our small roofs not to grab a mallet and begin to play.

First appeared in Ruminate’s Issue 46.