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Hells Bells
There's an Anglican church just up the road from our Meeting House and it has bells. Since our meeting for worship and their main morning service both happen at the same time their bells are banging away as we assemble and stop as we settle down into our silence. If George Fox were around he'd be casting disapproving looks in their direction.
Actually, he'd do more than silently disapprove, he'd be marching in amongst them to give the vicar a piece of his mind.
The Puritans- and Fox was a Puritan though a maverick one- had a thing about bells. They thought them sinful. John Bunyan who was a bellringer in his unregenerate youth had the hardest job weaning himself away from them and even after he'd stopped ringing himself used to turn up at the belltower in Elstow to observe and listen. In the end he got is such a twist about it that he developed a phobia about the steeple collapsing on him- and that kept him away.
Incidentally the bell tower of Elstow Priory is still standing.
I love the plainness of the Quaker set up and I also love bells and incense and all that fol-de-rol. What a pity one has to choose. I was looking round the Meeting Room yesterday and saw there was a picture hook on the far wall and thought "We ought to hang something from that" and then again, sadly, that it was probably against the rules- and if not against the rules most certainly against the ethos.
Actually, he'd do more than silently disapprove, he'd be marching in amongst them to give the vicar a piece of his mind.
The Puritans- and Fox was a Puritan though a maverick one- had a thing about bells. They thought them sinful. John Bunyan who was a bellringer in his unregenerate youth had the hardest job weaning himself away from them and even after he'd stopped ringing himself used to turn up at the belltower in Elstow to observe and listen. In the end he got is such a twist about it that he developed a phobia about the steeple collapsing on him- and that kept him away.
Incidentally the bell tower of Elstow Priory is still standing.
I love the plainness of the Quaker set up and I also love bells and incense and all that fol-de-rol. What a pity one has to choose. I was looking round the Meeting Room yesterday and saw there was a picture hook on the far wall and thought "We ought to hang something from that" and then again, sadly, that it was probably against the rules- and if not against the rules most certainly against the ethos.
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Fox would have been yelling about 'steeple houses' and their iniquities!
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